Intractability and optimality are two sides of one coin: Optimal models are often intractable, that is, they tend to be excessively complex, or NP-hard. We explain the meaning of NP-hardness in detail and discuss how modem computer science circumvents intractability by introducing heuristics and shortcuts to optimality, often replacing optimality by means of sufficient sub-optimality. Since the principles of decision theory dictate balancing the cost of computation against gain in accuracy, statistical inference is currently being reshaped by a vigorous new (...) trend: the science of simplicity. Simple models, as we show for specific cases, are not just tractable, they also tend to be robust. Robustness is the ability of a model to extract relevant information from data, disregarding noise.Recently, Gigerenzer, Todd and the ABC Research Group (1999) have put forward a collection of fast and frugal heuristics as simple, boundedly rational inference strategies used by the unaided mind in real world inference problems. This collection of heuristics has suggestively been called the adaptive toolbox. In this paper we will focus on a comparison task in order to illustrate the simplicity and robustness of some of the heuristics in the adaptive toolbox in contrast to the intractability and the fragility of optimal solutions. We will concentrate on three important classes of models for comparison-based inference and, in each of these classes, search for that to be used as benchmarks to evaluate the performance of fast and frugal heuristics: lexicographic trees, linear modes and Bayesian networks. Lexicographic trees are interesting because they are particularly simple models that have been used by humans throughout the centuries. Linear models have been traditionally used by cognitive psychologists as models for human inference, while Bayesian networks have only recently been introduced in statistics and computer science. Yet it is the Bayesian networks that are the best possible benchmarks for evaluating the fast and frugal heuristics, as we will show in this paper. (shrink)
The notion of biopolitical sovereignty and the theory of the state of exception are perspectives derived from Carl Schmitt’s thought and Michel Foucault’s writings that have been popularized by critical political theorists like Giorgio Agamben and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri of late. This article argues that these perspectives are not sufficient analytical points of departure for a critique of the contemporary politics of terror, violence and war marked by a growing global exploitation of bodies, tightened management of (...) life, and endless and unpredictable abusive force. To better capture the singularity of our present condition of violence, war and terror, a supplementation of Schmitt’s and Foucault’s approaches by way of Hannah Arendt’s language of political action and agonistic engagement is useful. By bringing Arendt’s language of political agony to bear on contemporary biopolitical debates and discourses, we wish to revisit common practices of war and terror as matters of ‘agonal sovereignty’. ‘Agonal sovereignty’ allows us to peer into the ‘abyss of total violence’ that manifests itself after sovereign decisionism and biopolitical modalities of power have taken over the everyday conduct of political affairs. (shrink)
Carl Schmitt, an increasingly influential German law professor, developed a provocative and historically oriented model of “political theology” with specific relevance to legal scholarship and the authorship of constitutional texts. His “political theology” is best understood neither as an expressly theological discourse within constitutional law, nor as a uniquely legal discourse shaped by a hidden theological agenda. Instead, it addresses the possibility of the continual resurfacing of theological ideas and beliefs within legal discourses of, for instance, sovereignty, the force (...) of law and states of emergency (or “exception”) that present themselves as relentlessly secular, even—in the case of Kelsenian jurisprudence—”scientific”. This article illustrates and then critically evaluates Schmitt’s theory in terms of the authorship of constitutional texts in particular. It includes two case studies—genocidal colonial land appropriation and Kelsenian positivism in order to illustrate aspects of his political theology. Whilst Schmitt is defended against reductionist interpretations, I show that there remains considerable unfinished business before a Schmittian approach to legal theory merits full acceptance. (shrink)
Suppose a fire broke out in a fertility clinic. One had time to save either a young girl, or a tray of ten human embryos. Would it be wrong to save the girl? According to Michael Sandel, the moral intuition is to save the girl; what is more, one ought to do so, and this demonstrates that human embryos do not possess full personhood, and hence deserve only limited respect and may be killed for medical research. We will argue, (...) however, that no relevant ethical implications can be drawn from the thought experiment. It demonstrates neither that one always ought to let the embryos die, nor does it allow for any general conclusion concerning the moral status of human embryos. (shrink)
On the 27th of October, 1949, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Manchester organized a symposium "Mind and Machine", as Michael Polanyi noted in his Personal Knowledge (1974, p. 261). This event is known, especially among scholars of Alan Turing, but it is scarcely documented. Wolfe Mays (2000) reported about the debate, which he personally had attended, and paraphrased a mimeographed document that is preserved at the Manchester University archive. He forwarded a copy to Andrew Hodges and (...) B. Jack Copeland, who in then published it on their respective websites. The basis of this interpretation here is the copy preserved in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, Special Collections, Polanyi Collection (abbreviated RPC, box 22, folder 19). The same collection holds the mimeographed statement that Polanyi prepared for this symposium: "Can the mind be represented by a machine?" This text has not been studied by Polanyi scholars. (shrink)
In Consciousness and persons, Michael Tye (Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) develops and defends a novel approach to the unity of consciousness. Rather than thinking of the unity of consciousness as involving phenomenal relations between distinct experiences, as standard accounts do, Tye argues that we should regard the unity of consciousness as involving relations between the contents of consciousness. Having developed an account of what it is for consciousness to be unified, Tye goes on (...) to apply his account of the unity of consciousness to the split-brain syndrome. I provide a critical evaluation of Tye's account of the unity of consciousness and the split-brain syndrome. (shrink)
In his recent writings, Sir Michael Dummett has reflected twice on the Catholic position on the morality of contraception, focusing his attention especially on Humanae Vitae’s prohibition of the contraceptive use of the birth control pill. On examination, Dummett finds this prohibition ‘incoherent’, arguing that its promulgation ‘greatly damaged the respect of the faithful for the Catholic Church’s moral teaching in general’, as well as ‘the integrity of Catholic moral theology’. Given Dummett’s earlier defense of Paul VI’s reaffirmation of (...) the Church’s traditional position on contraception in Humanae Vitae, as well as his forceful criticisms of certain liberalizing tendencies among Catholic theologians and biblical scholars, these arguments deserve to be taken seriously, and regarded as coming from a spirit of serious philosophical reflection rather than casual dissent. Nevertheless, this paper argues that they are based on a misapprehension of what is really behind the position Dummett means to be criticizing, and that when the essentials of that position are clarified the rationale behind it is safe from his objections. (shrink)
Michael Tye argues for two crucial theses: (1) that experiences of pain have representational content (essentially); (2) that the representational content can be specified in terms of something like damage in parts of the body. (Different types of pain are connected with different types of damage.) I reject both of these theses. In my view experiences of pain carry nonconceptual content, but do not represent essentially. Rather they are apt to represent when the subject attends to them. The experiences (...) carry nonconceptual content not only about tissue damage, but about many other qualities as well, including dispositional qualities. (shrink)
For more than 100 years, anthropologists have collected ethnographic research among communities who assert that the spirits, animal allies, and other entities of the unseen world are “really real,” yet we have historically contextualized this information under the umbrella of cultural relativism rather than taking the veracity of these claims seriously. In the last decade, some anthropologists claim that our discipline has finally undergone an ontological turn, which opens a door for anthropologists to finally take claims of nonhuman sentience seriously (...) under the umbrella of ontological, rather than cultural, relativism. This paper takes issue with ontological relativism as just one more frame for explaining away the stories of other-than-human consciousness that ethnographers report and suggests that there is an urgent need to consider the relevance, rather than the relativism, of other-than-human consciousness. It looks to Michael Harner's work as a welcome alternative to ontological relativism and encourages opening our minds to a reconsideration of what is “really real.”. (shrink)
Imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle that works like the board game in the movie “Jumanji”: When you finish, whatever the puzzle portrays becomes real. The children playing “Jumanji” learn to prepare for the reality that emerges from the next throw of the dice. But how would this work for the puzzle of scientific research? How do you prepare for unlocking the secrets of the atom, or assembling from the bottom-up nanotechnologies with unforeseen properties – especially when completion of such (...) puzzles lies decades after the first scattered pieces are tentatively assembled? In the inaugural issue of this journal, Michael Polanyi argued that because the progress of science is unpredictable, society must only move forward with solving the puzzle until the picture completes itself. Decades earlier, Frederick Soddy argued that once the potential for danger reveals itself, one must reorient the whole of one’s work to avoid it. While both scientists stake out extreme positions, Soddy’s approach – together with the action taken by the like-minded Leo Szilard – provides a foundation for the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies. This paper narrates the intertwining stories of Polanyi, Soddy and Szilard, revealing how anticipation influenced governance in the case of atomic weapons and how Polanyi’s claim in “The Republic of Science” of an unpredictable and hence ungovernable science is faulty on multiple levels. (shrink)
In line with his theory of secularization according to which all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts, Carl Schmitt argues in Constitutional Theory that people’s (Volk) constitution-making power in modern democracy is analogical to God’s potestas constituens in medieval theology. It is also undoubtedly possible to find a resemblance between Schmitt’s constitution-making power and God’s power as it is described in medieval theology. In the same sense as the constitution-making power is (...) absolutely free from all normative ties, God’s potestas constituens, or rather, God’s potentia absoluta is free from such ties. Yet, unlike the Schmittian constitution-making power, God’s potentia absoluta was not, in medieval theology, originally intended as a description of some form of divine action: the absolute power of God referred to the total possibilities initially open to God. However, when the canonists started to employ the term potentia absoluta in their speculations concerning the papal plenitude of power (plenitude potestatis) by the end of the thirteenth century, they used it in a different sense than the theologians previously. According to certain canonists, the pope, by his potentia absoluta, could grant de facto dispensations from divine and ecclesiastical laws. Later on, this notion became a theological notion as well, but given its origin in juridical discourse, the constitution-making power, rather than being a secularized theological notion, is a theologized juristic notion. (shrink)
This paper discusses how Wittgenstein’s thinking informs recent conversations about art and aesthetic practice by examining his influence on the work of the noted modernist art critic, Michael Fried. Fried considers an excerpt from Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value, with a puzzling thought experiment, to help us see more clearly the Canadian artist Jeff Wall’s photographic vision and aesthetic. I consider Fried’s account of the photographic practice of Jeff Wall, especially his photograph Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation (1999).
[Michael Friedman] This paper considers the extent to which Kant's vision of a distinctively 'transcendental' task for philosophy is essentially tied to his views on the foundations of the mathematical and physical sciences. Contemporary philosophers with broadly Kantian sympathies have attempted to reinterpret his project so as to isolate a more general philosophical core not so closely tied to the details of now outmoded mathematical-physical theories (Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics). I consider two such attempts, those of Strawson and (...) McDowell, and argue that they fundamentally distort the original Kantian impulse. I then consider Buchdahl's attempt to preserve the link between Kantian philosophy and the sciences while simultaneously generalizing Kant's doctrines in light of later scientific developments. I argue that Buchdahl's view, while not adequate as in interpretation of Kant in his own eighteenth century context, is nonetheless suggestive of an historicized and relativized revision of Kantianism that can do justice to both Kant's original philosophical impulse and the radical changes in the sciences that have occurred since Kant's day. /// [Graham Bird] Michael Friedman criticises some recent accounts of Kant which 'detach' his transcendental principles from the sciences, and do so in order to evade naturalism. I argue that Friedman's rejection of that 'detachment' is ambiguous. In its strong form, which I claim Kant rejects, the principles of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are represented as transcendental principles. In its weak form, which I believe Kant accepts, it treats those latter principles as higher order conditions of the possibility of both science and ordinary experience. I argue also that the appeal to naturalism is unhelpful because that doctrine is seriously unclear, and because the accounts Friedman criticises are open to objections independent of any appeal to naturalism. (shrink)
The aim of the article is to outline and compare the way that Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt understand the spheree of politics as well as analyse the concepts of power and freedom connected with their theories. Both Schmitt and Arendt criticise liberal democracy for its “neutrality” and counterpoise it with their own understanding of political action. Especially Schmitt who understand such action as a conflict between friends and enemies. The analysis of their approach to the power (...) and the contrasting their models of politics allows Wonicki to draw conclusions about contemporary liberalism and indicating its limits. (shrink)
This paper deals with Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought styles and Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge. Though both concepts have been very influential for science studies in general, and both have been subject to numerous interpretations, their accounts have, somewhat surprisingly, hardly been comparatively analyzed. Both Fleck and Polanyi relied on the physiology and psychology of the senses in order to show that scientific knowledge follows less the path of logical principles than the path of accepting or rejecting (...) specific conventions, where these may be psychologically or sociologically grounded. It is my aim to show that similarities and differences between Fleck and Polanyi are to be seen in the specific historical and political context in which they worked. Both authors, I shall argue, emphasized the relevance of perception in close connection to their respective understanding of science, freedom, and democracy. (shrink)
This article addresses, from a Frankfurt School perspective on law identified with Franz Neumann and more recently Habermas, the attack upon the principles of war criminality formulated at the Nuremberg trials by the increasingly influential legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. It also considers the contradictions within certain of the defence arguments that Schmitt himself resorted to when interrogated as a possible war crimes defendant at Nuremberg. The overall argument is that a distinctly internal, or “immanent”, form (...) of critique is required of Schmitt's position, in which its is found wanting even on its own terms. In principle, the application of this dialectical mode of critique can allow a genuine debate to emerge between those seeking to continue both the Schmittian and critical theory traditions, whilst safeguarding the latter from the dangers of formulating polemical interventions that are, in effect, counterproductive to their own intentions. (shrink)
Michael Walzer is currently at the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey. Professor Walzer has written Just and Unjust Wars; The Revolution of the Saints and has edited Toward A Global Civil Society. In this interview, he discusses some of the current concerns about education, political theory and the current state of the art of toleration, and acceptance and accommodation of different racial, ethnic, social and minority groups. He has published extensively and his (...) work has been translated in several other languages. In this interview, he responds to questions about his work, his writings and his current concerns. (shrink)
Introduction : up against Carl Schmitt -- An afterlife for Carl Schmitt? -- On politics, law and ideology -- Mobilising direct political action: Sorel, myths and counter-myths -- Myths of parliamentarism -- Leviathan : a political myth misfired? -- Hamlet as an instructive prototype of a political myth? -- Political myths underpinning democracy.
In his widely influential statement of just war theory, Michael Walzer exempts conscripted soldiers from all responsibility for taking part in war, whether just or unjust (the thesis of the moral equality of soldiers). He endows the overwhelming majority of civilians with almost absolute immunity from military attack on the ground that they aren't responsible for the war their country is waging, whether just or unjust. I argue that Walzer is much too lenient on both soldiers and civilians. Soldiers (...) fighting for a just cause and soldiers fighting for an unjust one are not morally equal. A substantial proportion of civilians in a democracy are responsible, to a significant degree, for their country's unjust war. Moreover, under certain (admittedly rare) circumstances, some of them are legitimate targets of military attack. This has bearing on settling moral accounts in the wake of war and the issue of forgiving the wrongs done in its course: possible candidates for such forgiveness are much more numerous than is usually assumed. (shrink)
Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism portrays liberalism as a supple political ideology, one which moves constantly between the horns of several connected dilemmas. In particular, liberalism cannot decide whether it is based on substantive political values or is neutral or substanceless. John Rawls's 'political liberalism' is argued to exemplify-and to fall prey to-Schmitt's critique. Rawls tries to find a shallow justification for liberalism, one which claims no truth for itself and is thus neutral between many different ideologies. But (...) his justification, as he is forced to admit, presupposes the substantive commitments he wants to avoid. Hence, liberalism has to move beyond Rawls and accept its place within democracy. Key Words: Carl Schmitt • democracy • John Rawls • liberalism • neutrality. (shrink)
In the 82/2 (2000) issue of this journal, Michael Friedman has offered a stimulating discussion of my recent book, Kant and the Capacity to Judge. His conclusion is that on the whole I fail to do justice to what is most revolutionary about Kant's natural philosophy, and instead end up attributing to Kant a pre-Newtonian, Aristotelian philosophy of nature. This is because, according to Friedman, I put excessive weight on Kant's claim to have derived his categories from a set (...) of logical forms of judgment which he inherits from a traditional Aristotelian logic. In taking Kant at his word on this point, I fail to give their full import to Kant's insights into the newly discovered applications of mathematical concepts and methods to the science of nature. (shrink)
In this exciting new collection, a distinguished international group of philosophers contribute new essays on central issues in philosophy of language and logic, in honor of Michael Dummett, one of the most influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. The essays are focused on areas particularly associated with Professor Dummett. Five are contributions to the philosophy of language, addressing in particular the nature of truth and meaning and the relation between language and thought. Two contributors discuss time, in particular (...) the reality of the past. The last four essays focus on Frege and the philosophy of mathematics. The volume represents some of the best work in contemporary analytical philosophy. (shrink)
Although it goes against a widespread significant misunderstanding of his view, Michael Smith is one of the very few moral philosophers who explicitly wants to allow for the commonsense claim that, while morally required action is always favored by some reason, selfish and immoral action can also be rationally permissible. One point of this paper is to make it clear that this is indeed Smith’s view. It is a further point to show that his way of accommodating this claim (...) is inconsistent with his well-known “practicality requirement” on moral judgments: the thesis that any rational person will always have at least some motivation to do what she judges to be right. The general conclusion is that no view that, like Smith’s, associates the normative strength of a reason with the motivational strength of an ideal desire will allow for the wide range of rational permissibility that Smith wants to capture. (shrink)
The present article discusses the relationship between might ( potentia ) and power ( potestas ) as it has unfolded throughout the modern age, from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Hobbes indicates the way forward for a progressive linguistic and conceptual coincidence of potentia and potestas : the goal of Hobbesian political philosophy (the search for peace and security) necessitates the reduction of potentia to potestas through the elimination of the content of actus . Schmitt accepts this reduction, (...) by assigning priority to potestas : the image of modern technology as a privileged dimension of potentia—potestas comes together as the modern state. Instead of taking the route of potentia understood as an opening-up to new possibilities and as human self-affirmation, the language of potentia—potestas has triggered a process, which is that of a naturalization of power relations, that is based on and justified by the social inequality arising from the differing extent of ownership of the instruments of technological production. (shrink)
In Consciousness and persons, Michael Tye (Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) develops and defends a novel approach to the unity of consciousness. Rather than thinking of the unity of consciousness as involving phenomenal relations between distinct experiences, as standard accounts do, Tye argues that we should regard the unity of consciousness as involving relations between the contents of consciousness. Having developed an account of what it is for consciousness to be unified, Tye goes on (...) to apply his account of the unity of consciousness to the split-brain syndrome. I provide a critical evaluation of Tye's account of the unity of consciousness and the split-brain syndrome. (shrink)
McCormick, John, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Caldwell, Peter, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Dyzenhaus, David, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Hermann Heller (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Cristi, Renato, Carl Schmitt and Liberal Authoritarianism: Strong State, Free Economy (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas).
Considering the enormous outpouring of scholarly work on Schmitt over the last two decades, the absence of an adequate treatment in English of Schmitt's concept of history and the problem of secularization is quite surprising. After all, it is Schmitt himself who claims that “all human beings who plan and attempt to unite the masses behind their plans engage in some form of philosophy of history,” such that the attempt to make sense of Schmitt's program remains (...) incomplete without a serious treatment of his philosophy of history. This article is an attempt to address this problem by means of his exchange with Hans Blumenberg who, more than any other critic of Schmitt, was privy to the political intentions behind Schmitt's metaphorical use of theology. While their discussion is extensive and wide-ranging, I focus here on their diverging philosophies of history, precisely that aspect that is most relevant to gaining a more expansive understanding of Schmitt's arguments, and indeed the relationship between political thought and historical thought. (shrink)
Moral rationalism is the view that morality originates in reason alone. It is often contrasted with moral sentimentalism, which is the view that the origin of morality lies at least partly in (non-rational) sentiment. The eighteenth century saw pitched philosophical battles between rationalists and sentimentalists, and the issue continues to fuel disputes among moral philosophers today.
In Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Michael Martin argues that to posit a God that is both omnipotent and omniscient is philosophically incoherent. I challenge this argument by proposing that a God who is necessarily omniscient is more powerful than a God who is contingently omniscient. I then argue that being omnipotent entails being omniscient by showing that for an all-powerful being to be all-powerful in any meaningful way, it must possess complete knowledge about all states of affairs and thus (...) must be understood to be omniscient. (shrink)
For someone who is inclined towards truth monism and moral realism, reading this book is like journeying through a foreign country: somewhat disconcerting, but nonetheless enjoyable. Michael Lynch’s world is a stoutly naturalistic world, in which representation is conceived in terms of causal or teleological relations. This is a world in which it is hard to fit normative facts. Thus, the reader is told that there are good reasons to think that ‘moral properties, should they exist, would not be (...) the sort of properties with which we enter into causal contact’ (p. 161). But it is also a world in which thought is conceived of as unified, in the sense that propositions of all kinds, whether about middle-sized dry goods, mathematical objects, or morals, are truth-apt and cognitive, so that they can intermingle in reasoning. What we have, then, is the following: no moral facts in any serious sense of that term, but ordinary moral truth nonetheless. This is an interesting, but difficult, position. What it requires is a decidedly original account of truth, which Lynch dubs the functionalist theory of truth, according to which truth is both one and many. (shrink)
Michael Jubien’s Ontology, Modality, and the Fallacy of Reference is an interesting and lively discussion of those three topics. In ontology, Jubien defends, to a first approximation, a Quinean conception: a world of objects that may be arbitrarily sliced or summed. Slicing yields temporal parts; summing yields aggregates, or fusions. Jubien is very unQuinean in his explicit Platonism regarding properties and propositions, but concerns about abstracta are peripheral to much of the argumentation in the book.1 His version of the (...) doctrine that arbitrary mereological sums exist is nonstandard in that he views it as a convention (albeit a useful one) that we treat sums of objects as themselves being objects. Indeed, he views the concept of objecthood itself as being conventional. The world consists fundamentally of stuff, which we divide into things in any way that suits our purposes. In modality, Jubien’s views are to a first approximation Chisholmian: he holds the doctrine of mereological essentialism, according to which anything.. (shrink)
This article seeks to explore the way that warfare, and categories gleaned from warfare and military practice, are used in the work of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault. Despite their profound political and theoretical differences both writers seek to understand politics and society through the idea of war. Because both writers resist the use of the state-civil society distinction their account of war renders it a perpetual phenomenon of the social and political order; this creates difficulties concerning fascism, though (...) for different reasons. At the same time the article explores the similarities and differences in the way both Schmitt and Foucault appropriate Hobbesian and Nietzschean ideas and motifs. Key Words: fascism • Foucault • Schmitt • state • war. (shrink)
Timothy Michael Fowler has argued that, as a consequence of their commitment to neutrality in regard to comprehensive doctrines, political liberals face a dilemma. In essence, the dilemma for political liberals is that either they have to give up their commitment to neutrality (which is an indispensible part of their view), or they have to allow harm to children. Fowler’s case for this dilemma depends on ascribing to political liberals a view which grants parents a great degree of freedom (...) in deciding on the education of their children. I show that ascribing this view to political liberals rests upon a misinterpretation of political liberalism. Since political liberals have access to reasons based upon the interests of children, they need not yield to parent’s wishes about the education of their children. A correct understanding of political liberalism thus shows that political liberals do not face the dilemma envisaged by Fowler. (shrink)
The article examines Hans Kelsen's and Carl Schmitt's lines of thought concerning the relationship between constitutional and international law, with the aim of ascertaining their respective ability to capture developments affecting that relationship, even those of a contradictory nature. It is significant that, while the rise of wars of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War era has evoked Schmitt's concept of the bellum iustum, the evolution in the direction of the “constitutionalisation of international law” has drawn attention to (...) Kelsen's theoretical approach. However, these assumptions rely heavily on the opposing objectives that the two authors claimed to pursue, such as, respectively, the search for the ultimate seat of political power and a pure theory of law. Things are more complicated, both because these objectives by no means exhaust Kelsen's and Schmitt's lines of thought, and because the conception of sovereignty as omnipotence, at the core of the Weimar controversy, is now behind us. (shrink)
Law as Politics thematically organises in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt's work and allows scholars to acknowledge-and ...
This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of extremist (...) political organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)
pseudo-Master's thesis Since Jacques Derrida’s 1989 essay “Force of Law: the Mystical Foundations of Authority,” Carl Schmitt has been a perennial subject of Derrida’s political critique. I will argue that Derrida’s concept of auto-immunity is uniquely applicable to Derrida’s interpretation of Schmitt’s political philosophy. Therefore, my argument will consist of two interrelated but equally divergent parts; the digressive structure will attempt to mimic Derrida’s complex style of weaving opposed concepts into a coherent whole. First, I will demonstrate the (...) many forms of Derrida’s concept of auto-immunity. Second, I will exhibit how this schema uniquely applies to Derrida’s criticisms of Schmitt and the contemporary state of politics. (shrink)
MichaelJordan is widely acclaimed as the greatest athlete who ever lived. The announcement of his retirement in January 1999 unleashed an unparalleled hyperbole of adjectives describing his superlative athletic accomplishments. Yet his continuing media presence and adulation after his retirement confirmed that Jordan is one of the most popular and widely known sports icons throughout the world. In China, the Beijing Morning Post ran a front paged article titled "Flying Man Jordan is Coming Back to (...) Earth" and in Bosnia Jordan's statement declaring his retirement was the lead story on the evening television news, pushing aside the war in Kosovo.[1] An icon of the global popular, Jordan is "a kind of new world prince," in the words of Pulitzer Prizewinning author David Halberstam, who recently published a biography of the basketball legend (1999): "You hear time and again about people being in Borneo or somewhere and coming across a kid in a tattered MichaelJordan T-shirt. He's the most famous American in the world.". (shrink)
The eminent historian and philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse, has written several books that explore the relationship of evolutionary theory to its larger scientific and cultural setting. Among the questions he has investigated are: Is evolution progressive? What is its epistemological status? Most recently, in "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution have a Purpose?," Ruse has provided a history of the concept of teleology in biological thinking, especially in evolutionary theorizing. In his book, he moves quickly from Plato and Aristotle (...) to Kant and such British thinkers as Paley and Whewell. His main focus, though, is on Darwin's theory and its subsequent fate. Ruse rests his history on some shaky historical and philosophic assumptions, particularly the unexamined notion that evolutionary theory is an abstract entity that is unproblematically realized in different historical periods. He also assumes that Darwin conceived nature as if it were a Manchester spinning loom -- a clanking, dispassionate machine. A more subtle analysis, which Ruse eschews, might discover that Darwin's conception of nature owed a strong debt to German Romanticism and that he contrived to infuse nature with moral and aesthetic values, not to suck them from nature. Ruse proves he is a thinker to contend with, and this essay is quite contentious. (shrink)
In the context of the recent proliferation of nationalisms and enemy figures, this paper agrees with the desirability of retaining some of the explanatory and motivational potential of an agonistic account of politics, but gives reasons not to accept too much of Carl Schmitt's account of citizenship. The claim as to the necessarily antagonistic exclusion of concrete others can be supported neither on its own terms nor on Derridian grounds, as Chantal Mouffe, in particular, attempts to do. I then (...) indicate that différance may nonetheless account for strong (but not necessary) tendencies toward exclusion as well as for the intrinsic contradictions of liberal universalism. (shrink)
The manuscript includes comments on Michael Jacovides’s paper, “How Berkeley Corrupted His Capacity to Conceive.” The paper and comments were delivered at the conference “Meaning and Modern Empiricism” held at Virginia Tech in April 2008. I consider Jacovides’s treatment of Berkeley’s Resemblance Argument and his interpretation of the Master Argument. In particular, I distinguish several ways of understanding the disagreement between Jacovides and Kenneth Winkler over the right way to read the Master Argument.
Back in the bad old days, it was easy enough to spot non-cognitivists. They pressed radical doctrines with considerable bravado. Intoxicated by the apparent implications of logical positivism, early noncognitivsts would say things like, "in saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, I am not making any factual statement..." (Ayer 1936: 107) Like most rebellious youths, non-cognitivism eventually grew up. Later non-cognitivists developed the position into a more subtle doctrine, no longer committed to the revisionary doctrines (...) associated with its forefathers. For example, Simon Blackburn has undertaken the "quasi-realist" project of showing how a non-cognitivist can "earn" the right to the seemingly realist discourse on a less metaphysically controversial and semantically implausible basis by giving a non-cognitivist analysis of realist-sounding semantics and pragmatics (Blackburn 1993). (shrink)
Consciousness has been defined as that annoying period between naps, and this grumpy definition may not be wholly facetious, if Michael Tye's latest book is right. Tye's main goal here is to develop a theory of the phenomenal unity of experience at a time, and its diachronic analog, the moment-to-moment continuity of one's experiential stream from the time one wakes up to the time consciousness lapses.
Michael S. Gazzaniga, a pioneer and world leader in cognitive neuroscience, has made an initial attempt to develop neuroethics into a brain-based philosophy of life that he hopes will replace the irrational religious and political belief-systems that still partly govern modern societies. This article critically examines Gazzaniga’s proposal and shows that his actual moral arguments have little to do with neuroscience. Instead, they are based on unexamined political, cultural and moral conceptions, narratives and values. A more promising way of (...) interpreting the belief-forming system of the brain is to say that we cannot avoid thinking in terms of wider frameworks and narratives that are socially embedded and historically developed; consequently, any moral discussion has to be in terms of these frameworks and narratives. (shrink)
Inheriting the religious prejudices of the Enlightenment, many supporters of liberal democracy consider John Calvin's theology contrary to the norms and virtues necessary for productive public discourse in a religiously and culturally diverse society. In Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics , Michael Walzer makes a similar assumption, arguing that, despite its contribution to political modernization, the inherent fideism, absolutism, and intolerance of Calvinism constitutes a threat to public discourse in liberal society. In (...) this paper, I contend that the prevailing understanding of Calvin's theology is incorrect. In actuality he is a nuanced natural law thinker, whose complex understanding of human nature and the state encourages the subtle balance of virtues that contemporary political life requires. (shrink)
A dominant interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s work depicts him as a theologically inspired and anti-humanist thinker. This article argues, however, that his concept of the political, founded on a plea for relative instead of absolute enmity, takes Schmitt away from theology onto a profane level, where enemies recognize each other as human beings. Although Schmitt states that whoever invokes the concept of humanity wants to deceive, one can trace in his work a distinction between two concepts of (...) humanity, which gives a philosophical foundation for the distinction between relative and absolute enmity, and, thus, for the political. It is at the basis of a minimally normative understanding of the political which can be of great interest for contemporary debates on the contemporary world order. (shrink)
Derrida describes the relationship between ethics and politics as an absolute hiatus . One problematic consequence of this formulation is that there seems to be no way for the ethical law to bear on political practice. I attempt to locate a link between the ethical and the political within this hiatus, through a reading of texts by two thinkers whose confrontation is suggested by Derrida: Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas. The link between the ethical and the political is that (...) they are respectively defined by the prohibition and the sanctioning of the same act: killing. In the discourses of both thinkers, killing is pivotal on account of its exceptional character. Through an analysis of the role of the exception in their work, I determine that Schmitt’s conception of the political requires Levinas’s conception of the ethical as its formal condition. I end by considering what consequences this derivation has for politics. Key Words: decision • Jacques Derrida • the ethical • ethics • exception • killing • Emmanuel Levinas • the political • politics • Carl Schmitt. (shrink)
Abstract. In Science and Spirituality, Michael Ruse attempts to reconcile traditional Christianity and modern science by arguing that Christianity addresses questions that lie beyond the domain of science. I argue that Ruse's solution raises a number of problems that render it unsatisfactory for both the scientist and believer. First, despite his objections to “God of the gaps” arguments, his own strategy for identifying those questions that are beyond the limits of science seems to raise the problem in a new (...) form. Second, what Ruse offers as evidence for the limits of science is better construed as evidence for deep disagreements among scientists and as such does not support his claims about the limits of science. Third, in aiming to establish their independence, Ruse subordinates religion to science. Finally, his support of traditional theology as a mode of religious understanding might cause concern for those who believe that certain kinds of theological reflection are at odds with scientific thinking. (shrink)
On 9 December 1930, Walter Benjamin sent a copy of his book The Origin of German Tragic Drama to Carl Schmitt, accompanied by a letter in which he expressed his indebtedness to Schmitt: "You will very quickly recognize how much my book is indebted to you for its presentation of the doctrine of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Perhaps I may say, in addition, that I have also derived from your later works, especially Die Diktatur, a confirmation of (...) my modes of research in the philosophy of art from yours in the philosophy of the state. If the reading of my book allows this feeling to emerge in an intelligible fashion, then the purpose of my sending it to you will be achieved" (qtd. in Weber 1992, 5). As .. (shrink)
Michael Ruse’s new anthology Philosophy After Darwin provides great history and background in the major impacts Darwinism has had on philosophy, especially in ethics and epistemology. This review focuses on epistemology understood through the lens of evolution by natural selection. I focus on one of Ruse’s own articles in the collection, which responds to two classic articles by Konrad Lorenz and David Hull on the two major forms of evolutionary epistemology. I side with Ruse against Lorenz’s account of the (...) necessity we think our principles of reasoning have, though I disagree with Ruse’s particular example. I also argue that Ruse’s alternative explanation is lacking. Against Hull, I side with Ruse in his doubts that a sociobiological approach to science will prove fruitful, though I point out that it has certain advantages other approaches do not have. Although I side with Ruse on the issue, I conclude that the two views do not really come into direct conflict and so one needs not reject either. Finally, I discuss Ruse’s positive view and raise questions for his conception of evolutionary epistemology. I conclude that his arguments are insufficient to overcome opposing views and his view has at least as many unintuitive conclusions as the alternatives. (shrink)
Michael Tomasello’s new book Why We Cooperate explores the ontogeny and evolution of human altruism and human cooperation, paying particular attention to how such behaviors allow humans to create social institutions.
This book is the culmination of Heinrich Meier's acclaimed analyses of the controversial thought of Carl Schmitt. Meier identifies the core of Schmitt's thought as political theology--that is, political theorizing that claims to have its ultimate ground in the revelation of a mysterious or supra-rational God. This radical, but half-hidden, theological foundation unifies the whole of Schmitt's often difficult and complex oeuvre, cutting through the intentional deceptions and unintentional obfuscations that have eluded previous commentators. Relating this religious (...) dimension to Schmitt's support for National Socialism and his continuing anti-Semitism, Meier compels the reader to come to terms with the irreconcilable differences between political theology and political philosophy. His book will give pause to those who have tended to gloss over the troubling aspects of some of Schmitt's ideas. With editions in German, French, Italian, and now English, Meier's two books on Schmitt have dramatically reoriented the international debate about Carl Schmitt and his significance for twentieth-century political thought. "Standing far above the rest . . . is Heinrich Meier's new study, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , which covers all of Schmitt's writings. . . . Meier's work has forced everyone to take a second look at the assumptions underlying Schmitt's better-known writings and reconsider some that have been ignored."--Mark Lilla, reviewing the German edition in The New York Review of Books. (shrink)
What are we to make of the "Parecon" phenomenon? MichaelAlbert's book made it to number thirteen on Amazon.com a few days after some on-line promotion.1 Eight of the twelve Amazon.com reviewers (when I last checked) had given the book five stars. It has been, or is being, translated into Arabic, Bengali, Telagu, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.2 The book has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, who says it "merits close (...) attention, debate and action," by Arundhati Roy, who calls it "a brave argument for a much needed alternative economic vision," by Ben Bagdikian, who finds it "a compelling book for our times," and by Howard Zinn, who sees it as "a thoughtful, profound meditation on what a good society can be like."3 Yet it is a terrible book. (shrink)
It has become standard for commentators to note sadly how little impact Frege’s work had amongst his contemporaries, but then to temper this observation by claiming an enormous indirect influence for his ideas through the work of those few who did pay serious attention to them, perhaps most notably Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap. How effective or transparent those conduits were is still a matter of scholarly debate.1 For myself, I am increasingly persuaded that much of what we would now judge (...) to be most centrally important in Frege was at best imperfectly transmitted. That we can now attempt judgement on what is thus central is owed, in the first place, to the re‐publication and translation of Frege’s work that effectively began with Austin’s version of Grundlagen in 1950. Austin had translated the work so as to be able to set if for an Oxford finals paper. Michael Dummett took the course, and was, he reports, “bowled over by the Grundlagen”, so much so that during the following year he “settled down to read everything that Frege had written” (2007: 9‐ 10). Soon, though not at first, Geach and Black’s Translations (1952) would help in this, but before long the work would take Dummett to Munster to examine Frege unpublished work: the first result of this study is the 1956 “Postscript” to his 1955 “Frege on Functions”, itself an important early step in dispelling bizarre misconceptions of Frege’s doctrines which seem then to have been prevalent.2 Dummett began to form plans for a comprehensive book on Frege. This required further sustained study of the Nachlass, including a visit in 1957 when, its editors acknowledge, Dummett provided an important stimulus and essential “spadework” (PW xii) towards its publication. Frege: Philosophy of Language, a rather different book from that first planned, eventually appeared in 1973. Dummett modestly remarks of it, “I believe that the book helped to revive interest in Frege” (2007: 24). Peter Geach,�.. (shrink)
How should a democratic state fight terrorism? This is the question discussed by Michael Ignatieff in his latest book. Ignatieff explores several possible positions as a response to this question. The review considers the analysis of these positions.
Michael Oakeshott's religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. In this essay I first discuss Oakeshott's view of religion and the mode of practice in his own terms. I attempt next to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing upon other thinkers such as Georg Simmel and George Santayana, who share similar views. I then evaluate Oakeshott's view as a whole, considering whether his ideas about religion (...) can stand up to careful scrutiny and whether they have value for present-day reflection on religion. (shrink)
It is commonly recognized that Jean-Luc Nancy’s efforts to elaborate a conception of ‘the political’ are based upon Heidegger’s thinking of die Tecknik , even as they seek to overcome the difficulties that beset Heidegger’s own politics. But few have noted that Nancy also seeks to critically engage Carl Schmitt’s conception of das Politische , according to which there is a metaphysical and practical need for a sovereign decision on friends and enemies if effective political community and law are (...) to be possible. This article argues that recognizing that Nancy seeks to overcome Schmitt’s conception of the political throws into high relief his failure to address the actual subject matter of politics. In the end, Nancy remains too metaphysical to engage with the political. (shrink)
Michael Dummett: The nature and future of philosophy. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2010, vi+152pp, $19.95 PB Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9460-x Authors Stathis Psillos, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, University Campus, 15771 Athens, Greece Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
This article evaluates the legality of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the March 2003 attack on Iraq. The author rejects assertions that Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002), standing alone, contained a mandate to employ force; on the contrary, the Resolution was only adopted on the understanding that it did not. The law of self-defense, including its ?preemptive? variant, similarly provided no legal basis for the action because the degree of Iraqi support to terrorism was insufficient and the threat of use of weapons (...) of mass destruction was not imminent. With regard to humanitarian intervention, the suffering inflicted by the Saddam Hussein's regime did not rise to a level allowing intervention. Moreover, international law does not permit forceful regime change except when authorized by the Security Council. However, the author argues that material breach of the 1991 cease-fire in Security Council Resolution 687 released the US and UK from their obligation to refrain from hostilities, thereby reactivating the use of force authorization in Security Council Resolution 678 (1990). This latter justification was the sole official legal justification offered for Operation Iraqi Freedom. (shrink)
Critical study of Michael Potter, Reason's Nearest Kin. Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. x + 305 pages.
Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? The Truth about Leo Strauss puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate such an oversimplified view of such a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. More important, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students (...) of Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. This idea, they show, stemmed from Strauss’s belief that modern thought, with its relativism and nihilism, undermines healthy politics and even the possibility of real philosophy. Identifying this view as one of Strauss’s three core propositions—America is modern, modernity is bad, and America is good—they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. The Zuckerts finish, appropriately, by examining the varied work of Strauss’s numerous students and followers, revealing the origins—rooted in the tensions within his own thought—oftheir split into opposing camps. Balanced and accessible, The Truth about Leo Strauss is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy. (shrink)
One prominent contemporary retributivist theory is built on the notion that crime yields an “unfair advantage” over law-abiding citizens which punishment removes or nullifies. Michael Davis has defended this theory by constructing a market model of “unfair advantage” that he contends answers critics' objections to the retributivist enterprise. I seek to demonstrate the inadequacy of Davis's approach, arguing in particular that the market model rests on an incoherent notion of “demand” and would not, even if coherent, link “unfair advantage” (...) to the seriousness of crimes in any acceptable fashion. The salience of traditional objections to retributivism is thus unaffected by Davis's theory. (shrink)
Michael Weisberg’s recent 2007 paper on the chemical bond makes the claim that the chemical notion of the covalent bond is in trouble. This note casts doubts on that claim.
Michael J. Sandel: The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 183-185 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0018-4 Authors Ilhan Ilkilic, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Medical Center Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz Germany <span class='Hi'>Rainer</span> Brömer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Medical Center Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz Germany Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 (...) Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 2. (shrink)
Michael Ruse, Science and spirituality: making room for faith in the age of science Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11153-010-9242-9 Authors Edward L. Schoen, Western Kentucky University Department of Philosophy and Religion Bowling Green KY USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047.
Michael Quante’s book Person offers a systematic and argumentative assessment of the question what a person is and accounts for the multiple aspects that play a role in our everyday understanding of the term. Quante is skeptical about the possibility of constructing a purely psychological account of the person and proposes to base the diachronic unity conditions of persons on the human organism. At the same time he acknowledges that psychological considerations, including the notion of a person’s personality, are (...) important for practical purposes. However, one may wonder why he proposes the human organism as the remedy for the alleged shortcomings of the psychological approach, rather than introducing an additional physical continuity requirement of the cerebrum or other parts of the brain. (shrink)
Many philosophers of language have held that a truth-conditional semantic account can explain the data motivating the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions, but I believe this is a mistake. I argue that these data also motivate what I call “dual-aspect” uses as a distinct but closely related type. After establishing that an account of the distinction must also explain dual-aspect uses, I argue that the truth-conditional Semantic Model of the distinction cannot. Thus, the Semantic Model cannot (...) explain the data for which it is developed and so fails as an account of the referential/attributive distinction. (shrink)
I present two challenges to the theory of moral sentimentalism that Michael Slote defends in his book. The first challenge aims to show that there are cases in which we empathize with an agent and yet judge her actions to be morally wrong. If such cases are plausible, then we have good reason to doubt Slote's claim that moral judgments are an affective attitude of warmth or chill and, thus, are purely sentiments. The second challenge is more of a (...) suggestion. At the end of my paper, I suggest that perhaps one important role that empathy plays in our moral phenomenology is to mitigate the scope of our moral judgments. If this is right, it tells not only against Slote's account but against moral sentimentalist approaches more broadly. (shrink)
Despite his elusiveness on important issues, there is much in Michael Oakeshott's educational vision that Richard Peters quite rightly wishes to endorse. The main aim of this essay is, however, to consider Peters' justifiable critique of three features of Oakeshott's work. These are (1) the rigidity of his distinction between vocational and university education, (2) the lack of clarity and accuracy in his philosophy of teaching and learning, especially the under-conceptualisation of the role of example in teaching, (3) the (...) over-emphasis on tradition in moral and civic learning. (shrink)
In a previous issue of Philo, Michael Almeida claimed to have “defeated” William Rowe’s “New Evidential Argument from Evil” againstthe existence of a benevolent god. However, Almeida’s argument suffers from serious logical errors and even logical absurdities, leaving Rowe’s argument intact and quite unthreatened by anything Almeida argues.
Liberalism is the dominant ideology of our time, yet its character remains the subject of intense scholarly and political controversy. Debates about the liberal political tradition - about its history, its central philosophical commitments, its implications for political practice - lie at the very heart of the discipline of political theory. Many outstanding political theorists have contributed to the growing sophistication of these debates in recent years, but the original voice of Michael Freeden deserves particular attention. In the course (...) of a body of work that spans over thirty years, Freeden's iconoclastic contributions have posed important challenges to the dominant understandings of liberal ideology, history, and theory. Such work has sought to redefine the very essence of what it is to be a liberal. This book brings together an international group of historians, philosophers, and political scientists to evaluate the impact of Freeden's work and to reassess its central claims. (shrink)
In the second chapter of his book Kant and the Exact Sciences Michael Friedman deals with two different interpretations of the relation or the difference between algebra and arithmetic in Kant's thought. According to the first interpretation algebra can be described as general arithmetic because it generalizes over all numbers by the use of variables, whereas arithmetic only deals with particular numbers. The alternative suggestion is that algebra is more general than arithmetic because it considers a more general class (...) of magnitudes. This means that arithmetic is concerned only with rational magnitudes, whereas algebra is also concerned with irrational magnitudes. In this article, I will discuss which of the two aforementioned approaches is to be considered the most plausible interpretation of Kant's theory of algebra and arithmetic. According to Friedman, the first interpretation cannot be reconciled with certain statements made by Kant on various occasions. The second interpretation is developed by Friedman himself. It is meant to be an attempt to avoid such inconsistencies. By a detailed analysis of the texts Friedman himself cites I shall examine the soundness of his arguments against the first interpretation and the compatibility of his own interpretation of the difference between algebra and arithmetic with the relevant passages in Kant's texts. It will turn out that the reasons that make Friedman reject the first interpretation are invalid as they are based on misunderstandings and that his own interpretation does not expound Kant's notions on that subject correctly, whereas the first interpretation is compatible with these passages. Thus, I conclude that the interpretation rejected by Friedman, unlike his own approach, is actually the more adequate interpretation of Kant. (shrink)
In his review of my book Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism that he recently published in The Weekly Standard under the title “The God of Science: The Case for Intelligent Design” (Behe 1999), Michael Behe takes me to task for criticizing the “intelligent design” group, of which he is a member, in the same pages that I criticize Genesis literalists and other religious anti-evolutionists. He writes.
Elizabeth Corey suggests that in order to understand Michael Oakeshott's worldview one should pay special attention to two subjects, religion and aesthetics, and analyze the connection between these two realms and the idea of practical life in general and of politics in particular. Her book provides a sympathetic but also critical conversation with Oakeshott's ideas, ultimately offering us a coherent picture of the place of the religious, poetical, and political in the totality of his thought. Corey persuasively shows that (...) the major ideas of the mature Oakeshott originated in his earlier religious convictions and that his philosophy of aesthetics, contrary to what his critics claimed, fit nicely in the general framework of his thought. (shrink)
Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens (...) both Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously. (shrink)
Scientific and political developments of the early twentieth century led Michael Polanyi to study the role of the scientist in research and the interaction between the individual scholar and the surrounding conditions in community and society. In his concept of “personal knowledge” he gave the theory and history of science an anthropological turn. In many instances of the history of sciences, research is driven by a commitment to beliefs and values. Society plays the role of authority and communicative backdrop (...) that presupposes individual liberty. As a system of beliefs science is rooted in community and also in history. However, as soon as fellow humans become the objects of research, their appeal transcends the researcher. Consequently, the history of human endeavor reveals a “firmament” of standards and obligations which represent an ontological reality, for which Polanyi invokes Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of noosphere. (shrink)
Michael Palmer’s The Question of God is an introductory textbook of the philosophy of religion. Textbooks on this subject typically cover a wide range of issues such as divine attributes, religious experiences, the problem of evil, life after death, and so on. Palmer’s book, however, solely focuses on a single problem: the existence of God. The book discusses six classic arguments for the existence of God: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the argument from design, the argument from miracles, (...) the moral argument and the pragmatic argument. Each chapter contains both a historical and a philosophical discussion of an argument and excerpts from a relevant philosophical literature. Palmer’s discussion is clear and sophisticated, and the sources drawn from philosophical texts are carefully selected. (shrink)
Michael Quante, Menschenwürde und personale Autonomie. Demokratische Werte im Kontext der Lebenswissenschaften Content Type Journal Article Pages 601-603 DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9278-7 Authors Claudia Wiesemann, Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center Göttingen, Humboldtallee 36, 37073 Göttingen, Germany Journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Online ISSN 1572-8447 Print ISSN 1386-2820 Journal Volume Volume 14 Journal Issue Volume 14, Number 5.
