In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 369-396 [Access article in PDF] Worlds or Words Apart?The Consequences of Pragmatism for Literary Studies:An Interview with Richard Rorty Richard Rorty, with E. P. Ragg ER: I WANTED TO ASK YOU first about holism. Clearly holism doesn't just mean being interdisciplinary. Nor, as you argue in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is it merely a question of antifoundationalist polemic. Rather, you say it (...) marks "a distrust of the whole epistemological enterprise." 1 Could you explain what you mean by that?RR: If you weren't some kind of foundationalist you wouldn't bother to get into epistemology. Epistemology only looks attractive if you think that there is a topic called knowledge whose nature can be studied. The idea is that once you have learned its nature, you might get more of it than you had before. Only someone who thinks that knowledge has foundations located in sense perception, or pure reason, or divine revelation, or something, would take the idea of studying knowledge, its nature and limits, seriously. I think of holism as just the view that people change their beliefs in such a way as to achieve coherence with their other beliefs, to bring their beliefs and desires into some sort of equilibrium—and that that is about all there is to be said about the quest for knowledge. There are no rules for which beliefs you sacrifice in order to accommodate other beliefs, or which desires you change to accommodate changed beliefs. Because there aren't any rules, there aren't any methods you can study in order to improve the way you achieve equilibrium. The whole idea of studying how belief is changed is pretty hopeless. It's just too holistic a process to be an appropriate topic of study. [End Page 369]ER: Holism is obviously a natural corollary of pragmatism because pragmatists urge bringing as many different useful vocabularies to discussion as we can. This reminds me of your definition of "literariness." In Contingency, irony, and solidarity you describe literary skill as the ability to effect "surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions from one terminology to another." 2 Would it be fair to say, then, that thinking holistically is, to some degree, literary?RR: No, I don't think so. It would be more appropriate to say thinking holistically, in the sense of not being limited to a given context or disciplinary framework, is a matter of thinking imaginatively. Politicians and theologians and engineers think imaginatively just as much as literary people do. To call it literary would be unduly to privilege literature.ER: Would you say that, as a writer, your own work has been treated holistically: first in the sense that your texts are seen as a growing body of thought—that is, that there is a difference between the writer of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the author of Contingency, irony, and solidarity—and, second, in the sense that people have thought holistically about your ideas, have brought them to bear on literature, philosophy, social science, the very demarcations you want to transcend?RR: I think that the stuff I do is more interesting to people outside of philosophy than those inside it. This is an example of the same phenomenon that led Kuhn to be much more read by people outside the hard sciences than by people within them. My stuff, like Kuhn's, debunks certain views that various earlier philosophers, especially the positivists, had tried to impose on the culture. My readers are people who are looking for a way out from the view they absorbed, without much liking it, when they were young. People inside of philosophy, however, often regard all this debunking as endangering the problems to the solution of which they have devoted their lives. They do not want the problems dissolved, because that would dissolve their solutions as well. So they welcome it less than do outsiders.ER: One of the markers of your... (shrink)

‘Menander has set up a confrontation between this law [the law about epikleroi] and love… He wants the audience to regard the law as stupid and wrong… Surely one of Menander's purposes in writing this play was to make the Athenians consider seriously whether the law ought to be changed.’ Thus Professor D. M. MacDowell in the concluding paragraph of his article ‘Love versus the Law: an Essay on Menander's Aspis’. A similar view was already implicit in E. Karabelias' treatment (...) of the play as indicative of the general attitude to this law in Athens in Menander's day: ‘A n'en point douter, l'épiclérat est ressenti, á l'epoque de Ménandre, comme une anomalie intolérable pour les mceurs de la societe athénienne à la fin du ive s.av.n.è L'épiclérat est odieux et ridicule… L'hostilité envers l'épiclérat est done un signe des temps’. And Professor E. G. Turner has written: ‘it is hard to imagine that the institution of the epiclerate emerged in good standing from this derisory treatment’. (shrink)

‘Menander has set up a confrontation between this law [the law about epikleroi] and love… He wants the audience to regard the law as stupid and wrong… Surely one of Menander's purposes in writing this play was to make the Athenians consider seriously whether the law ought to be changed.’ Thus Professor D. M. MacDowell in the concluding paragraph of his article ‘Love versus the Law: an Essay on Menander's Aspis’. A similar view was already implicit in E. Karabelias' treatment (...) of the play as indicative of the general attitude to this law in Athens in Menander's day: ‘A n'en point douter, l'épiclérat est ressenti, á l'epoque de Ménandre, comme une anomalie intolérable pour les mceurs de la societe athénienne à la fin du ive s.av.n.è L'épiclérat est odieux et ridicule… L'hostilité envers l'épiclérat est done un signe des temps’. And Professor E. G. Turner has written: ‘it is hard to imagine that the institution of the epiclerate emerged in good standing from this derisory treatment’. (shrink)

1. Belief and mental statesDavidson holds that intentional verbs occurring in the form ‘A Vs that p’ signify propositional attitudes. These are, he claims, mental states, and dispositions. Davidson does not conceive of himself as introducing a special technical sense of the common intentional verbs. He insists that ‘the mental states in question are beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on, as ordinarily conceived'. Consequently he contends that believing that p is a mental state, disposition or dispositional state. These ontological claims (...) about the nature of belief inform his account of the logical form of belief sentences. I shall address the question of whether believing that p can justly be deemed a mental state, a disposition or dispositional state. Subsequently I shall examine Davidson's account of the logical form of belief sentences.Our concept of a mental state, like so many of the concepts which philosophers treat as categorial, is none too sharply defined. It has a respectable use, which can be described. But, like other such general psychological terms, e.g. ‘mental process’, ‘mental activity’, far from being the ‘hardest of the hard’ - a sharply circumscribed categorial term akin to a variable in a well-constructed formal system — it has blurred boundaries and is elastic. Like all our ordinary psychological concepts, it evolved in order to meet everyday needs. As Wittgenstein observed, ‘The concepts of psychology are just everyday concepts. They are not concepts newly fashioned by science for its own purposes, as are the concepts of physics and chemistry.’Although our ordinary concepts can be replaced by technical ones for specialized purposes, they cannot be abused without generating conceptual confusion and incoherence. If the expression ‘mental state’ is being employed in its ordinary sense, then it is wrong to hold that believing that p is to be in any mental state. If it is being employed in a special technical sense, then those who employ it thus owe us an account of what it means and how it is to be used. This Davidson and the many other philosophers who subscribe to the view that believing is a mental state have not done. Until such an account is forthcoming, one may presume that they think of themselves as deploying our ordinary concept of a mental state. And if so, I shall argue, they are misusing it. (shrink)

According to “hard” compatibilists, we can be responsible for our actions not only when they are determined by mindless natural causes, but also when some agent other than ourselves intentionally determines us to act as we do. “Soft” compatibilists consider freedom compatible with merely natural determinism, but not with intentional determinism (e.g., theological determinism). Because he believes there is no relevant difference (NRD) between a naturally determined agent and a relevantly similar intentionally determined agent, John Martin Fischer is a hard (...) compatibilist. However, he argues for “historical” compatibilism by appealing to the intuition that certain manipulated agents are not responsible. By considering a new type of manipulation case, I show that Fischer’s appeal to ordinary intuitions about manipulation conflicts with NRD, so that he must choose between the two. The closing section explains why I think going “soft” is Fischer’s better option. (shrink)

Quantum theory can be regarded as a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally e cacious and necessary role in brain dynamics It therefore provides a natural basis created by scientists for the science of consciousness As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms as compared to similar organisms (...) that lack consciousness As a second illustration it is explained how within the quantum framework the consciously experi enced I directs the actions of a human being It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporat ing causally e cacious experiential events into the physical universe in a manner that puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well de ned way explains in principle how the e ects of consciousness per se can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it allows this survival e ect to feed into phylogenetic de velopment and explains how the consciously experienced I can direct human behaviour.. (shrink)

In this paper, I will give a three-stage analysis of the origin of phenomenal consciousness. The first one has to do with a non-causal stage. The second one has to do with a causal stage. The third one has to do with a correlation stage. This paper is divided into three sections. In section I, I will discuss a non-causal stage which focuses on finite consciousness as an irreducible emergent property—i.e., a simple non-structural property that is unique to the “emergent” (...) level of reality. I will examine currently dominant accounts of the emergence of phenomenal consciousness—which require consciousness to have some sort of causal link to its base level. Those who think of the emergence of consciousness in casual terms, often have in mind, brain complexity as a source of such causality. However, the causal proposal faces two serious empirically supported objections, namely: the gametes problem and the complexity problem, respectively. The first objection deals with conception (i.e., fertilization) and the impossibility of tracking down/spotting the origin of consciousness at any point during the process of the development of a foetus. The second objection focuses on demonstrating that, no amount of analysis of the physical basis of complex brain will unfold anything substantial about the origin of consciousness. Both of these two objections show why the diachronic account of the origin of the phenomenal consciousness is hard to come by. In section II, I will discuss a causal stage which focuses on, how once it emerges, consciousness enters into the domain of causal interaction with brain states. This is the stage where we come across both ‘the explanatory gap problem’ and ‘the hard problem of consciousness.’ In section III, I will discuss the correlation stage which focuses on the manner in which phenomenal consciousness continues to co-exist with its physical base (e.g., brain). To show this, I will discuss the notion of correlation and its relation to causation. The upshot of my discussion in the above three sections will constitute the view I call the non-causal spontaneous emergence of phenomenal consciousness. According to the view I am proposing, there is no causal-link between strongly emergent property (in this case, consciousness) and its base level—although the base level (as far as we know) serves as a sufficient condition (but not as a necessary condition) for its emergence. In light of this, I conclude this paper by claiming that phenomenal consciousness is a strongly emergent property. (shrink)

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ over against the ‘articles of faith’ . Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within (...) the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason , placing faith in the area of irrationality; and that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground . Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’. 1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason and against reason . The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless. (shrink)

The readings, which cover most important work from Plato to Prichard, are arranged chronologically. Some selections, e.g., Butler's Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, Kant's Foundations, and Mill's Utilitarianism, are reprinted in their entirety, and the other selections are lengthy enough for the student to get a clear view of a philosopher's ethical position. Two lacunae which existed in the previous edition, namely, from St. Augustine to Hobbes, and from Kant to Mill, are filled in this edition. In the former, (...) selections from Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae are inserted to balance the chronology, and in the latter, selections from Nietzsche are included to give a better picture of the diversity of the nineteenth century. The book is not without its defects, however. St. Augustine's treatment of free will in the City of God has been deleted. Perhaps it would have been better if, instead of omitting this topic altogether, the editor had included some passages from Augustine's On the Free Choice of the Will, which contains a much better discussion of this issue. Also, the only selections from the twentieth century are parts of the first chapter of Moore's Principia Ethica, and Prichard's article "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" Of course, everything cannot be included, but the latter two selections hardly bring the book up to date. However, in spite of the fact that one would have to supplement this text with additional material from twentieth century writings, Ethical Theories is still probably the most satisfactory available anthology for a treatment, via readings from the original writings, of the history of ethical philosophy.—G. P. (shrink)

Philosophers have had an interest in language from the earliest times but the twentieth century, with its so-called 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, has seen a huge expansion of work focused specifically on language and its foundations. No branch of philosophy has been unaffected by this shift of emphasis. It is timely at the end of the century to review and assess the vast range of issues that have been developed and debated in this central area. The distinguished international contributors present (...) a clear, accessible guide to the fundamental questions raised by the philosophers about language. Contributions include Graeme Forbes on necessity, Susan Haack on deviant logics, Paul Horwich on truth, Charles Travis on Wittgenstein, L.J. Cohen on linguistic philosophy, Ruth Kempson on semantics and syntax and Christopher Hookway on ontology, to name but a few. A wide range of topics are covered from the metaphysics and ontology of language, language and mind, truth and meaning, to theories or reference, speech act theory, philosophy of logic and formal semantics. There are also articles on key figures from the twentieth century and earlier. Based on the foundation provided by the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics this single volume provides a collection of articles that will be an invaluable reference tool for all those interested in the area of philosophy of language, and also to those in cognitive science and psychology. All the articles have been thoroughly revised and updated. This volume gives a unique survey of topics that are at the very core of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Hospitalization—Bridging the Gap Between Respect and ControlPaul P. ChristopherIntroductionThis issue of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics offers varied and somewhat unique perspectives on the experience of psychiatric hospitalization. This commentary highlights a number of salient themes that emerge from reading these essays and attempts to explore how they relate to the broader academic literature on psychiatric hospitalization, particularly with regard to ethical considerations. In reading these narratives, each several (...) times, I was repeatedly struck by the courage required of the authors, both to share their stories publicly and to endure the challenges that the writing process no doubt demanded of them—revisiting and suspending themselves in deeply emotional and, at times, traumatic experiences in order to share the most compelling narrative. Their hard work clearly paid off—the stories are at once intimate and indelible. Still, in many instances, I found myself wanting to know more; to enter the story and sit with the individual through these events; to ask what they were thinking or feeling in a particular situation; to see and hear the world in which they found themselves. Such is the nature of good story telling—the reader, left with the lingering vision created in his mind, turns over the last page, eagerly hoping for more.Narrative ThemesI. Loss of Autonomy or ControlPerhaps the most notable theme had to do with the loss of control or freedom that followed from hospitalization. On first consideration, it may seem odd that this issue appears so often since patient autonomy constitutes one of the fundamental principles of medical ethics. Only under specific circumstances—e.g., when there is a risk of imminent harm—may autonomy be curtailed, and even then only to the extent that is minimally necessary. Yet, as these narratives highlight, there are a multitude of ways in which psychiatric hospitalization engenders actual or perceived restrictions in freedom (Newton-Howes & Mullen, 2011).Consistent with prior research (Goodwin et al., 1999), many of the authors describe a fear or the actual experience of not being able to leave the hospital freely, even when the admission seems to have been voluntary. For example, one writer worries, “I was so afraid that if I ever went ‘in,’ I would never get ‘out’... I thought I would never taste freedom again... alive.” Another describes:When it came time for my possible discharge they told me that I might not get discharged because I was ‘acting up the previous evenings.’ My anxiety level at this point went through the roof. The only reason I was discharged was because my father knew some politicians. If not [End Page 29] for him I would have been a patient there for perhaps years and my life would have been ruined.A third gives this example: “When I asked to sign the form to leave after three days, [the psychiatrist] told me if I did that she would have me committed.” Another writer fears not having any control of how the psychiatrist might approach the treatment: “... I was totally vulnerable... would the doctors blame me, drug me, shock me, kill me?”Somewhat surprising, however, was the fact that so few of the narratives take issue with the decision to hospitalize. This omission is especially striking in light of the fact that prior reports consistently note that a substantial minority (up to nearly half) of voluntarily admitted patients nevertheless experience their admission as coerced (Bonsack & Borgeat, 2005; Hiday et al., 1997; Katsakou et al., 2010; Rogers et al., 1993; Sheehan & Burns, 2011). Because many of these narrators had been hospitalized more than once, the relative absence of expressed resistance to being hospitalized seems strange, particularly when earlier hospital experiences or their aftermath are often described as negative. For example, one individual characterized the time after being released from the hospital as, “My sense of self was questioned. I felt as if I lost my soul.” Another put it this way:When I got out of the private hospital, I felt like my soul had been ripped out of me. I felt like I had a gaping hole in the center of my body... I felt psychically raped, dazed, and confused.Given these... (shrink)

In this paper I offered a friendly amendment to Paul Churchland’s a well-known criticism of Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument. According to Jackson’s argument, a hypothetical Mary, living in her darkened stimulus-impoverished environment, knows all information from physical science about the perception of color but still does not know everything, e.g., what it is like to experience the color red. Churchland offered a refutation by analogy whereby Mary is an ectoplasmologist who knows all the supposed nonphysical things that friends of the (...) hard problem of qualia believe about that phenomenon. So Mary knows everything ectoplasmic about the perception of color but still does not know everything – what it is like to experience the color red. I made a necessary adjustment whereby Mary is not just an ectoplasmologist but a dualist who knows everything physical and ectoplasmic about the perception of color. By the same reasoning, then, the Jackson-style argument would refute dualism too. I also offered a diagnosis of the problem much in the spirit of other criticisms, namely, that things like experiencing red or riding a bicycle can be fully physical even though Mary would not “know how” to experience red or ride a bicycle simply by possessing all the “know that”/propositional/book-learning about those things. (shrink)

In the Aristotelian corpus of writings as it has come down to us, there are four works specifically on ethics: the Nicomachean ethics, the Eudemian ethics, the Magna moralia ( or Great ethics) and the short On virtues and vices. Scholars are now agreed that the first two are genuinely by Aristotle and most also believe that the Nicomachean is the later and better of the two. About the Magna moralia, there is still a division of opinion, though probably most (...) scholars hold that it is not genuine, Those who hold it is genuine suppose it to be an early work or a redaction of an early work made by a later Peripatetic. As for On virtues and vices almost everyone holds it to be a spurious work written some two centuries after Aristotle's death. However the arguments scholars give for these opinions are entirely unconvincing. In fact, they beg the question by assuming the conclusion in order to prove the conclusion. My own contention is that all the hard evidence we have compels us to conclude that all of these works are definitely by Aristotle but that they dffer not by time of writing, as scholars universally suppose, but by audience and purpose. In brief, the Nicormachean and Eudemian ethics are writings internal to Aristotle's School with the Nicomachen being directed to legislators and the Eudemian to philosophers. The Magna moralia ls an exoteric work meant for those outside the school. On virtues and vices is a collection of endoxa, or common and received opinions about virtues, perhaps meant as a handbook for young students but also for use in philosophical analysis. It is almost certainly referred to as such by a cryptic remark in the Eudemian ethics. (shrink)

Chow pays lip service (but not much more!) to Type I errors and thus opts for a hard (all-or-none) .05 level of significance (Superego of Neyman/Pearson theory; Gigerenzer 1993). Most working scientists disregard Type I errors and thus utilize a soft .05 level (Ego of Fisher; Gigerenzer 1993), which lets them report gradations of significance (e.g., p.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Demanding Environmental Ethics for the FutureJames P. Sterba (bio)As we contemplate the present and future effects of global climate change, it is hard not to be disillusioned by what we see. Melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more intense and erratic weather patterns, wide-scale extinction of endangered species—what can we as environmental philosophers do that might be helpful in this regard? My suggestion is that we respond by drawing (...) on the resources of traditional normative philosophy to ground a demanding environmental ethics that will justify the kind of sacrifices that are needed to cope with our unsettling future.This is a project that, with a lot of help from others, I have been working on for the last twenty years. I will present it, at least in outline, in my presidential address at the APA Central Division Meeting next spring, entitled "Completing the Kantian Project: From Rationality to Equality." By equality here I mean substantive intergenerational equality. This will require that we limit our current use of resources to simply meeting our basic needs. So the argument moves from a neutral nonmoral rational foundation to a very demanding set of practical moral requirements. So far sketched, the argument does not yet take into account the requirements that nonhuman living nature places upon us. But surprisingly, so demanding is this morality as sketched so far, that when additional considerations are introduced to take nonhuman living nature into account, not much more is required of us other thansome further constraints on population policy.Now I know some environmental philosophers are more skeptical than I am about the usefulness of traditional moral philosophy. Even I am unhappy with certain debates currently raging among contemporary moral philosophers, such as the realist/anti-realist debate. In fact, my argument is designed to make that very debate unnecessary. Still, if we leave most of traditional moral philosophy behind, what do we as philosophers bring with us to the new disciplines with which we now propose to collaborate? Do we bring an ability to do values clarification and a good sense of argument? I don't think these skills and others like them alone will be enough for the task at hand. We need a very demanding ethics, and if we don't look to philosophy to ground such an ethics, where do we look? [End Page 146]There is also an additional advantage here to grounding a demanding environmental ethics in traditional normative philosophy. Such an approach is more likely to force traditionalists and conservatives, philosophers and otherwise, to take notice of our arguments. If we are out in "left" field just talking to those both inside and outside of philosophy who happen to agree with our practical agenda, it is easier for us to be dismissed by others who are not committed to that same practical agenda. By contrast, if we address our opponents by appealing to very traditional values by which they claim to live their lives, then we do have at least a fighting chance of changing the way they do live their lives. At least, as moral philosophers, we would have then done our best to respond to the environmental crisis. Provided of course that we are also willing to reach out with our demanding ethics in hand and do that interdisciplinary collaboration that needs to be done to secure fully practical and effective solutions to the problems we face.James P. Sterba James P. Sterba is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He has published 24 books, including the award-winning Justice for Here and Now (Cambridge, 1998), Three Challenges to Ethics (Oxford, 2001). Terrorism and International Justice (Oxford, 2003), Affirmative Action and Racial Preference: A Debate, co-authored with Carl Cohen (Oxford, 2003) and The Triumph of Practice Over Theory in Ethics (Oxford, 2005) He is president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. E-mail: [email protected] © 2007 Indiana University Press... (shrink)

This book aims to show the centrality of a proper ontology of properties in thinking about consciousness. Philosophers have long grappled with what is now known as the hard problem of consciousness, i.e., how can subjective or qualitative features of our experience—such as how a strawberry tastes—arise from brain states? More recently, philosophers have incorporated what seems like promising empirical research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology in an attempt to bridge the gap between measurable mental states on the one hand, (...) and phenomenal qualities on the other. In Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties, many of the leading philosophers working on this issue, as well as a few emerging scholars, have written 14 new essays on this problem. The essays address topics as diverse as substance dualism, mental causation, the metaphysics of artificial intelligence, the logic of conceivability, constitution, extended minds, the emergence of consciousness, and neuroscience and the unity and neural correlates of consciousness, but are nonetheless unified in a collective objective: the need for a proper ontology of properties to understand the hard problem of consciousness, both on non-empirical and empirical grounds. (shrink)

I adopt a cladistic view of species, and explore the possibility that there exists an equally valuable cladistic view of organismic traits. This suggestion seems to run counter to the stress on functional views of biological traits in recent work in philosophy and psychology. I show how the tension between these two views can be defused with a multilevel view of biological explanation. Despite the attractions of this compromise, I conclude that we must reject it, and adopt an essentially cladistic (...) conception of biological traits. (shrink)

The global workspace architecture is examined from an evolutionary perspective. It is argued that certain aspects of the theory are difficult to account for in terms of a sequence of evolutionary elaborations. These notably include distinct actors and audience members, and the lingua franca by which they communicate. An alternative metaphor of a ‘global arena’ is suggested, along with speculation on how this bottleneck of behavioural competition may have evolved toward a more sophisticated architecture, perhaps even a theatre . . (...) . (shrink)

The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics ‘Intervention Ladder’ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ‘negative liberty’ view of autonomy. Yet there are several alternative accounts of autonomy that are both arguably superior as accounts of autonomy and better suited to the issues facing public health ethics. We propose to replace the one-sided ladder, which has any intervention coming at a cost to autonomy, with a two-sided ‘Balanced Intervention (...) Ladder,’ where intervention can either enhance or diminish autonomy. We show that not only the alternative, richer accounts of autonomy but even Mill’s classic version of negative liberty puts some interventions on the positive side of the ladder. (shrink)

Modal interpretations take quantum mechanics as a theory which assigns at all times definite values to magnitudes of quantum systems. In the case of single systems, modal interpretations manage to do so without falling prey to the Kochen and Specker no-go theorem, because they assign values only to a limited set of magnitudes. In this paper I present two further no-go theorems which prove that two modal interpretations become nevertheless problematic when applied to more than one system. The first theorem (...) proves that the modal interpretation proposed by Kochen and by Dieks cannot correlate the values simultaneously assigned to three systems. The second and new theorem proves that the atomic modal interpretation proposed by Bacciagaluppi and Dickson and by Dieks cannot correlate the values simultaneously and sequentially assigned to two systems if one assumes that these correlations are uniquely related to the dynamics of the state of the systems. (shrink)

The modal interpretation of quantum theory ascribes at each instant physical magnitudes with definite values to quantum systems. Starting from certain natural requirements, I determine unique solutions for the evolution of these possessed magnitudes in free systems and in special cases of interacting systems. The evolution is given in terms of transition probabilities that relate the values of the possessed magnitudes at one instant to the values at a second instant. I also determine a joint property ascription to a composite (...) system and its separate subsystems. Finally, I give a proof that the predictions of the modal interpretation with respect to measurement outcomes agree with the predictions of the standard interpretation. (shrink)

Originally published in 1950, this book contains an edited version of the French text of Ernest Renan's 1871 work La réforme intellectuelle et morale, in which Renan makes suggestions intended to improve France in the wake of its defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. Charvet supplies a biographical note at the beginning of the book explaining Renan's life and opinions. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in French history and the work of Renan.

Assuming it rational to treat other persons' probabilities as epistemically significant, how shall their judgements be weighted (Barnes [1998])? Several plausible methods exist, but theorems in classical psychometrics greatly reduce the importance of the problem. If scientists' judgements tend to be positively correlated, the difference between two randomly weighted composites shrinks as the number of judges rises. Since, for reasons such as representative coverage, minimizing bias, and avoiding elitism, we would rarely employ small numbers of judges (e.g. less than 10), (...) the difference between two weighting systems becomes negligible. Suggestions are made for quantifying verisimilitude, identifying 'types' of scientists or theories (taxometrics), inferring latent factors, and estimating reliability of pooled judgements. (shrink)

Digeser contends that our rich and varied practices of friendship multiply and moderate connections to politics. Along the way, she sets forth a series of ideals that appreciates friendship's many forms and its dynamic relationship to individuality, citizenship, political and legal institutions, and international relations.

This poem, first printed by Scaliger in his Ausonianae lectiones, lib. II c. 29, from a MS in the possession of Cuiacius, will also be found in Burman's anthologia Latina, vol. II p. 321, in Meyer's, no. 1032, and in Baehrens' poetae Latini minores, vol. V p. 350. In date, combining as it does the prosody of plānetae with the syntax of sex (for sexiens) denos, it can hardly be earlier than Prudentius and may easily be much later. It is (...) edited by Riese from eight MSS better than the Cuiacian, three of the 9th century, three of the 10th, one of the 11th, and one of the 12th: the best of these, and the only one of which he professes to give a full collation, is C, Aug. 167 at Karlsruhe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 1-20 [Access article in PDF] Crime, Compassion, and The Reader John E. MacKinnon IN "WRITING AFTER AUSCHWITZ," Günter Grass describes how at the age of seventeen he stubbornly refused to believe the evidence arrayed before him and his classmates of Nazi atrocities, the photographs showing piles of eyeglasses, shoes, hair, and bones. "Germans never could have done, never did do a thing like that," (...) he recalls thinking. And "when the Never collapsed," he and other young Germans were assured that they were free of responsibility. "It took several more years," Grass reports, "before I began to realize: This will not go away; our shame cannot be repressed or come to terms with." Later, he confesses that those of his age "belonged to the Auschwitz generation—not as criminals, to be sure, but in the camp of the criminals." 1Although one would be hard-pressed to find a novel more dramatically different in style and narrative development than Grass's own dark, audacious fables, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader 2 nonetheless shares this fascination with the notion of collective guilt, in particular the burden of inheritance endured by Germany's "second generation." Set in a university town in the late 1950s, the novel tells the story of a high school student, Michael Berg, who falls in love with Hanna Schmitz, a woman twenty years his senior. Though capable of genuine concern and deep affection, Hanna is oddly secretive, often brusque and officious, occasionally given to cruelty and sarcasm, and prone to unpredictable fits of pique. She also has an endearing quirk: she likes Michael to read to her. Eventually, and without explanation, she vanishes from Michael's life. It is seven years before he sees her again, when, as a law student, he attends a trial of concentration-camp guards, one of whom is Hanna. She stands accused, along with four other [End Page 1] women, of serving at both Auschwitz and a satellite camp near Cracow, of being actively involved in the selection of prisoners for almost certain death, and of locking several hundred women in a church, where they burned to death during a bombing raid.In light of testimony given at trial, Hanna's puzzling conduct, and his own recollections of their time together, it finally dawns on Michael that Hanna cannot read, that she was and remains illiterate. But while in retrospect this may explain certain episodes of frustration, incomprehension, and overreaction on her part, does it have any bearing on her guilt? What would Michael himself have done if similarly situated, and similarly limited? Thus, the story of Michael and Hanna serves as an allegory of the relation between the two generations of Germans, those who were Nazis, or who at least assisted or accommodated them, and the "lucky late-born." It is against this background that Schlink is able most searchingly to investigate questions of complicity, recrimination, and atonement.As much courtroom drama as rite-of-passage tale, The Reader is also something of a philosophical investigation. According to Eva Hoffman, in fact, Schlink has managed to compose "a fictionalized essay... a kind of philosophical parable." For all the briskly evocative prose, she adds, The Reader "gradually acquires some of the severity of a legal or logical argument, in which propositions are set forth and then tested from various points of view." 3 In a recent article, Jeremiah P. Conway offers a sympathetic interpretation of the novel, attending in particular to the philosophical issues that it raises. Conway challenges Martha Nussbaum's claim that it is logically incoherent for us to feel compassion for one whom we hold responsible for a morally reprehensible act. 4 For in Hanna, he suggests, we have a compelling counterexample, a fit object of our compassion no less than our condemnation. And yet, Conway's challenge is grounded in an even more fundamental denial that The Reader is at all concerned to establish the circumstances of Hanna's life as mitigating her crime.In what follows, I will argue that this interpretation is untenable... (shrink)

Pv~P: Cambridge Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, Issue 1, 1982.