In this paper we look at the manual analysis of arguments and how this compares to the current state of automatic argument analysis. These considerations are used to develop a new approach combining a machine learning algorithm to extract propositions from text, with a topic model to determine argument structure. The results of this method are compared to a manual analysis.

We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We provide a case study for the application of the methods to (...) the problem of identifying and extracting arguments about anthropomorphism during a critical period in the development of comparative psychology. We show how a combination of classification systems and mixed-membership models trained over large digital libraries can inform resource discovery in this domain. Through a novel approach of “drill-down” topic modeling—simultaneously reducing both the size of the corpus and the unit of analysis—we are able to reduce a large collection of fulltext volumes to a much smaller set of pages within six focal volumes containing arguments of interest to historians and philosophers of comparative psychology. The volumes identified in this way did not appear among the first ten results of the keyword search in the HathiTrust digital library and the pages bear the kind of “close reading” needed to generate original interpretations that is the heart of scholarly work in the humanities. Zooming back out, we provide a way to place the books onto a map of science originally constructed from very different data and for different purposes. The multilevel approach advances understanding of the intellectual and societal contexts in which writings are interpreted. (shrink)

If critical momentum in European philosophy and theory has seemed to shift away from deconstruction over the past decade or so, nevertheless the indebtedness of contemporary key thinkers to Derrida's writing and the entire project of deconstruction is unquestionable, regardless of whether it is always fully acknowledged, and whether or not Derrida's influence manifests itself as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism or opposition. Many of those who now reject deconstruction continue to write texts that engage (...) with Derrida's work, whether dismissively or not. In this context, how best to recall deconstruction as a continuing 'voice' across the various fields of the critical humanities, theory and philosophy? The starting point for this collection of essays is the idea that, rather than reduce deconstruction to an object of historical importance or memory, one might more fruitfully analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire in which it continues to figure; ceaselessly provoked in this way, deconstruction may neither be dismissed as simply 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as still alive and well. Instead, it asks to be repositioned on the threshold of life-death (about which deconstruction has always had much to say), an intricate threshold which profoundly complicates its relationship to the 'present' field of critical thought. This is a field which-according to a highly complex set of desires-still struggles to memorialize, to inter, or indeed to cremate, reduce to ashes, the deconstructive corpus. This collection therefore brings together leading voices at the forefront of their critical fields, in order to address the question of the desires of deconstruction, in precisely these multiple senses. With contributions from Etienne Balibar, Catherine Malibou and Martin Hagglund, the volume includes key thinkers across various generations of scholarship: those whose careers took off in the 1960s, at the same time Derrida's importance was gaining acknowledgement; those who played their part in the Anglo-American reception and translation of Derrida in the subsequent two or three decades; those taught by him; and those who, without undue discipleship or hagiography, now seek to critically re-evaluate his work. (shrink)

Kraus, O. Biographical sketch of Franz Brentano.--Stumpf, C. Reminiscences of Franz Brentano.--Husserl, E. Reminiscences of Franz Brentano.--Gilson, E. Brentano's interpretation of medieval philosophy.--Gilson, L. Franz Brentano on science and philosophy.--Titchener, E. B. Brentano and Wundt: empirical and experimental psychology.--Chisholm, R. M. Brentano's descriptive psychology.--De Boer, T. The descriptive method of Franz Brentano.--Spiegelberg, H. Intention and intentionality in the scholastics, Brentano and Husserl.--Marras, A. Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality.--Chisholm, R. M. Intentional inexistence.--McAlister, L. L. Chisholm and Brentano on (...) intentionality.--Chisholm, R. M. Brentano's theory of correct and incorrect emotion.--Moore, G. E. Review of Franz Brentano's The origin of the knowledge of right and wrong.--Franks, G. Was G. E. Moore mistaken about Brentano?--Kotarbinski, T. Franz Brentano as reist.--Terrell, D.B. Brentano's argument for reismus.--Bergman, H. Brentano's theory of induction.--Kraus, O. Toward a phenomenognosy of time consciousness. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the meaning of the notion of the “uncanny” in Nietzsche’s Birth of tragedy. To read today this work is to encounter a text that has preserved intact the force of its philosophical message: man is such only in the alternance and coexistence of health and illness, Apollonian and Dionysian, art and life. The role of Socrates’ philosophy in Nietzsche’s The birth of tragedy, however, needs to be reconsidered. Socrates is also, according to this reading, an (...) “uncanny” figure. This article is dedicated to an analysis of the aesthetical leitmotif of Nietzsche’s philosophy and a comparison between The birth of tragedy and Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann. Topics are the complex relationship between health and illness and the difference between humankind and mechanical robots or automata. (shrink)

Medical research saves lives--yet all too often, it is thwarted by a review system supposed to safeguard patients that instead creates needless delays and expense. Institutional Review Boards, which exist at every hospital and medical school that conducts medical research, have ended up imposing such complex, draconian conditions that research is frequently damaged, delayed, and distorted. This is why medical miracles like the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed at warp speed, are far too rare. Instead, medical research in countless areas (...) is kept at a horse-and-buggy pace. The result: unnecessary suffering and avoidable deaths. From Oversight to Overkill vividly recounts the story behind this crisis, one that remains unknown to the general public. Family physician and ethicist Simon Whitney shows how the IRB system was launched in response to scandals like the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study--and how, in recent decades, this well-intentioned program has become increasingly bureaucratic, convoluted, and stifling. Readers will learn how vital breakthroughs in treating conditions from kidney stones to heart attacks and premature birth have been delayed by IRB red tape, forcing doctors and patients to settle for less-effective treatments. They'll see how ill-informed demands from Congressional leaders that regulators "get tough" on scientists have caused respected research institutions to be shut down-with no benefit to the public. And they'll learn about a balanced, common-sense approach to reforming the system that can free scientists from pointless wheel-spinning while still protecting the public from the risks of unethical or careless experimentation. Until now, the debate about the IRB system's failures has been confined to specialty journals in medicine, law, and ethics. From Oversight to Overkill will finally alert citizens about this little-known crisis with America's medical research system-and what can be done about it. (shrink)

Philosophe politique et intellectuel engage dans la vie des idées aux Etats-Unis comme dans le monde, Michael Walzer est l'un des penseurs de la société parmi les plus stimulants a l'époque contemporaine. Son oeuvre défriche des pistes nouvelles de réflexion dans les domaines du politique, de la justice sociale, de la morale ou de l'identité culturelle. En même temps, Walzer, dont la pensée s'est forgée lors des luttes pour l'égalité des droits civiques aux USA et contre la guerre du Vietnam (...) dans les années 1960, poursuit une activité féconde d'animation du débat public à travers sa revue Dissent. Dans cet essai, Simon Wuhl a souhaité éclairer une autre dimension de la pensée de Michael Walzer : la relation étroite avec la pensée juive, dont les potentialités d'universalisation sont une référence majeure dans la plupart de ses écrits. Qu'elle s'exprime ouvertement comme dans son article emblématique sur " Les deux universalismes ", ou en arrière-fond comme dans son livre plus théorique sur les Sphères de justice, l'empreinte du judaïsme est toujours présente dans son oeuvre pour éclairer les grandes questions de société. Faisant par ailleurs retour, dans certains de ses travaux, sur les textes de base du judaïsme, Walzer mobilise les ressources méthodologiques des sciences humaines pour les soumettre à une relecture critique. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What if Tattooing is Immoral? Latent Criminals or Degenerate Aristocrats Loos and Amorality Tattooing is Like Murdering? Loos and the Crime of Ornamentation Tattooing and Personal Meaning Tattooing and Liberal Autonomy Attraction and Repulsion.

This paper recovers and pays homage to the arguments in support of the equality of the sexes developed by the Seventeenth Century Cartesian philosopher François Poullain de la Barre (1647-1723).

The concerns regarding patient autonomy presented in August A. Culbert et al.’s “Navigating Informed Consent and Patient Safety in Surgery: Lessons for Medical Students and Junior Trainees” fall just short of addressing the main issue. Patient autonomy is not something that just one member of a team should consider, and it should not be something that any protocol should have the power to subvert, particularly in an environment as tenuous as the operating room. This article will take the concerns regarding (...) the ethics of removing a patient’s hearing aid prior to entering the operating room presented in the aforementioned article and show the necessity for a new standard operating procedure. (shrink)

In the following we shall see, however, that Chisholm’s interpretation of Brentano’s intentionality doctrine is not wholly accurate, and that while the doctrine he sets forth as Brentano’s is an interesting and provocative one, it gives a misleading impression of what Brentano’s views actually were, by obscuring almost entirely the specific nature of the question Brentano was trying to solve, and by misreading the answer Brentano gave. If only for the sake of historical accuracy a corrective should be given, but, (...) of course, taking another look at Brentano’s particular way of construing the mind/body problem and the solution he put forth may also prove to be suggestive in its own right. (shrink)

Offering a study of women philosophers, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, this is a comprehensive view of women in the history of philosophy. Covering various ideas - from religion, to evolution, to political theory, this volume brings creative women thinkers into mainstream discussion of the history of philosophy.

Our engagement with time is a ubiquitous feature of our lives. We are aware of time on many scales, from the briefest flicker of change to the way our lives unfold over many years. But to what extent does this encounter reveal the true nature of temporal reality? To the extent that temporal reality is as it seems, how do we come to be aware of it? And to the extent that temporal reality is not as it seems, why does (...) it seem that way? These are the central questions addressed by Simon Prosser in Experiencing Time. He defends the B-theory of time, according to which the apparently dynamic quality of change, the special status of the present, and even the passage of time are all illusions. Prosser goes on to explore solutions to certain puzzles raised by experiences of temporal features such as changes, rates, and durations, and in doing so sheds light on broader issues in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Franz Brentano and Intentional Inexistence LINDA L. McALISTER FRANZBRnrCrXr~O,in his important early work Psychologie vom empirischen Stand, punkt (1874), maintains that all human experience is divided into two classes: mental phenomena and physical phenomena,x It is then incumbent upon him to show how these two classes of phenomena are to be distinguished one from another. In Book II, Chapter 1, of the Psychologie, he devotes him.self to this (...) task, and in the course of the chapter he surveys several different ways of making out the distinction. After enumerating examples of men~l phenomena and of physical phenomena, he searches for defining characteristics of mental phenomena. He finds several charac, teristics which he thinks all mental phenomena have and all physical phenomena lack or vice versa, but far and away the most important of these, in Brentano's estimation, and the one whdch has aroused the most interest on the part of later philosophers, is what he calls "intentional inexistence," 2 (or merely "intentional existence"; the prefix "in-" does not indicate negation but rathor location, indicating existence in the mind). As examples of mental phenomena Brentano lists first ideas or presentations (Vorstellungen), whether sensory or issuing from the imagination, and by this he meam not the objects which are presented or which one has before one's mind, but rather the condition or, what Brentano; broadly speaking, calls the act of having such an idea or presentation.3 Thus the acts of hearing something, or seeing or perceiving something would be mental phenomena regardless of whether the object which is, e. g., seen, ds perceived through the visual organs or seen in the mind's eye, so to speak. Other examples are acts of judgment, amongwhich Brentano includes ~:emembering, inferring, believing, doubting; and emotions.such as being happy or sad, lovi~,g and hating, along with which Brentano includes such things as willing, intending, choosing, etc.4 i Oskar Kraus, e.d.,2nd ed. (Leipzig,1924),I, 109. Psych. I, 137. Psych. I, 111. " Psych. I, 112. [423] 424 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ExamFles of physical phenomena which Brentano mentions are "a color, a figure, a landscape which I see, a chord which I hear, warmth, cold, odor which I perceive; as well as similar images which appear in the imagination." s It appears from the examFles, then, that mental phenomena are all mental acts, in a broad sense, while physical phenomena are, strictly speaking, all instances of sensible qualities, the inclusion of "a landscape" being, apparently, a slip on Brentano's part, as his student, friend and editor Oskar Kraus points out. 6 As mentioned above, Brentano thought that there is one partieula~ mark of mental phenomena which characterizes them better than any other: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (by which you should not take me to mean a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something in itself as an object, though they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affmned or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.7 Commentators, perhaps not surprisingly, have disagreed as to the precise nature of the view which Brentano is enunciating in this passage,s Some have supposed that since you can think of, hate, or judge, etc., things which do not exist, e.g., Pegasus, then the immanent object of which Brentano speaks i,s not Pegasus but a "thoughtof Pegasus" (gedachtes Pegasus) which exists in one's mind whenever someone th'mks of Pegasus. Apparently H6fler interpreted the doctrine in this way in a paper which he presented to the Fifth International Psychology Congress in 1905.9.In the light of some passages from Brentano's early writings it appears to be a plausible interpretation. Consider, for example, the following passage: There cannot be anyone who contemplates an A unless there is a contemplated A; and conversely.... The two concepts are not identical but they... (shrink)

Social norms – rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community – are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is (...) little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of ‘culture’ and to become organized around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation. (shrink)

This paper was originally presented as part of a panel entitled "Feminist Philosophy After Twenty Years" at the 1993 meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA). It is a discussion of the conditions that needed to be-and were-present in the United States in the 1970s in order for feminist philosophy to take root and flourish.

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of thing. This edition (...) consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

According to the B-theory, the passage of time is an illusion. The B-theory therefore requires an explanation of this illusion before it can be regarded as fullysatisfactory; yet very few B-theorists have taken up the challenge of trying to provide one. In this paper I take some first steps toward such an explanation by first making a methodological proposal, then a hypothesis about a key element in the phenomenology of temporal passage. The methodological proposal focuses onthe representational content of the (...) element of experience by virtue of which time seems to pass. The hypothesis involves the claim that the experience of changeinvolves the representation of something enduring, rather than perduring, through any change. (shrink)

This is a book that no one with a serious interest in the spiritual life can afford to be without.

"I think many people would find it a useful resource, both in terms of information on particular philosophers and as a point of inspiration for designing courses that incorporate the work of women philosophers.... I expect I will refer individual students to this book as a resource for their own work and I will consult it in designing future courses." —Teaching Philosophy "With intelligence and agility, the writers [present] female thinkers who influenced the famous philosophers of their respective ages. This (...) should become a standard text in both philosophy and women’s studies classes and will have great appeal to lay readers as well. Highly recommended." —Library Journal This study of women philosophers from the Middle Ages to the 20th century covers a wide spectrum of ideas—from religion, to evolution, to political theory. This unique volume brings creative women thinkers into mainstream discussions of the history of philosophy. Contributors examine the work of, among others, Hildegard of Bingen, Vicountess Conway, Sor Juana, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah Arendt, Angela Davis, and Hypatia herself. (shrink)

Societies vary in their levels of social inequality and in the degree of popular support for policies that reduce disparities within them. Survey research in Texas, where levels of disparity in health and medical care are relatively high, studied how psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement relate to public support for expanding access to government-subsidized health care. Telephone interviews ( N = 1,063) measured agreement with statements expressing tendencies to minimize the effects of inequality, blame its victims and morally justify limits (...) on government help. The interviews also assessed support for general and specific policies to reduce inequality, e.g., through state-subsidized health care for lower income groups, as well as political party affiliation, ideological orientation, gender, age, education and income. Agreement with beliefs expressing moral disengagement was associated with opposition to governmental policies to reduce inequality in children’s health care. Beliefs that justify the withholding of government assistance, blame the victims of societal inequality, and minimize perceptions of their suffering were strongly related to variation between and within groups in support for governmental action to reduce inequality. (shrink)

What is it for two people to think of an object, natural kind or other entity under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a particularly difficult question for advocates of the Mental Files approach, the Language of Thought, or other ‘atomistic’ theories. In this paper I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve a certain kind of epistemic transparency between the token thoughts (...) of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how this account can be extended for thoughts expressed using demonstratives or indexicals. (shrink)

This is an expanded and revised discussion of the argument briefly put forward in my 'A New Problem for the A-Theory of Time', where it is claimed that it is impossible to experience real temporal passage and that no such phenomenon exists. In the first half of the paper the premises of the argument are discussed in more detail than before. In the second half responses are given to several possible objections, none of which were addressed in the earlier paper. (...) There is also some discussion of some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon-Mitchell along with objections raised against them recently by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively. (shrink)

In this collection of newly commissioned essays, the contributors present a variety of approaches to it, engaging with historical and empirical aspects of the subject as well as contemporary philosophical work.