In this paper we explore the sustained and multifaceted attempt of Jürgen Habermas to reconstruct Kant's theory of cosmopolitan right for our own times. In a series of articles written in the post‐1989 period, Habermas has argued that the challenge posed both by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and by social forces of globalization, has given new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice that Kant first expressed. He recognizes that today we cannot simply repeat Kant's eighteenth‐century vision: that (...) if we are to grapple with the complexities of present‐day problems, it is necessary to iron out certain inconsistencies in Kant's thinking, radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation‐states is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the “differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that now separate us from him.”1 His basic intuition, however, is that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is as relevant to our times as it was to Kant's own. If it was Kant's achievement to formulate the idea of cosmopolitanism in a modern philosophical form, Habermas takes up the challenge posed by Karl‐Otto Apel: to “think with Kant against Kant” in reconstructing this idea. What follows is a critical assessment of Habermas's response to this challenge. We focus here on the dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the national framework in which he developed his ideas of constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the sustained and multifaceted attempt of Jürgen Habermas to reconstruct Kant's theory of cosmopolitan right for our own times. In a series of articles written in the post‐1989 period, Habermas has argued that the challenge posed both by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and by social forces of globalization, has given new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice that Kant first expressed. He recognizes that today we cannot simply repeat Kant's eighteenth‐century vision: that (...) if we are to grapple with the complexities of present‐day problems, it is necessary to iron out certain inconsistencies in Kant's thinking, radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation‐states is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the “differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that now separate us from him.”1 His basic intuition, however, is that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is as relevant to our times as it was to Kant's own. If it was Kant's achievement to formulate the idea of cosmopolitanism in a modern philosophical form, Habermas takes up the challenge posed by Karl‐Otto Apel: to “think with Kant against Kant” in reconstructing this idea. What follows is a critical assessment of Habermas's response to this challenge. We focus here on the dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the national framework in which he developed his ideas of constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Gene therapy is the modification of the human genetic code to prevent disease or cure illness. This technology is in its infancy and remains confined to experimental clinical trials. Once the present barriers are overcome, gene therapy will confront humanity with a host of ethical challenges. Therapies targeted to the genes of germ-line cells will introduce permanent changes to the human gene pool. Furthermore, nonmedical gene modifications have the potential to introduce a new form of eugenics into our (...) society by which some members attempt to become inherently superior to others and humanity is re-engineered to man-made specifications. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.1 (Spring 2010): 45–50. (shrink)

AutoBioPhilosophy is an astonishingly frank and original autobiography that explores the fundamental question of what it means to be human.Robert Rowland Smith's life story involves a love triangle, office politics, police raids, illegal drugs, the academic elite and a near-death experience. It sees him grappling with the tragic fate of his father, going through a double divorce and encountering a living divinity. We witness him confronting his demons but also looking out for angels.A former Oxford don, Robert (...) uses these deeply personal experiences to generate philosophical insights that will resonate with everybody. What are the recurring patterns, unconscious motives and social forces that govern our behaviour? Through his experiences, and referencing writers from Shakespeare to Freud, he offers new models and ways into human psychology.As we are led into Robert's private world, we gain an understanding of what it means to be human that is relevant to all. (shrink)

In order to appreciate the contributions of Star Noise: Discovering the Radio Universe, a little history will help. At the end of the nineteenth century, astronomy consisted of two branches, `posit...

The core argument in this paper is that, to reconstruct the last unwritten section on Judging in Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind , it is necessary to address what Arendt was doing with the book as a whole and how the different parts relate internally to one another. This is no easy matter, especially as the existing sections on Thinking and Willing are quite different in tone from one another. My proposition is that the work should be read as (...) a critique of the life of the `modern' mind, and especially of the differentiation of the modern mind into distinct and reified faculties. The work as a whole is an attempt to understand the distorted forms of modernization that result from the division of the life of the mind into opposing faculties. It is, so to speak, a critique of the combined and uneven development of the life of the modern mind. While Arendt famously argues that the activity of thinking itself conditions people against evildoing, the spectre that informs her analysis of both thinking and willing is the danger of nihilism inherent in these mental activities. The work raises vital questions concerning the conditions under which this danger is actualized and the means by which it might be averted. What this entails for our reconstruction of the missing section on judgment is that, rather than see it as the core of Arendt's contribution to political thought or as the promised solution to an impasse, we should explore the equivocations of judging. This aporetic reading of the text helps clarify Arendt's concerns over the separation of the life of the mind from the world and the role of both judging and understanding in renewing its connections to the world. (shrink)

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; (...) COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry Stapp. (shrink)

In “Ontologies Relevant to behaviour change interventions: A Method for their Development” Wright, et al. outline a step by step process for building ontologies of behaviour modification – what the authors call the Refined Ontology Developmental Method (RODM) – and demonstrate its use in the development of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). RODM is based on the principles of good ontology building used by the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry in addition to those outlined in (Arp, Smith, and (...) Spear 2015). BCIO uses as its top-level ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The methods outlined in Wright, et al. are a valuable contribution to the field, especially the use of formal mechanisms for literature annotation and expert stakeholder review, and the BCIO will certainly play an important role in the extension of OBO Foundry ontologies into the behavioural domain. (shrink)

In this paper we will take a careful look at the well-known fact that a complete 2 rotation in three dimensional space, while leaving vectors, tensors and generally the integral representations of the rotation group unchanged, causes a sign change in the half-integral spinor representations of the rotation group. First, in a brief introduction, we review the origin of the sign change of spinors by a 2 rotation. Next, we analyze Aharonov and Susskind's (hereafter referred to as A. & (...) S.) (1967) original proposal for detecting such a sign change and compare it with a later proposal1 for detecting the sign change using neutron beams that are coherently split and recombined. While the A. & S. experiment is, we think, conceptually more interesting, the neutron beam experiment has actually been carried out. And finally, we discuss the philosophical significance of the rotationally induced spinor sign change. (shrink)

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

First published in 1972. Militant protest is not new to British politics, but the widespread recourse to direct action, in Britain and abroad, is unprecedented. This book was the first comprehensive examination of contemporary protest in the British context. The contributors represented leading agencies of protest as well as those academics who had made this phenomenon their special concern. The result is a unique blend of direct experience and objective reflection. The first part of the volume covers the theoretical and (...) historical dimensions of protest, and is followed by a detailed consideration of specific issues. An analysis is then made of the reaction of the State to such protest through legislative and administrative channels. The final part shows the intermediary roles of political parties, MPs, the NCCL and the mass media. The book concludes with a critical examination of the interaction between protest and representative democracy and the implications which arise from it. Students of politics and sociology as well as political activists of all shades of opinion will find this book essential to an understanding of the bases of protest movements. (shrink)

Sleep has long been a topic of fascination for artists and scientists. Why do we sleep? What function does sleep serve? Why do we dream? What significance can we attach to our dreams? We spend so much of our lives sleeping, yet its precise function is unclear, in spite of our increasing understanding of the processes generating and maintaining sleep. We now know that sleep can be accompanied by periods of intense cerebral activity, yet only recently has experimental data started (...) to provide us with some insights into the type of processing taking place in the brain as we sleep. There is now strong evidence that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories. Once the preserve of psychoanalysts, 'dreaming' is now a topic of increasing interest amongst scientists. With research into sleep growing, this volume is both timely and valuable in presenting a unique study of the relationship between sleep, learning, and memory. It brings together a team of international scientists researching sleep in both human and animal subjects. Aimed at researchers within the fields of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology, this book will be an important first step in developing a full scientific understanding of the most intriguing state of consciousness. (shrink)

Foundations of Space-Time Theories, by Michael Friedman, falls naturally into two parts. In the first, he presents the general framework within which he will characterize and discuss space-time theories, and then he devotes a chapter each to Newtonian physics, special relativity, and general relativity. Although there is some rich philosophical discussion along the way, these chapters are, of necessity, somewhat technical expositions of the general framework in action. It is in the second part, consisting of two substantial chapters, one (...) on relationalism, the other on conventionalism, that more general philosophical issues are addressed. (shrink)

We review Potts' influential book on the semantics of conventional implicature , offering an explication of his technical apparatus and drawing out the proposal's implications, focusing on the class of CIs he calls supplements. While we applaud many facets of this work, we argue that careful considerations of the pragmatics of CIs will be required in order to yield an empirically and explanatorily adequate account.

When the U.S. conducts warfare, elements of a force are drawn from different services and work together as a single team to accomplish an assigned mission. To achieve such unified action, it is necessary that the doctrines governing the actions of members of specific services be both consistent with and subservient to joint Doctrine. Because warfighting today increasingly involves not only live forces but also automated systems, unified action requires that information technology that is used in joint warfare must be (...) aligned with joint doctrine. It requires also that the separate information systems used by the different elements of a joint force must be interoperable, in the sense that data and information that is generated by each element must be usable (understandable, processable) by all the other elements that need them. Currently, such interoperability is impeded by multiple inconsistencies among the different data and software standards used by warfighters. We describe here the on-going project of creating a Joint Doctrine Ontology (JDO), which uses joint doctrine to provide shared computer-accessible content valid for any field of military endeavor, organization, and information system. JDO addresses the two previously mentioned requirements of unified action by providing a widely applicable benchmark for use by developers of information systems that will both guarantee alignment with joint doctrine and support interoperability. (shrink)

Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy (...) choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations. (shrink)

I should like to thank Ben Fine, Costas Lapavitsas and Dimitris Milonakis for their stimulating and detailed comments. In the limited space available, I cannot respond to every criticism. A number of criticisms appear to be a matter of mere semantics. In the Marxian literature, the term ‘crisis’ is often used to refer to extended downturns as well as to short and sharp declines. And Marx himself defines the organic composition of capital as the value composition considered ‘in so (...) far as this is determined by its technical composition and reflects it’, which is how the value composition is considered in my paper. Nor will I respond to the charge that my ‘use of Grossmann is mechanical and unpersuasive’, since I am not sure what exactly the objection is. Firstly, I will take up the criticisms regarding the logical structure of Capital. Then I move on to consider one substantive issue raised regarding the tendency for the falling rate of profit. I will next respond to criticism of my treatment of the relation between systematic and historical dialectics. Finally, I respond to criticism of my main thesis overall. (shrink)

What exactly is a genetic disease? For a phrase one hears on a daily basis, there has been surprisingly little analysis of the underlying concept. Medical doctors seem perfectly willing to admit that the etiology of disease is typically complex, with a great many factors interacting to bring about a given condition. On such a view, descriptions of diseases like cancer as geneticseem at best highly simplistic, and at worst philosophically indefensible. On the other hand, there is clearly some practical (...) value to be had by classifying diseases according to theirpredominant cause when this can be accomplished in a theoretically satisfactory manner. The question therefore becomes exactly how one should go about selecting a single causal factor among many to explain the presence of disease. When an attempt to defend such causal selection is made at all, the standard accounts offered (Koch's postulates, Hill's epidemiological criteria, manipulability) are all clearly inadequate. I propose, however, an epidemiological account of disease causation which walks the fine line between practical applicability and theoretical considerations of causal complexity and attempts to compromise between patient-centered and population-centered concepts of disease. The epidemiological account is the most basic framework consistent with our strongly held intuitions about the causal classification of disease, yet it avoids the difficulties encountered by its competitors. (shrink)

I will sketch, but not argue for here, a hypothesis about its origins and structure. What philosophers think of as folk psychology has dual origins. One is a genuine "intuitive psychology." This is an evolved predictive tool seen also in some nonhuman animals and very young children. It is "peripheral" in what it recognizes and describes. Primarily, it recognizes seeing and acting (including trying) as activities of others. This is common element in how human and non-human animals deal with (...) each other. The full folk psychology that we are familiar with in philosophical discussion also includes a model of psychological interactions within the periphery. This model is based perhaps on discourse, the exchange of sentences in public – roughly as Wilfrid Sellars suggested many years ago. This part of folk psychology, unlike the first, might be expected to show some cultural variation. The resulting framework might be fine for describing certain kinds of human thought, but it is problematic when applied more generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Implicit Soul of Charlie Kaufman's AdaptationDavid L. SmithI don't know what else there is to write about other than being human, or, more specifically, being this human. I have no alternative. Everything is about that, right? Unless it's about flowers.—Charlie Kaufman 1There are some things that cannot be observed directly, even in principle: a single quark, the present moment, ones own eye. What Richard Rodriquez calls the "one (...) subject" of literature—"What it feels like to be alive" 2 —is perhaps another one of those things. A writer struggles to be true to something central about life—to catch it on the fly, to get it right. Some have reified this "something" as "the soul" or "the human spirit." Today, though, we mainly rely on placeholders: "it," for example, as in "do you get it?" or "what's it all about?"—a usage that flirts with the vanishing "it" of "it is raining," implying a source or substance behind phenomena in which we do not really believe but without which we cannot do justice to experience. In any case, the writer's attempt to represent this elusive heart of things is typically frustrated, done in by the slipperiness of words, the cludginess of the conventions of communication, and the waywardness of the imagination. Writing inevitably falls short of its deepest aims.Nevertheless, there is something deviously affirmative in this state of affairs. For if life is a thing that refuses to be observed, then isn't the very failure of literature, if consciously acknowledged, a way of staying true to it? Isn't the writer's disappointment an especially telling feature of "what it feels like to be alive?" Emerson, more clearly than most, understood how this trick is turned: "We grant that human life is [End Page 424] mean; but how did we find out that it was mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim?" 3 As noted above, "the soul" is a disposable term here. If you prefer, say simply "the human," "life," or "it." The point, in any case, is that the elusive subject which cannot be stated or represented directly may nevertheless be implied. If the human cannot be caught in a formula, it may be embodied or enacted in the ongoing work of creation.Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation is both an argument for and an example of this implicit realization of the human in art. Many viewers and even reviewers might see it as a poor candidate for humanistic interpretation along these lines. Most, in fact, have seen the film as little more than a clever postmodern puzzle-box, albeit one with great acting, deft direction, and a generous sense of humor. Its theme, after all, is the representation of representation. A book is being rewritten or adapted to become the film we are watching. The subject of that film is its own author's struggle to create it. The film further calls attention to its own artificiality by changing the rules of representation on us midway through. Its tone, style, and basic genre conventions shift when the author/protagonist begins to rethink his original purposes, undermining the credibility of all representational schemes in the process. Adaptation, in short, seems to be what the graduate-educated a decade ago might have felt comfortable calling "an endless play of simulacra," a text absorbed in its own textuality, a snake that eats its own tail. 4All of this is true enough, but it is not the whole story. The point of Adaptation, I will argue, is not simply the pleasure it takes in playing with issues of representation, but its clear sense of the human issues at stake in that play. Adaptation, that is, is not only about the way words tend to float free of the world. Rather, it is also a demonstration of the way a writer's basic goal can survive the wreck of her intentions, or the way that failed attempts to be true to life... (shrink)

One of the most salient differences between fine art and new media art lies in the possibility for interactivity. Interactivity is not simply an inherent quality of new media, it also relates to a crucial ethico-aesthetic premise informing deconstructive art from Dada and Surrealism through radical art of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present. The ethico-aesthetic premise in question concerns breaking down the barrier between the viewer and the work of art and bringing art into life. More (...) specifically the goal is to bring creativity into everyday life as an antidote to alienation and reification. Whereas new media art finds it relatively easy to devise art games that encourage creative involvement on the part of the viewer, fine art is severely hindered in its attempts in this direction by the traditional focus on the artist-genius and the transformation of the artistic product (whatever its material) into a precious object. It will be shown that creative games exist in fine art but they are for the most part designed by the artist for the artist. This is even the case with the most radical fine artists celebrated at the turn of the millennium such as Rirkrit Tiravanija who Nicolas Bourriaud put forward as a prime instance of so-called relational aesthetics. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the view recently set forth by Paul Guyer that Kant's theories of artistic beauty and artistic creativity exclusively coincide with this theory of natural beauty. I note that very great works of art, although they may indeed be beautiful, also tend to be sublime. To acknowledge the sense of awe which attends those great works of art which are also beautiful, I argue that Kant's theory of sublimity must also be included within an accurate interpretation of (...) Kant's account of artistic beauty, and maintain that Guyer's exclusive reference to Kant's theory of natural beauty will not suffice. (shrink)

The big news about chaos is supposed to be that the smallest of changes in a system can result in very large differences in that system's behavior. The so-called butterfly effect has become one of the most popular images of chaos. The idea is that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Argentina could cause a tornado in Texas three weeks later. By contrast, in an identical copy of the world sans the Argentinian butterfly, no such storm would have arisen (...) in Texas. The mathematical version of this property is known as sensitive dependence. However, it turns out that sensitive dependence is somewhat old news, so some of the implications flowing from it are perhaps not such “big news” after all. Still, chaos studies have highlighted these implications in fresh ways and led to thinking about other implications as well. -/- In addition to exhibiting sensitive dependence, chaotic systems possess two other properties: they are deterministic and nonlinear (Smith 2007). This entry discusses systems exhibiting these three properties and what their philosophical implications might be for theories and theoretical understanding, confirmation, explanation, realism, determinism, free will and consciousness, and human and divine action. (shrink)

Much has been published on the career and scholarly achievements of Bernard Smith (1916–2011) since his retirement from teaching in 1977 and has predictably gathered pace after his death. It is clear that the reception of his very substantial body of writings, addressing so many fields within the humanities, critical thought and art history in particular, is only just beginning. The present study focuses on a large recent collection of Smith’s studies in which critical responses are integrated. I (...) argue that the profoundly personal nature of historiography, necessarily incorporating praise and blame in its rhetorical structure, requires that the critic position oneself openly in relation to the life and work of the subject undergoing scrutiny. Smith’s antipodean experience was in many ways distinctive. But those of us who knew him personally, or felt his influence as a teacher and writer, will need to reassess honestly their own genesis in order to deal effectively with the challenges embedded in his work. (shrink)

Robert Cummins has recently used the program of Clark Hull to illustrate the effects of logical positivist epistemology upon psychological theory. On Cummins's account, Hull's theory is best understood as a functional analysis, rather than a nomological subsumption. Hull's commitment to the logical positivist view of explanation is said to have blinded him to this aspect of this theory, and thus restricted its scope. We will argue that this interpretation of Hull's epistemology, though common, is mistaken. Hull's epistemological (...) views were developed independently of, and in considerable contrast to, the principles of logical positivism. (shrink)

The republican tradition has long been ambivalent about markets and commercial society more generally: from the contrasting positions of Rousseau and Smith in the eighteenth century to recent neorepublican debates about capitalism, republicans have staked out diverse positions on fundamental issues of political economy. Rather than offering a systematic historical survey of these discussions, this chapter will instead focus on the leading neo-republican theory—that of Philip Pettit—and consider its implications for market society. As I will argue, Pettit’s (...) theory is even friendlier to markets than most have believed: far from condemning commercial society, his theory recognizes that competitive markets and their institutional preconditions are an alternative means to limit arbitrary power across the domestic, economic, and even political spheres. While most republican theorists have focused on political means to limit such power—including both constitutional means (e.g., separation of powers, judicial review, the rule of law, federalism) and participatory ones (democratic elections and oversight)—I will examine here an economic model of republicanism that can complement, substitute for, and at times displace the standard political model. Whether we look at spousal markets, labor markets, or residential markets within federal systems, state policies that heighten competition among their participants and resource exit from abusive relationships within them can advance freedom as non-domination as effectively or even more effectively than social-democratic approaches that have recently gained enthusiasts among republicans. These conclusions suggest that democracy, be it social or political, is just one means among others for restraining arbitrary power and is consequently less central to (certain versions of) republicanism than we may have expected. So long as they counteract domination, economic inroads into notionally democratic territory are no more worrisome than constitutional ones. (shrink)

How can we articulate the intimate demand of the spiritual life and the struggle for solidarity? These two issues have often been treated separately; in Simone Weil: Attention to the Real, however, Robert Chenavier explores the work of Simone Weil and demonstrates how she brought them together in a single movement of thought. "Our time has a unique mission, calling for the creation of a civilization based on the spirituality of work," she wrote near the end of her short (...) life. Her experience as a militant and the call of the divine nurtured in her writing an intense and unwavering defense of this new civilization, backed by her personal sense of intellectual, moral, and political responsibility. Originally published in French in 2009, Simone Weil: Attention to the Real leads the reader through her earliest writing as a perceptive social critic to her work on spirituality and materialism, and finally to her extraordinary concept of decreation, produced before her death at the age of thirty-four. "To an exceptional degree," Chenavier says, "the life of Simone Weil, her personality, her commitment, and her reflection form one single whole." Chenavier argues that Weil's vocation took on a very original form in the history of philosophical thought. He is especially concerned with Weil's philosophical writings on the concept of work, which remain relevant today, and which provide an important key to her thinking throughout her life. Bernard Doering's superb translation brings to English readers Chenavier's succinct account of Simone Weil's life and an illuminating introduction to her philosophical thought. "Bernard Doering has crafted a very fine translation of Robert Chenavier's comprehensive but brief introduction to Simone Weil's philosophical project. It provides an excellent English introduction to the social philosophy of Simone Weil, with due attention to her understanding of the importance of work in learning to attend to the real. Doering's translation will be of interest to both a religious and secular readership, both inside and outside the academy." --Lawrence Schmidt, University of Toronto "This is an excellent introduction to the thought of Simone Weil. Chenavier understands Weil as a philosopher and in one hundred pages is able to give a succinct presentation of her, from her earliest writings to her extraordinary later ones. This sophisticated presentation can serve both as an introduction to Weil for the nonspecialist and as an introduction to Chenavier's own take on Weil for the reader who knows Weil and is interested in Chenavier's contribution." --Eric O. Springsted, president, American Weil Society. (shrink)

Organized around eight themes central to aesthetic theory today, this book examines the sources and development of Kant's aesthetics by mining his publications, correspondence, handwritten notes, and university lectures. Each chapter explores one of eight themes: aesthetic judgment and normativity, formal beauty, partly conceptual beauty, artistic creativity or genius, the fine arts, the sublime, ugliness and disgust, and humor. Robert R. Clewis considers how Kant's thought was shaped by authors such as Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Meier, Moses (...) Mendelssohn, Johann Sulzer, Johann Herder, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry Home, Charles Batteux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. His resulting study uncovers and illuminates the complex development of Kant's aesthetic theory and will be useful to advanced students and scholars in fields across the humanities and studies of the arts. (shrink)

Human beings are both supremely rational and deeply superstitious, capable of believing just about anything and of questioning just about everything. Indeed, just as our reason demands that we know the truth, our skepticism leads to doubts we can ever really do so. In Walking the Tightrope of Reason, Robert J. Fogelin guides readers through a contradiction that lies at the very heart of philosophical inquiry. Fogelin argues that our rational faculties insist on a purely rational account of the (...) universe, yet at the same time, the inherent limitations of these faculties ensure that we will never fully satisfy that demand. As a result of being driven to this point of paradox, we either comfort ourselves with what Kant called "metaphysical illusions" or adopt a stance of radical skepticism. No middle ground seems possible and, as Fogelin shows, skepticism, even though a healthy dose of it is essential for living a rational life, "has an inherent tendency to become unlimited in its scope, with the result that the edifice of rationality is destroyed." In much Postmodernist thought, for example, skepticism takes the extreme form of absolute relativism, denying the basis for any value distinctions and treating all truth-claims as equally groundless. How reason avoids disgracing itself, walking a fine line between dogmatic belief and self-defeating doubt, is the question Fogelin seeks to answer. Reflecting upon the ancient Greek skeptics as well as such thinkers as Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Whitman, this book takes readers into--and through--some of philosophy's most troubling paradoxes. (shrink)

How can a business institution function as an ethical institution within a wider system if the context of the wider system is inherently unethical? If the primary goal of an institution, no matter how ethical it sets out to be, is to function successfully within a market system, how can it reconcile making a profit and keeping its ethical goals intact? While it has been argued that some ethical businesses do exist, e.g., Johnson and Johnson, the argument I would like (...) to put forth is that no matter how ethical a business institution is, or how ethical its goals are, its capacity to act in an ethical manner is restricted by the wider system in which it must operate, the market system. Unless there is a fundamental change in the notion of the market system itself, the capacity for individual businesses to act in an ethical manner will always be restricted. My argument is divided into two parts. The first part is to show the inherent bias towards unethical outcomes that is inherent in the market system. The second part is to suggest how to reorient the general economic framework in order to make ethical institutions more possible. The question then becomes, how to define economic behavior in terms other than competition for profit. (shrink)

Fifteen years ago, Robert Fulghum published a simple credo–a credo that became the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten . Now, seven million copies later, Fulghum returns to the book that was embraced around the world. He has written a new preface and twenty-five essays, which add even more potency to a common, though no less relevant, piece of wisdom: that the most basic aspects of life bear its most (...) important opportunities. Here Fulghum engages us with musings on life, death, love, pain, joy, sorrow, and the best chicken-fried steak in the continental U.S.A. The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to “fly” . . . life lessons hidden in the laundry pile . . . magical qualities found in a box of crayons . . . hide-and-seek vs. sardines–and how these games relate to the nature of God. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is brimming with the very stuff of life and the significance found in the smallest details. In the years that have passed since the first publication of this book that touched so many with its simple, profound wisdom, Robert Fulghum has had some time to ponder, to reevaluate, and to reconsider. And here are those fresh thoughts on classic topics, right alongside the wonderful new essays. Perhaps in today’s chaotic, more challenging world, these essays on life will resonate even deeper–as readers discover how universal insights can be found in ordinary events. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:184 THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT OF DAVID HUME David Hume's views on economics are expressed in his Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Part II (1752). He was a contemporary of Adam Smith and read Smith's The Wealth of Nations shortly before his death. Some commentators have suggested that Hume exercised some influence over Smith's views on economics; others are not so sure. Hume's commentators over the last (...) 200 years have emphasized his theory of knowledge, doctrine of causality and belief, theory of morals and historical writing. His views on economics have been relatively neglected. The purpose of this essay is to summarize and clarify Hume's views on economics. Commerce and Trade Hume's essay "Of Commerce" is an extension of his view of property rights. Just as government should not impair property rights, it should not impair commerce, which is the freedom to contract between consenting parties. But Hume was not a 'pure' advocate of laissez-faire. He supported the infant industry argument: A tax on German linen encourages home manufacturers, and thereby multiplies our people and industry. A tax on brandy encreases the sale of rum, and supports our southern colonies. The bulk of workers are employed either in argiculture or manufacturing. In the more primitive societies, almost everyone is employed in agriculture (husbandry), and as agricultural techniques are improved, the land becomes able to support more nonagricultural workers, including artisans and providers of luxuries as well as manufacturers. Some of these 185 surplus (i.e., nonagricultural or manufacturing) workers are sometimes appropriated by the sovereign for use in the army or navy (OC 256), which prevents them from producing luxury goods and services, and leads to a different kind of state than would exist if their labor were not so appropriated. Increases in industry, the arts and trade generally increase both the power of the sovereign and the happiness of the people (OC 260). Trade is something that is mutually beneficial -- both parties gain. Hume spends a great deal of time refuting the idea that one nation's gain is another's trade loss. Thus, trade is a win-win rather than a win-lose situation, as some modern-day mercantilists (such as Thurow fThe Zero Sum Gamel and Batra G The Great Crash of 1989l)would have us believe. Hume views everything in the world as purchased by labor, and sees labor as being caused by people's passions (OC 261). In modern language, one could say that wealth is produced either from physical or mental labor, and that it is individual incentive that causes the human action to begin in the first place. Of course, this view overlooks the fact that labor does not exist in a vacuum, but is mixed with land and perhaps capital (which can be seen as the result of accumulated labor). Exchange occurs when producers of a commodity produce more than they can consume. At that point, they trade their surplus for other goods and services (OC 261). In peacetime, the farmers' surplus goes toward the acquisition of manufactures or the cultivation of the liberal arts. In war, the surplus can go toward the support of an army or navy. The state becomes more powerful as it can produce increasingly beyond subsistence, what Hume refers to as employment beyond mere necessities (OC 186 262). But rather than encouraging the increase in state power by force, such increase is best accomplished by allowing individuals to produce as much as they want, which they will do automatically in the absence of coercion, and then appropriate part of the surplus: It is a violent method, and in most cases impracticable, to oblige the labourer to toil, in order to raise from the land more than what subsists himself and family. Furnish him with manufactures and commodities, and he will do it himself. Afterwards you will find it easy to seize some part of his superfluous labour, and employ it in the public service, without giving him his wonted return. Being accustomed to industry, he will think this less grievous, than if, at once, you obliged him to an argumentation of labour without any reward. (OC 262) Countries that engage in... (shrink)

Human beings are both supremely rational and deeply superstitious, capable of believing just about anything and of questioning just about everything. Indeed, just as our reason demands that we know the truth, our skepticism leads to doubts we can ever really do so. In Walking the Tightrope of Reason, Robert J. Fogelin guides readers through a contradiction that lies at the very heart of philosophical inquiry. Fogelin argues that our rational faculties insist on a purely rational account of the (...) universe, yet at the same time, the inherent limitations of these faculties ensure that we will never fully satisfy that demand. As a result of being driven to this point of paradox, we either comfort ourselves with what Kant called "metaphysical illusions" or adopt a stance of radical skepticism. No middle ground seems possible and, as Fogelin shows, skepticism, even though a healthy dose of it is essential for living a rational life, "has an inherent tendency to become unlimited in its scope, with the result that the edifice of rationality is destroyed." In much Postmodernist thought, for example, skepticism takes the extreme form of absolute relativism, denying the basis for any value distinctions and treating all truth-claims as equally groundless. How reason avoids disgracing itself, walking a fine line between dogmatic belief and self-defeating doubt, is the question Fogelin seeks to answer. Reflecting upon the ancient Greek skeptics as well as such thinkers as Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Whitman, this book takes readers into--and through--some of philosophy's most troubling paradoxes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:207 THE CARELESS SKEPTIC THE 'PAMPHILIAN' IRONIES IN HUME'S DIALOGUES In "Hume and the Legacy of the Dialogues" E. C. Mossner sets out a widely accepted interpretation of one of Hume's major intentions in that great work. He argues that Hume's main use of irony therein is to dissimulate with respect to his true religious convictions. The purpose is to provide Hume with a defense against the expected negative (...) reaction to the powerful attack on religion mounted 2 in the Dialogues. The attack, as is well known, is set out in the arguments of Philo against natural and revealed religion as espoused by Cleanthes and Demea, and Philo's views are taken to be those of Hume. It is argued or assumed that since such attacks were in Hume's day imprudent, they must be made by indirection, that is, by a device such as irony. Thus the Dialogues have surface meanings in which the religious views under attack are said (by Pamphilus) to win out; they also have other meanings, underlying or implicit, in which the religious views are conclusively refuted. That they are refuted is a conclusion drawn by the interpreters, in the present case Mossner and those who share his views. These destructive refutations are derived from explication and assessment of the ongoing argument as embodied in the explicit statements of the contestants, and are thus not explicitly linked to Hume. In consequence, quite often from one standpoint (a trivial one of external comment by an immature and prejudiced onlooker) the design argument wins; and from another, more sophisticated one, it loses. The upshot is that "Philo, who as Hume's spokesman for mitigated 208 skepticism will perforce be the victor in the philosophic debate, will nevertheless be 'artfully' depicted as being vanquished by the antagonist." The strategy Mossner finds in the Dialogues thus has the youthful Pamphilus, a ward of Cleanthes, and one who takes no actual part in the adversarial discussions, interposing (in brief asides) comments that superficially but subtly belittle Philo's philosophical position. Philo is characterized, for instance, as having a "careless scepticism," in contrast with Cleanthes, who has an "accurate philosophical turn [of mind]" (D 128). Similarly, at the end of the Dialogues, Pamphilus awards the victory to Cleanthes. In support of his thesis that Philo is a devious Hume's mouthpiece, Mossner brings forth two kinds of evidence, roughly characterizable as external and internal. One kind of external evidence is exemplified in Hume's correspondence with Gilbert 4 5 Elliot of Minto, and Adam Smith; the letters involved are interpreted as showing that Philo represents Hume. Another kind involves comparing the amount of space devoted to the arguments of the three adversaries. The internal evidence is derived from the explication and appraisal of the explicit statements of the contestants; and it is essentially identified with the arguments and conclusions of Philo, except where Cleanthes can be said to make claims which square with those made by Hume in other works such as the Treatise. Thus Hume's views and the related arguments are interpreted as those of Philo, in part because they are considered to be more valid and sound than those of Cleanthes, and in part because they are held to square with the views and arguments affirmed in Hume's other writings. Hume's views, as indicated above, are taken to be those of 209 Philo except where Philo appears to agree with Cleanthes and to accept a form of the design argument. Hume is Cleanthes when Cleanthes sets forth doctrines of the Treatise and the Enquiry that are in accordance with the received (more or less) positivistic interpretation of Hume's skepticism. It is this view that requires that in those places in Parts III, X, and XII, where Philo appears to avow a form of the design argument or to let it stand unrefuted, he be (ironically) dissimulating. Thus the surface victories of Cleanthes and natural religion, which the adversarial flow of the statements of Philo and Cleanthes exhibits, are refuted by the propositions derived from the assessed form and content of the philosophical debate. The basic irony, therefore, lies in aspects of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 69-72 [Access article in PDF] Christian Experiences with Buddhist Spirituality: A Response Robert Thurman Columbia University Recently I read an account on the CNN website of a statement made at the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad in India, where about eighty million devotees of Hinduism were joined in their worship of the grace of the Goddess River Ganga by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, informal (...) head of Tibetan Buddhists and formal head of the Tibetan government in exile. His Holiness also joined the leaders of Hinduism, various Shankaracharyas and others, in a formal statement in which they requested with the followers of other world religions not to persist in the practice of aggressive conversion of the followers of other religions. The statement addressed a special plea to Christians and Muslims, who may currently be the most intense in their worldwide missionary activities.The writer of the CNN article was clearly cynical about this, mentioning, as if to undercut the force of their appeal to other religions, that the Hindu leaders themselves wanted to declare India a Hindu nation. He noted that the Dalai Lama "giggled" when he sprinkled himself with Ganga water out of respect for Hindu beliefs, but declined to immerse himself in the river, saying it was too cold.His Holiness has often challenged leaders of world religions, including Buddhists, Hindus, and secular humanists (which he considers a world religion/ideology, whether Marxist or liberal democratic), by saying that now is past the time when anyone should be attempting to convert others to a different belief system or institutional affiliation. If persisted in, it will lead to worse violence in the future than it already has in the past. His position seems eminently reasonable, looking realistically at the world situation, the powerful technologies of communication and possible scale of violence. Yet people filled with enthusiasm for their saving faith tend to feel deprived if they cannot have a mission to save others with it.I do not think His Holiness means that you cannot share your enthusiasm, or make the jewels of faith, wisdom, and compassion of your tradition accessible to others, or even dialogue with others comparing your tradition with theirs. He travels the world teaching Buddhism, mostly to Buddhists, but freely to anyone who is interested. But then he does tell those who are not Buddhists notto convert to Buddhism. Rather, he cautions, they should take whatever they learn and use anything that seems good to them to enhance their original tradition, thereby remaining integrated with [End Page 69] their families, communities, and local customs, perhaps even enriching their own traditions. Those who are Buddhists from birth he urges to study other traditions, learn from them, and critically extricate themselves from feelings of superiority or estrangement. And some who may already have chosen to become Buddhist he strongly cautions not to criticize their birth traditions or look down on their followers.What I love about the essays in this collection is that they all seem to be learning from Buddhism and appreciate its traditions, yet they interpret it in Christian terms, apply it to their own Christian understanding, and practice an enriched Christianity, perhaps what Bardwell Smith so aptly calls in his essay "becoming a Christian." I feel privileged to respond to the deep personal quest for truth I sense within each essay. I am not going to review each essay point by point, though I will touch on each of the five as I follow a kind of pilgrimage through them. Though all five essays are personal and confessional, those by Ingram and Muck are perhaps more theoretical in tone, Adeney and Frohlich more contemplative in focus, and Smith combines both in a special combination I will save for last.Paul Ingram writes as a man who floats contentedly in a sea of God's grace, the vision of which seems to have been opened for him by Martin Luther. While he floats, he reflects deeply and knowledgeably about both Pure Land and Zen Buddhisms, acknowledging how his appreciation of the Christian... (shrink)

Consideration of the amazing organized intricacy of human cortical anatomy entails a deeper appreciation of nature that is fully consistent with a mature religious spirit. A brain seems at first glance to be a mere lump of grayish claylike stuff, but facts of basic neuroanatomy compel us to consider that this particular kind of stuff may really contain all the richly tangible and richly ghostly inner essences of emotion, thought, and behavior. Humans are the “college graduates” of evolution. The human (...) cortex is 3,400 times the volume of, yet only slightly thicker (about 3 millimeters) than, that of the mouse. This remarkable sheet is as thin as a graduation‐day “mortarboard” cap, but its 2,600 square centimeter area is four times as large (about 20 × 20 inches if a square; both metric and English units used deliberately). Zooming in, there are about 50 billion cortical neurons; though named after “pyramids,” they are more like tiny “magic trees,” with branches and roots so long and fine that there are 1 or 2 miles of these electrically scintillating fibers within each cubic millimeter of cortex. Cortical neurons communicate intimately: viewed from above, beneath a single square millimeter 100,000 nerve cells intertwine; each such neuron makes 5,000 or more connections with others. These and many additional amazing facts about brain tissue, together with some conjectures about dense connectedness in the mathematics of graph theory, help to bear out the groundwork prepared by such pioneers as Ralph Wendell Burhoe that the spirit and knowledge of science might rejoin that of religion. If it takes enchanted matter to contain consciousness, this is a kind of enchantment that science may well be able to penetrate for eventual thoroughgoing understanding. Inevitable by‐products will be greater reverence for nature and greater awe at the mystery of nature's origin. (shrink)

In the discourse of 18th-century British intellectuals the term 'luxury' held a well-recognized and much disputed place. Dispute arose chiefly around the problem of disentangling the economic, moral-theological and political strands of the term. The object of the present paper is to trace forward the history of debate over the concept along one develop ing line of specialization - that of 19th-century political economy. It will be seen how the term luxury (and related terms: necessity, decency, productive, unproductive, etc.) (...) adjusted meaning(s) as the economic, social and intellectual contexts in which it was embedded themselves mutated. In particular, it is argued, the changing significance attached to the term illustrates the extent to which a key 19th-century intellec tual elite managed to accommodate the implications of a transition from a society based on assumptions of scarcity and hierarchy to one that was beginning to contemplate the possibility of mass market abun dance. While the profession's leaders did develop a sharpened interest in aspiration to luxury consumption as a legitimate motor of economic growth, all registered their disapproval of certain forms of the aspira tion, revealing in the process a variety of class, gender and 'race' pre occupations - including (from J. S. Mill onwards) a particular distaste for positional or status-related consumption. (shrink)

Much has been published on the career and scholarly achievements of Bernard Smith (1916–2011) since his retirement from teaching in 1977 and has predictably gathered pace after his death. It is clear that the reception of his very substantial body of writings, addressing so many fields within the humanities, critical thought and art history in particular, is only just beginning. The present study focuses on a large recent collection of Smith’s studies in which critical responses are integrated. I (...) argue that the profoundly personal nature of historiography, necessarily incorporating praise and blame in its rhetorical structure, requires that the critic position oneself openly in relation to the life and work of the subject undergoing scrutiny. Smith’s antipodean experience was in many ways distinctive. But those of us who knew him personally, or felt his influence as a teacher and writer, will need to reassess honestly their own genesis in order to deal effectively with the challenges embedded in his work. (shrink)

We are probably alone in the universe—a conclusion based on observations of over 4,000 exoplanets and fundamental physical constraints. This article updates earlier arguments with the latest astrophysical results. Since the discovery of exoplanets, theologians have asked with renewed urgency what the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence says about salvation and human purpose, but this is the wrong question. The more urgent question is what their absence says. The “Misanthropic Principle” is the observation that, in a universe fine-tuned for life, (...) the circumstances necessary for intelligence are rare. Rabbis for 2,000 years discussed the existence of ETI using scriptural passages. We examine the traditional Jewish approaches to ETI, including insights on how ETI affects our perception of God, self, free-will, and responsibility. We explore the implications of our probable solitude, and offer a Jewish response to the ethical lessons to be drawn from the absence of ETI. (shrink)

No one wishing to possess a concise yet conceptually comprehensive account of the questions bedeviling liberalism—all topics are tracked with a fine bibliography—will be disappointed with Robert B. Talisse’s Democracy After Liberalism. While special attention is given to liberalism’s theoretical and practical relations with democracy and citizenship, widely documented troubles within historically democratic cultures motivate and contextualize the analysis. Since we need “a deliberative account of democracy that is not precommitted to liberal or antiliberal goals” (p. 95), (...) Talisse aims to realize his “pragmatic deliberativism” after liberalism. (shrink)

THERE is no trap that is easier to stumble into than that of trying to show whether one philosopher did or did not answer the problem of another philosopher. The trap consists in the tendency to think that both philosophers handled the problem in precisely the same way, even though they represent two quite different traditions. This is especially true of thinkers like David Hume and Charles Sanders Peirce. John Smith has shown quite convincingly that we cannot understand the (...) American pragmatists by limiting discussion to the epistemological questions of the British empiricist tradition stemming from Hume, Mill, and Russell. And A. J. Ayer can be faulted for attempting to do just that. However, it is possible for one to treat of Peirce's answer to Hume on necessary connection without falling into the trap. First of all, both philosophers raised the same kind of question. It is clear that Peirce had Hume specifically in mind when on many an occasion he attacked nominalism and defended real connections. But they differed in that Peirce defended his position from a broader perspective enabling him to arrive at a more satisfactory conclusion. To establish this thesis, it will be necessary to focus on several aspects of their thought that bear upon the topic under discussion. Undoubtedly the task of selection and interpretation of details has many a trap of its own, but it is hoped that the more obvious ones can be avoided. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato on Knowledge as a Power1Nicholas D. SmithAt 471C4 in Plato’s Republic, the argument takes a sudden turn when Glaucon becomes impatient with all of the specific prescriptions Socrates has been making, and asks to return to the issue Socrates had earlier set aside—whether or not the city he was describing could ever be brought into being. In response to Glaucon’s impatient question, Socrates articulates his “third wave of (...) paradox” (472ag–7), namely, that the ills of the cities will never be ended until either philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers (473c11–d6). Glaucon immediately responds that such a view is likely to be greeted with violence and scorn (473e6–474a4), and so Socrates must hasten to explain his odd claim. His explanation, it turns out, is that true philosophers have an enormous cognitive advantage over non-philosophers—philosophers have and use knowledge (ἐπιστήμη), whereas non-philosophers have and use only opinion (δόξα).2 This distinction, between επιστήμη and δόξα, turns out: to be a distinction between two different cognitive powers (δυνάμεις—477d7–e3). And different powers, Plato clearly tells us, apply to or take as their objects (Plato says they are “ἐπί”) different things (477dl).In this paper, I shall argue that the relationship between the cognitive powers and their various objects has been fundamentally misunderstood, which has led scholars into one or more misinterpretations of important and explicit features of the text. At the heart of these misunderstandings, I claim, is [End Page 145] their shared misconception of the relation between the cognitive power and its objects as interpretable in terms of the relationship between a cognitive stale and what the content of that state is of or about.3 One consequence of the view for which I shall argue is that what has come to be known as the “two-worlds theory”4 of Plato’s epistemology is seriously mistaken, but no less mistaken than the alternatives given by its recent critics. Another consequence that I shall draw from my argument is that Plato should be understood neither as a kind of foundationalist with regard to knowledge and warrant, as some have supposed him to be,5 nor as a coherentist, as others have supposed,6 but, rather, as a kind of causal reliabilist. [End Page 146]1. KNOWLEDGE AS A POWERScholarly interpretations of Plato’s epistemology have routinely sought to understand the relationships between each cognitive power of Republic Book V and the objects of the ἐφ’ ᾦ (“what it is related to”) condition by which it is differentiated from other δυνάμεις as Plato’s way of telling us what each sort of cognition is of or aboul. 7 So, for example, we find Gail Fine using the expressions “belief [δόξα] is set over [Fine’s translation of Plato’s ἐπί] …” and “knowledge is set over …” interchangeably with “belief is of …” or “belief is about…” and “knowledge is of …” or “knowledge is about …”8 Against the “two-worlds theory,” Fine argues that, for Plato, there can be knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms. Accordingly, since she assimilates the power-ἐπί-object set of relations to the cognilion-of/about-object relation, she concludes—in order to account for knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms—that the objects of knowledge and opinion must be propositions. Plato’s claims that knowledge is ἐπί what is, whereas opinion is ἐπί what is and is not, Fine understands as, “One can only know true propositions; one can believe both true and false propositions.”9 We shall see later that this “veridical” understanding of what Plato means to identify as “what is,” and “what is and is not” fails to account for important and explicit elements of Plato’s exposition of the epistemological and metaphysical distinctions he is making. For now, it is enough to note that Fine understands the ἐφ’ᾦ) relation in terms of our cognition-of/about-object relation. One finds the same assimilation made by those who advance existential readings of Plato’s “is” and “is not,”10 as [End Page 147] well as those who have urged that we adopt predicative readings of “is” and “is not.”11But I think there are very serious problems with this assimilation. Plato is very... (shrink)

At least four different frameworks — psychiatric, cognitive, functional and decision-making — are used in the evaluation of competence, all of which remain more or less unrelated in the literature. In the first section of this paper we consider various meanings of competence, in order to arrive at a definition of the term relevant to the medical and legal setting. Patient or client competence, we conclude, refers to the practical abilities that individuals employ in pursuing their own autonomous goals in (...) life. We then show how a systematic categorization of these practical abilities — which we call a taxonomy of practical judgment — allows us to show when the traditional frameworks for the evaluation of competence may or may not be useful in the evaluation of a particular competence.In the final section we explore some of the normative considerations underlying the taxonomy. For instance, competence is not only related to intrinsic abilities but to resources available in the community. Here we touch on questions related to the fair distribution of community resources. (shrink)

Tony Smith Philosophy, Iowa State University Robert Brenner‟s recent monograph on the economics of global turbulence has renewed interest in one of the most important topics in Marxian thought, the theory of crisis tendencies in capitalism.1 In their introduction to Brenner‟s monograph the editors of The New Left Review praise him as a worthy successor to Marx in the strongest possible terms. In the eyes of a number of critics, however, Brenner is guilty of a major betrayal of (...) Marx‟s legacy. In Michael Lebowitz‟s view, for instance, Brenner should now be seen as a disciple of Adam Smith, not Karl Marx, while Fine, Lapavitsas, and Milonakis refer to Brenner‟s position as “a distinctly non-Marxist perspective.”. (shrink)

The thesis that an analysis of property rights is essential to an adequate analysis of the state is a mainstay of political philosophy. The contours of the type of government a society has are shaped by the system regulating the property rights prevailing in that society. Views of this sort are widespread. They range from Locke to Nozick and encompass pretty much everything else in between. Defenders of this sort of view accord to property rights supreme importance. A state that (...) does not sufficiently respect property rights is likely to be a totalitarian state, and will also be likely to fail to respect rights of other sorts. (shrink)

Learn the intricacies of High Dynamic Range photography from experts and get feedback on your work High Dynamic Range photography offers a new range of creative possibilities to the photographer who is skilled in the technique. HDR requires specific camera skills as well as the use of specialized software, and the photographers who wrote this book are experts in both. They explain the process of shooting the same subject at different exposures, combining those shots into a single HDR image, (...) class='Hi'>fine-tuning brightness and contrast, minimizing noise, layering images, and more, including creative techniques with Photoshop and Lightroom. You can submit your HDR images for feedback at photoworkshop.com. High Dynamic Range photography offers creative possibilities through specific camera and software techniques that produce highly detailed and imaginative images Two professional photographers team up to provide expert instruction in HDR camera and software techniques for those new to HDR Covers the latest software and concepts, a comprehensive exploration of HDR basics, various techniques for shooting and merging images, and creative tricks with Photoshop and Lightroom Lavishly illustrated with new examples and full of suggestions for developing a personal HDR style Students can upload their own images for feedback at photoworkshop.com Any photographer who is new to HDR will find this guide loaded with helpful instructions and encouraging advice. (shrink)

Insects have small brains and heuristics or ‘rules of thumb’ are proposed here to be a good model for how insects optimize the objects they make and use. Generally, heuristics are thought to increase the speed of decision making by reducing the computational resources needed for making decisions. By corollary, heuristic decisions are also deemed to impose a compromise in decision accuracy. Using examples from object optimization behaviour in insects, we will argue that heuristics do not inevitably imply a (...) lower computational burden or lower decision accuracy. We also show that heuristic optimization may be driven by certain features of the optimization problem itself: the properties of the object being optimized, the biology of the insect, and the properties of the function being optimized. We also delineate the structural conditions under which heuristic optimization may achieve accuracy equivalent to or better than more fine-grained and onerous optimization methods. (shrink)

In this updated edition of his brief, engaging book, Robert J. Fogelin examines figures of speech that concern meaning--irony, hyperbole, understatement, similes, metaphors, and others--to show how they work and to explain their attraction. Building on the ideas of Grice and Tversky, Fogelin contends that figurative language derives its power from its insistence that the reader participate in the text, looking beyond the literal meaning of the figurative language to the meanings that are implied. With examples ranging from Shakespeare, (...) John Donne, and Jane Austen to e.e. cummings, Bessie Smith, and Monty Python, Fogelin demonstrates that the intellectual and aesthetic force of figurative language is derived from the opportunity it provides for unlimited elaboration. Fogelin presents a modern restatement of the view, first put forward by Aristotle, that metaphors are to be treated as elliptical similes. He then offers a detailed defense of this "comparativist" view of metaphors in response to criticisms that have been brought against it by a series of eminent philosophers. This new edition is updated to reflect more recent work on the topic and will interest philosophers, linguists, and literary theorists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Le doute en question: Parades pragmatistes au défi sceptiqueRobert AlmederClaudine Tiercelin Le doute en question: Parades pragmatistes au défi sceptique (Doubt in Question: Pragmatist Responses to the Challenge of Skepticism) Paris & Tel-Aviv: Editions de l'eclat, 2005. 332 pp.This book is a serious contribution to the highest standards of scholarship along with a masterful ability to re-deploy the results of that contribution in a striking display of philosophical (...) acumen aimed at showing us how to set aside that vast body of contemporary literature devoted to taking seriously the challenge of contemporary skepticism in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. It is not enough to say that this is an excellent book. Those who think that philosophy done well is a commanding esthetic experience will find Tiercelin's book a work of high art performed and executed with style, deep analytic insight, and grace.The author, who teaches American Philosophy, Contemporary Epistemology and Philosophy of Language at the University of Paris, is an outstanding scholar and an incisive philosopher. She is pre-eminently equipped to elucidate and advance philosophical discourse by carefully applying the best of pragmatic thought to enduring epistemological, metaphysical and ethical problems associated with strong global skepticism. She has a sensitive and broad command of the critical texts, and shows us why the usual objections to pragmatic epistemology, for example, are, in spite of continuing popularity, unacceptable in the light of those texts. She guides us back to Peirce's doubt-belief theory of inquiry and argues carefully not only that the purpose of all inquiry is to establish reliable beliefs that allow us to adapt successfully to the myriad demands of an independent world, but also that our explication of the nature of truth and knowledge must be made consistent with that fundamental point. That in itself would be enough for [End Page 282] a fine book. But she then goes further to delineate how pragmatic thought can be redeployed to discover the inadequacy of several responses to contemporary arguments for skepticism (including the argument from ignorance) and at the same time show how those very pragmatic theses deserve a place of honor in virtue of their demonstrable power to dissolve or undermine the main arguments for the skeptic's general story.After an introductory section outlining the new rise and nature of contemporary skepticism with its roots in ancient and modern philosophy, the book divides nicely into seven sections bearing the following titles:1. The nature and impact of the skeptical challenge in contemporary philosophy2. To what extent can we doubt?3. Two pragmatic strategies in the face of doubt: Peirce and Wittgenstein4. Pragmatism or the human logic of truth5. The ethical response to the skeptical challenge;6. Do we perceive the external world? and7. The risk of error and the presumption of knowledge.In the introduction and in the first two sections, Tiercelin shows in detail the continuity between the contemporary resurgence in skeptical thought affirming that knowledge that P requires the elimination of every possibility of error, and the Cartesian thesis to the effect that as long as one can imagine any universe of discourse in which one might be mistaken for any reason in what one believes, one's belief is not an item of knowledge. But, for Tiercelin, while knowledge may be a form of justified true belief, justification sufficient for knowledge simply does not require freedom from the logical possibility of error. Later, in the conclusion of the book (p. 253) she returns to this same issue and notes that, along with many others, even the late David Lewis accepted the unfortunate Cartesian thesis when he asserted in "Elusive Knowledge" (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74.4 [1996]: 549ff) that there is something fundamentally contradictory with sentences such as "I know that P, but I may be mistaken". After all, so the Lewis story goes, if you know that P, there can be no sense in which what you know could be mistaken. At any rate, in the first two sections, Tiercelin delineates different kinds of doubt, and argues from a Peircean perspective on the nature and origin of real doubt... (shrink)