The abandonment of sole reliance on the logical positivist canon of wholly general, topic-neutral, a priori inference principles has created a pressing need for a principled way to set limits on the demand for justification. I diagnose the problems with several contemporary proposals via two case studies, the first concerned with the possibility of groundlessly rational theism, and the second with the use of groundlessly rational commitments in defense of scientific rationality. ;I argue that William Alston's appeal to the "practical" (...) rationality of engaging in a socially established belief-forming practice and Alvin Plantinga's defense of properly basic belief in God are overly permissive. Alston's position gives too much scope to pragmatic and social considerations, while Plantinga's rejection of polemically useful epidemic principles leaves him with an implausible externalism about rationality as the only way to block irrationality. In the case of scientific rationality, I argue that Bas van Fraassen's "liberal probabilism" gives too much scope to tradition and pragmatic factors, while Richard Boyd's methodological argument for scientific realism gives too much weight to the successful use of theories that happen to belong to one's own scientific tradition. ;In the light of these defects, I argue that the only propositions that don't require justification are "hinge-propositions"--topic-specific, defeasible principles that express conceptual competence conditions--because groundless doubt of them is either irrational or betrays lack of conceptual grasp. ;This account provides adequate fundamental principles for science, but sets strict limits to groundless rationality. For example, theistic belief-forming practices can't be groundlessly rational because they involve an unjustified departure from the application of the concept of a person in response to experience. ;I defend the closure claim that hinge-propositions are the only kind of groundlessly rational propositions by arguing that this account provides the best explanation for our shared uncontroversial judgments of rationality and irrationality. My account makes the strongest demands for justification that are compatible with our shared and secure judgments of prima facie rationality and the weakest demands for justification that are compatible with our shared and secure judgments about epistemically responsible beliefs. (shrink)

In this profound and subtle study, a practising psychoanalyst explores the dynamics of the interaction between the patient and the analyst. Michael Feldman draws the reader into experiencing how the clinical interaction unfolds within a session. In doing so, he develops some of the implications of the important pioneering work of such analysts as Klein, Rosenfeld and Joseph, showing in fine detail some of the ways in which the patient feels driven to communicate to the analyst, not only in order (...) to be understood by him, but also in order to affect him. The author's detailed descriptions of the clinical process allow the reader to follow the actual process that enables the patient to get into contact with thoughts and feelings of which he or she was previously unconscious or only vaguely aware. Feldman makes the reader aware of the constant dynamic interaction between the patient and the analyst, each affecting the other. He shows how the analyst has to find a balance between doubt, uncertainty and confusion in himself and through this process may arrive at an understanding of what is happening, and by formulating this understanding the analyst can make a significant contribution to the process of psychic change. This collection of essays not only throws light on fascinating questions of technique, but also reflects on elements that are fundamental to psychoanalytic work. It is essential reading for practising psychoanalysts and those in training, as well as anyone with a general interest in the psychoanalytic relationship between the client and the therapist in the consulting room. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend the theoretical framework of an empirical model to describe people’s fundamental moral attitudes (FMAs) to animals, the stratification of FMAs in society and the role of FMAs in judgment on the culling of healthy animals in an animal disease epidemic. We used philosophical animal ethics theories to understand the moral basis of FMA convictions. Moreover, these theories provide us with a moral language for communication between animal ethics, FMAs, and public debates. (...) We defend that FMA is a two-layered concept. The first layer consists of deeply felt convictions about animals. The second layer consists of convictions derived from the first layer to serve as arguments in a debate on animal issues. In a debate, the latter convictions are variable, depending on the animal issue in a specific context, time, and place. This variability facilitates finding common ground in an animal issue between actors with opposing convictions. (shrink)

1. The current political scene in many countries is populated by polarised groups with sharply contrasting loyalties and beliefs implying that there are fundamental schisms between opposing groups....

This book addresses the fundamental ethical and legal aspects, penal consequences, and social context arising from a citizen's acceptance of guilt. The focus is upon sentencing people who have pleaded guilty; in short, post-adjudication, rather than issues arising from discussions in the pretrial phase of the criminal process. The vast majority of defendants across all common law jurisdictions plead guilty and as a result receive a reduced sentence. Concessions by a defendant attract more lenient State punishment in all western (...) legal systems. The concession is significant: At a stroke, a guilty plea relieves the State of the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and in open court. Plea-based sentencing has become even more visible in recent years. The book provides insightful commentary on the following questions: - If an individual voluntarily accepts guilt, should the State receive this plea without further investigation or any disinterested adjudication? - Is it ethically acceptable to allow suspects and defendants, to self-convict in this manner, without independent confirmation and evidence to support a conviction? - If it is acceptable, what is the appropriate State response to such offenders? - If the defendant is detained pretrial, the ability to secure release in return for a plea may be particularly enticing. Might it be too enticing, resulting in wrongful convictions? (shrink)

Moral conflicts over medical treatment that are the result of differences in fundamental moral commitments of the stakeholders, including religiously grounded commitments, can present difficult challenges for clinical ethics consultants. This article begins with a case example that poses such a conflict, then examines how consultants might use different approaches to clinical ethics consultation in an effort to facilitate the resolution of conflicts of this kind. Among the approaches considered are the authoritarian approach, the pure consensus approach, and the (...) ethics facilitation approach described in the Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation report of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, as well as a patient advocate approach, a clinician advocate approach, and an institutional advocate approach. The article identifies clear limitations to each of these approaches. An analysis of the introductory case illustrates those limitations, and the article concludes that deep-seated conflicts of this kind may reveal inescapable limits of current approaches to clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

Laura Valentini's novel theory, the Agency-Respect View, says that we have a fundamental moral duty to honor other people's convictions, at least pro tanto and under certain conditions. I raise doubts that such a duty exists indeed and that informative conditions have been specified. The questions that Valentini faces here have a parallel in Kant's moral philosophy, viz. the question of why one has a duty to value the other's humanity and the question of how to specify the (...) maxim of one's action. Additionally, I discuss the concept of a social convention and Valentini's use of it. (shrink)

It was 250 years ago that Immanuel Kant’s “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” was published first. Generations of philosophers regarded this work as the ne plus ultra in epistemology or metaphysics of knowledge. Since central parts of his doctrine can, to say the least, be considered to be incompatible with fundamentals in current physical theorizing, many philosophers have continued to explore his ideas. Some of them do so believing that Kant’s convictions have definitely been proved to be true and that (...) therefore physical theories contradicting them are either flatly wrong or at least inadequately formulated; others try to reformulate his ideas in a way appropriate to provide a Letztbegründung for physical theories in general. Still others, and that includes the larger part of all the Kant researchers, are not interested mainly in these questions of truth but in all kinds of philological and historical questions concerning the position of his work in the flow of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Resumen La movilidad humana es un fenómeno social que ha puesto en la sensibilidad pública nacional una serie de inquietudes, que han derivado en definiciones normativas desde la política pública. Tras decisiones de orden administrativo, emergen convicciones sociales y culturales que tienden a relativizar, y en otros casos estigmatizar ciertas realidades migratorias subjetivamente evaluadas. En este contexto el aporte que podemos reconocer desde una reflexión teológica, contribuye a ampliar la mirada y reorientar aquellas convicciones previas que se ven ilumina das (...) desde otra epistemología. El presente artículo busca poner el desafío de acoger la movilidad humana en perspectiva teológico fundamental y reconocer allí la integración de un fenómeno que interpela hoy nuestra realidad nacional.Human mobility is a social phenomenon that has put a series of concerns in the national public sensibility, which have resulted in normative definitions from public policy. After administrative decisions, social and cultural convictions emerge that tend to relativize, and in other cases stigmatize certain subjectively evaluated migration realities. In this context, the contribution that we can recognize from a theological reflection, helps to broaden the look and redirect those previous convictions that are illuminated from another epistemology. This article seeks to put the challenge of welcoming human mobility in a fundamental theological perspective and to recognize the integration of a phenomenon that challenges our national reality today. (shrink)

This article considers Hobbes’ contribution to the development of constitutionalist thought by contextualizing his treatment of the concepts of treason and fundamental law in De cive (1642, 2nd ed. 1647) and Leviathan (1651). While in Leviathan he adopts the controversial conception of treason as a violation of fundamental law that had been employed to convict Charles I of high treason in 1649, he draws on the original meaning of the term “fundamental law”, as outlined in the most (...) influential early analysis of Innocent Gentillet, to deny that fundamental laws can constrain the rights and powers of the sovereign. He bolsters this position by treating fundamental law as natural, not civil, law. While citizens commit treason when they violate the original covenant that establishes the sovereign, citizens cannot appeal to a human court for violations of fundamental law by the sovereign (who must render account for violations of natural law only to God). Hobbes’ ingenious reconceptualization of fundamental law, hence, shows that, when understood correctly, the theory of treason embraced by parliamentarians could never support the violent resistance against, and overthrow of, a monarch like Charles I. (shrink)

I discuss the role of beauty in physics. Physicists are sometimes described as platonists for their conviction that the fundamental laws are elegant and aesthetic arguments represent an important epistemic tool. After a review of the ideas of Plato and some of the leading figures of modern physics, which suggest that this is indeed the case, I present a list of current aesthetic criteria. I focus on symmetry and unity and demonstrate their increasing relevance in an array of experimentally (...) verified theories. I also deal with an open issue of naturalness as the third criterion. The laws of nature appear increasingly beautiful as we uncover them, and it is important to see if the trend continues in the future. (shrink)

The general topic of my philosophical dissertation is phenomenological ontology of breathing. I do not investigate the phenomenon of breathing as a natural scientific problem, but as a philosophical question. Within our tradition, breathing has been normally understood as a mechanistic-materialistic physiological life-sustaining process of gas exchange and cellular respiration which does not really seem to have any essential connection to human being’s spiritual, mental or philosophical capacities. On the contrary to this natural scientific view, I argue that breathing can (...) be understood as a philosophical question that has phenomenological, experiential, ontological, spiritual, bodily, mental, poetic, elemental, ethical, voluntary and mystical dimensions. My investigation conceptualizes breathing in the first place as a question of phenomenological ontology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenologico-ontological method of interrogation of the lived body’s experiential openness to the world and Being provides the most fundamental point of departure in this dissertation. Merleau-Ponty emphasized in his investigations the lived body’s perceptual openness to the world and Being. He argued famously for the primacy of perception. His thesis of the primacy of perception means that perception as the perceptual openness to the world and Being is the foundation which is always presupposed by all the other levels of our existence and being-in-the-world. In this dissertation, I challenge this idea of the primacy of perception with Merleau-Ponty’s own remarks about breathing. I argue that in his own remarks about breathing, he implicitly points toward a level which is even more fundamental than the primacy of perception. In this dissertation, this level of our being-in-the-world I call the primacy of breathing. Breathing as the lived body’s respiratory openness to the world and Being is now understood as the foundation which is always presupposed by all the other dimensions of our being-in-the-world. These dimensions are, for example, our theoretical, practical, social and perceptual ways of relating with the world. If the idea of the primacy of breathing is taken seriously, it means that all the questions of philosophy could be rethought, reexamined and re-experienced within the fundamental atmosphere of respiratory openness to the world and Being. In this dissertation, I initially try to rethink philosophy as a new philosophy of breathing. This new philosophy of breathing would be phenomenological ontology of breathing. The bases of this new phenomenological ontology of breathing are Merleau-Ponty’s remarks about breathing. My task is to explicate and interpret them with the help of Merleau- Ponty’s own phenomenological ontology. In my task of beginning philosophy anew as philosophy of breathing or as respiratory philosophy, I will also use the ideas of Martin Heidegger, Gaston Bachelard, Paul Claudel, Luce Irigaray, Edmund Husserl and David Kleinberg-Levin. My dissertation is divided into two main sections. In Section One, I construct within the framework of phenomenological ontology a new notion of breathing as the primacy of breathing. In Section Two, I develop a phenomenological method that I call the method of ontologico-respiratory reduction. This method will lead us back to the primacy of breathing. (shrink)

This paper discusses some philosophical problems lurking behind the issues of human biotechnology, particularly prenatal screening. Firstly, prenatal screening technology disempowers existing disabled people. The second problem is that it systematically deprives us of the “fundamental sense of security.” This is a sense of security that allows us to believe that we will never be looked upon by anyone with such unspoken words as, “I wish you were never born” or “I wish you would disappear from the world.” Thirdly, (...) we argue that the loss of the fundamental sense of security is connected with the disappearance of “conviction of love” in the age of human biotechnology. And finally, all these issues are examined from the viewpoint of “painless civilization.” Our society is filled with a variety of “preventive reduction of pain,” of which prenatal screening is a good example. By preventively reducing pain and suffering, we lose the chance to transform the basic structure of our way of thinking and being; as a result, we are deprived of opportunities to know precious truths indispensable to our meaningful life. Hence, it is concluded that what is most needed is an academic research on “philosophy of life.”. (shrink)

Alan Donagan, in The Theory of Morality, famously claims that the principles of “common morality” (i.e., the morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition) form a consistent system that can be derived from a single fundamental principle: It is impermissible not to respect every human being, oneself or any other, as a rational creature. In particular, I want to show that the prohibition contained in the fundamental principle is interpreted by appeal to prior convictions about particular sorts of cases, (...) whether they involve the violation of “respect” or not, and that this has unfavorable consequences for Donagan’s claim that the principles of common morality form a truly deductive system of morality. (shrink)

Despite a variety of “non-ecumenical” features in Christian arguments about suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia, there are obvious “ecumenical” aspects to be found in the general Christian prohibition of these practices. A fair reading of the Christian tradition requires that we acknowledge both the differences that distinguish particular perspectives and the fundamental themes that allow an identifiably Christian position to emerge in stark contrast to the secular discussion of these issues. Central to Christian interpretations of dying and death are (...) an acknowledgment of God's sovereignty over human life, an understanding of suffering that stresses identification with Christ as the source of Christian hope, and the recognition that God's creative and redemptive purposes are generally (or always) at odds with the deliberate choice of assisted suicide or euthanasia. (shrink)

Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also (...) shows how hinge theorists can explain the existence of moral hinge propositions, which enables them to account for the rational permissibility of being steadfast in response to disagreements over fundamental moral convictions. (shrink)

Zagorin presents a critique of F. R. Ankersmit's postmodernist philosophy of history as fallacious and opposed to some of the fundamental convictions and intuitions historians feel about their discipline. It questions Ankersmit's conclusion that the overproduction of historical writings and continuing generation of new interpretations has obliterated the past as an object of knowledge. It argues that Ankersmit's attempt, in accord with Hayden White, to aestheticize historiography and regard it as a linguistic construction indistinguishable from literature, must sever (...) it from its necessary grounding in reality and truth. It also rejects as groundless Ankersmit's claim to have deconstructed causality, and concludes that the postmodernist conception trivializes historiography and deprives it of its essential function in education and culture. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making constitutes a major challenge for bioethical deliberation and political governance in modern democracies: On the one hand, it touches upon fundamental convictions about life, death, and the human condition. On the other, it is deeply rooted in religious traditions and historical experiences and thus shows great socio-cultural diversity. The bioethical discussion of such cultural issues oscillates between liberal individualism and cultural stereotyping. Our paper confronts the bioethical expert discourse with public moral attitudes. The paper is (...) based on a qualitative study comprising 12 focus group discussions with religious and secular persons in the USA, Germany, and Israel. Considering the respective socio-political and legal frameworks, the thematic analysis focuses on moral attitudes towards end-of-life decision making and explores the complex interplay between individual preferences, culture, and religion. Our findings draw attention to the variety and complexity of cultural and religious aspects of end-of-life decision making. Although there is local consensus that goes beyond radical individualism, positions are not neatly matched with national cultures or religious denominations. Instead, the relevance of the specific situatedness of religious beliefs and cultural communities becomes visible: Their status and role in individual situations, for example, as consensual or conflicting on the level of personal perspectives, family relationships, or broader social contexts, e.g., as a majority or minority culture within a political system. As the group discussions indicate, there are no clear-cut positions anchored in “nationality,” “culture,” or “religion.” Instead, attitudes are personally decided on as part of a negotiated context representing the political, social and existential situatedness of the individual. Therefore, more complex theoretical and practical approaches to cultural diversity have to be developed. (shrink)

The fundamental freedoms of speech, conscience, privacy, and religion are now an essential part of the fabric of contemporary society, set down in our most basic laws and regularly invoked in our political and cultural debates. These freedoms play a vital role in securing the spaces and opportunities within which people are able to pursue their own lives in their own ways. Independence of Mind takes this accepted thought a step further, by exploring the ways in which the (...) class='Hi'>fundamental freedoms help us to achieve something even more profound, by enabling us to arrive at beliefs, convictions and voices of our own, so that we truly come to think, believe and speak for ourselves in the rich and various ways that the freedoms then protect. Privacy grants us the distance and refuge from others necessary to develop views of our own; freedom of speech calls on us to imagine ways of expressing ourselves that are both true to the views we have developed and innovative in their own right; freedom of conscience enables each of us to create a distinctive rational personality in which to embed the convictions that we wish to treat as non-negotiable; freedom of religion allows groups of us to endorse certain beliefs as articles of faith, free from the full demands of rational scrutiny. Much has been written about the political and legal implications of the fundamental freedoms and their entrenchment in bills of rights. This is the first book to undertake a comprehensive philosophical examination of their moral bases. It offers a penetrating analysis of what makes these particular freedoms matter to us in the ways that they do, and of the true significance of their entrenchment in law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F. H. Bradley and the Working-out of Absolute Idealism* JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. FRANCIS HERBERTBRADLEY (1846-1924) 1 agreed with the other English idealists that the real world is the experienced world. But he started with the fundamental conviction that "experience" is more than "thought," as Green had maintained. Bradley's basic drive is the refusal to abolish "feeling" in favor of knowledge and intelligibility. "Feeling" is a fundamental (...) and ineradicable aspect of "reality"m more fundamental, in fact, than thinking. In the immediately experienced world, all intelligible distinctions and relations are merged in a "whole of feeling" which is the ultimate subject-matter of philosophy. "Thought" arises out of feeling, out of "immediacy," as an interpretation of immediate experience by distinguishing relations and aspects in it. "Knowledge " is only one aspect of the experienced world; it needs blending with "feeling" and will to include all the experienced aspects. "Feeling" starts for Bradley, in his Principles of Logic (1883), in pretty much the empiricist sense, as isolated sensations, and as subjective (in flavor at least). It then becomes neutral: "feeling" is identified with "the felt"; and it grows richer, attempting to include the whole wealth of immediate experience. Thus Bradley gets very close to Dewey's conception of "direct experience," "non-reflective experience," without, however, Dewey's biological analysis. It is through this conception of experience that Bradley approaches the naturalism to which his thinking almost arrived at the end. Thought, that is, has a setting in experience " it is relational, and by its analysis it breaks up experienced and felt wholes. There is a double insistence in Bradley. On the one hand, reality is experienced, but is not adequately expressed in thought. On the other, reality/s accessible to knowledge. What has often been called Bradley's "skepticism" is really an objective relativism. Thought, logical structure, is not ultimate. In Appearance and *This study of F. It. Bradley is based on one of five chapters on post-ttegehan philosophical Ideahsm in Britain and America to be included in my forthcoming Career oJ Philosophy in Modem Times, Vol.III: The Hundred Years Since Darwin. ISee Bradley ed. of Mind, XXXIV (1925); A. E. Taylor, "F. H. Bradley"; J. H. Muirhead, "Bradley's Place in Philosophy." See also T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy (London: 1910), chap. VII, 2rid part; Rudolf Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic (New York: 1931). The best philosophical analyses of Bradley are Robert D. Mack, The Appeal to Immediate Experience (New York: 1945),and Richard Wollheim,F. H. Bradley (Pelican Books, 1959). [245] 246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Reality, he insists it is really self-contradictory; then later he emphasizes rather that it is always relative to its particular subiect-matter. The real, experienced world is never identical with the intelligible world, yet it is also never "extraneous " to it. The relation of the two can be said to be, in Aristotelian terms, that of substance to form, that of what is to its intelligible aspect. The intelligible world, the system of science and knowledge, thus fundamentally needs criticism in the light of its setting in the experienced world. This is not only the entire drive of Dewey's Experience and Nature; it is the expression of that whole current of thought on the Continent which began with the criticism of Hegel's "panlogism" in the 1840's and is today called "Existentialism." Bradley is the British counterpart of all those who have criticized philosophies of logical structure like T. H. Green's, or like the other contemporary forms of Neo-Kantianism in Germany and France. The "known world" is a world of relations distingflished in the richer "real world." These distinctions are ultimately relative to their particular setting, but in that setting they are valid enough. Bradley's celebrated doctrine of the "degrees of truth and reality" means that practically knowledge is "true"; any idea which fulfills its purpose of rendering some portion or aspect of experience intelligible and significant and meaningful, and which is not ousted by a better idea, Bradley is willing to say is "so far true." It is valid, in its own sphere and purpose, despite its ultimate inconsistency; the wave-theory... (shrink)

There are those who say that the changes in the position of Jean-Paul Sartre from the publication of L'Être et le néant to the appearance of Critique de la raison dialectique constitute a “radical conversion”. Some attribute this conversion to the influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Sartre has given support to this claim by acknowledging that Merleau-Ponty taught him politics and in doing so helped to move Sartre from the fierce individualism of his early period to the position which culminated in (...) CRD, a position informed by a much greater appreciation for social entanglement. But what is not clear is that Merleau-Ponty's influence upon Sartre extended to Sartre's fundamental convictions, particularly to his fundamental ontological theses. Kwant tells us that Merleau-Ponty's objections to Sartre in the last days of his life indicate that he believed that Sartre had not altered his ontological views. Sartre has not commented upon that issue. It is of vital interest because Merleau-Ponty explicitly claimed in Les Aventures de la dialectique that Sartre's mistaken political views were a consequence of his mistaken ontological principles. Were this true and were it true that Sartre had not made significant alterations in his ontology, one would expect that Merleau-Ponty would have to have said that Sartre's political views in CRD were similarly mistaken. We know that he did make some comments to that effect but, since Merleau-Ponty's tragic death prevented the full articulation of his latest opinions, we cannot be certain. (shrink)

In a 1981 letter to H.L. A. Hart, John Rawls sketches a view of moral objectivity that substantially differs from that of contemporary constructivists. The view he describes does not rely on constitutive features of agency as Korsgaard's does, and it does not bottom out in a form of realism as Scanlon's moral theory does. Instead, Rawls's view grounds objectivity on the fundamental conceptions that could be shared in wide reflective equilibrium. Constructivism grounds objectivity in a kind of intersubjectivity, (...) and Rawls finds the relevant kind of intersubjectivity in the alignment between fundamental convictions. This article develops this Rawlsian view of objectivity and highlights its strengths. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Killing God, Liberating the “Subject”: Nietzsche and Post-God FreedomMichael LackeyIIndeed, we philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectations. 1After God’s death, if Michel Foucault is to be believed, the death of the subject followed quite naturally. But how, one might ask, did that fateful (...) event of God’s death necessarily lead to the demise of that most noble animal? Answering this question is crucial, for once we understand how, for Nietzsche, God’s existence and His metaphorical participation in the creation of humanity are most destructive of what is most vital within the human, then we will see how, in killing God and His crown of creation, Nietzsche does not become the quintessential nihilist; rather, he becomes, to his mind, the first sane voice crying in the intellectual wilderness: make way the coming of a new human, a “subject” which can only become a “self “ when it paradoxically learns to overcome its very constructed “self.” Nietzsche’s logic therefore runs as follows: so long as God exists, a subject which overcomes itself cannot come into being; for as Richard Schacht rightly notes, the God-hypothesis serves as a support for the traditional subject-hypothesis in Nietzsche’s writings. So to produce a self-overcoming subject Nietzsche must first kill what he considers that stodgy old tyrant of the soul. But this raises the question of how one goes about doing away with [End Page 737] God. In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche gives his reader a puzzling answer to this question when he says that he fears that “we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar” (“Reason,” 5). 2 Given Nietzsche’s logic, to kill off God he needs to eliminate belief in grammar, and once God is dead, he can then do away with the subject. In what follows I will show how Nietzsche tries to eliminate God and the traditional subject through his extended analysis of what it means to “believe in grammar.”IIIf there is today still no lack of those who do not know how indecent it is to “believe”—or a sign of decadence, of a broken will to live—well, they will know it tomorrow. 3To understand what it means to believe in grammar, it is best to note how Nietzsche contrasts belief and freedom. More starkly, we could say that for Nietzsche to have faith means, necessarily, to lack freedom; or to be free means, necessarily, to reject faith. Nietzsche makes this clear in the fifth book of GS when he says: “Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes ‘a believer.’ Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses” (§ 347). I isolate this passage not in order to outline Nietzsche’s criticism of belief but rather to understand how Nietzsche defines freedom by contrasting it with belief. Such an analysis of course begs the question how it is possible that belief necessarily precludes freedom. Intuitively, it would seem that belief and freedom entail no contradiction. For instance, given two choices, to believe in God or not to believe in God, I exercise my freedom in choosing one belief over the other. With this example, it would seem that belief necessarily presupposes freedom. So how is it that Nietzsche concludes that freedom and belief are irreconcilable?That Nietzsche considers faith obscene is clear when he tells us in AC that belief of any kind is a “sign of decadence” (§ 50) which leads to “self-alienation” (§ 54). In fact he goes so far as to claim that faith is actually “slavery in a higher sense” (§ 54). To see why belief implies slavery we must first understand what Nietzsche means by faith. While the standard view suggests that faith is... (shrink)

[ES] Gottlob Frege posiblemente era el primer filósofo analítico. La exégesis de su doctrina quedó durante varias décadas restringida casi naturalmente al ámbito de la filosofía analítica y angloparlante. El método que Frege heredó a la filosofía analítica se basa en el análisis abstracto y formal, y la aprehensión de su doctrina se desarrolló bajo el supuesto –tomado casi por autoevidente- que éste método es el único correcto para dar cuenta de los problemas filosóficos más fundamentales, muy particularmente el de (...) desarrollar una teoría de significado. Igualmente se asumía y asume todavía con cierto automatismo que las preocupaciones filosóficas de Frege son fundamentalmente las mismas de la filosofía analítica y las que no caben en este supuesto se desechan fácilmente como anacrónicas o absurdas. Este acercamiento al pensamiento de Frege exclusivamente bajo los supuestos de la filosofía analítica, sus méritos no obstante, no toma en cuenta el ambiente anti-naturalista y neo-kantiano en el cual Frege formó sus convicciones fundamentales. Algunos aspectos contenciosos como, por ejemplo, el principio de contexto, una posible jerarquía de sentidos indirectos o la suposición, casi tácita, de que la doctrina de Frege es una teoría sobre expresiones referenciales, aparecen en una luz diferente si nos damos cuenta de que su intento de construir un sistema es, en cuanto a filosofía, en el fondo una respuesta a problemas que Frege encontró en el sistema de Kant. [EN] Gottlob Frege was quite possibly the first analytical philosopher. For several decades the study of his teachings restricted itself almost naturally to the sphere of analytical and English speaking philosophy. The very method which Frege might have impressed upon analytical philosophy takes off with abstract and formal analysis and the apprehension of his doctrine developed under the assumption –taken to be almost self-evident- that this method is the only one capable of correctly accounting for the most fundamental philosophical problems, especially bringing forth a comprehensive theory of meaning. Hence it was taken for granted with certain automatism that the Frege´s philosophical worries were initially identical in its origins with those of contemporary analytical philosophy and those not amenable to easy adoptions are discharged as absurd anachronisms when viewed against current doctrines. Approaching Fregean thought exclusively under the assumptions of analytical philosophy, while having merit, does not take into account the anti-naturalist and neo-Kantian background which influenced the modelling of Frege’s fundamental convictions. Some contentious aspects like for example the context principle, a possible hierarchy of indirect senses or the almost tacit assumption that Frege’s doctrine is a theory about referential expressions appear in a different light, once we become aware that his attempt at system-construction, as far as it concerns philosophy, is fundamentally an answer to problems which Frege found in Kant’s system. (shrink)

Fichte’s doctrine of science is a theory and practice of thinking, which reconstructs the constituent acts of “knowledge”. As “system of freedom” is therefore in Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy not only a system of knowledge, but also, and at the same time, the never definitive result of an activity of thinking, which is never satisfied with the results already obtained and deals with new issues. It was Fichte’s fundamental conviction that the construction of the theory of science as an “art” (...) of reflection presupposes the formation of a particular “organ” of reflection or of “seeing”. This inner sense is called the “sense of philosophy”. A genuine philosophical attitude presupposes the formation of the sense of philosophy and can come into being only through it. In this paper, the issue of the formation of the philosophical sense is taken into consideration, such as Fichte has developed it in the Introduction to the theory of science of autumn 1813 at the University of Berlin.Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre stellt eine Theorie und Praxis des Denkens dar, welche die konstituierenden Akte des „Wissens“ zum Thema hat. Als „System der Freiheit“ erweist sich daher die Transzendentalphilosophie Fichtes nicht nur als System der Erkenntnisse, sondern auch, und zugleich, als nie definitives Ergebnis einer Tätigkeit des Denkens, das sich mit den errungenen Resultaten nie zufrieden gibt und sich mit neuen Fragestellungen auseinandersetzt. Es war Fichtes grundlegende Überzeugung, dass die Konstruktion der Wissenschaftslehre als „Kunst“ der Besinnung die Bildung eines bestimmten „Organs“ des Besinnens bzw. des Sehens voraussetzt und fordert. Dieser innere Sinn wird als „Sinn für die Philosophie“ bezeichnet. Die echte philosophische Haltung hat die Bildung des Sinnes für die Philosophie zur Voraussetzung und kann erst durch ihn zustande kommen. In diesem Aufsatz wird das Thema der Bildung des philosophischen Sinnes in Betracht genommen, wie Fichte es in der Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre von Herbst 1813 an der Universität Berlin entfaltet hat. (shrink)

Berkeley belonged to the days when it was possible to write philosophy without being learned, when it was sufficient to have fundamental convictions and to be able to write about them clearly. His contribution to the stock of philosophical possibilities was substantially complete when he was twenty-five, at which age no man can or should be learned. Not until he became a bishop did he pile up the burden of scholarship, and the work in which he expressed it, (...) the Siris, has remained a stumbling-block to his expositors. In his day philosophy was not learning but culture and wisdom. He. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pluralism ConferenceJohn HickIn September 2003 a conference was held at Birmingham University, UK, of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs who all hold the "pluralist" view that no one religion is the one and only true or uniquely salvific faith, but that, in the words of the thirteenth-century Sufi thinker Rumi, "The lamps are different but the Light is the same: it comes from beyond." The conveners were (...) Professors Perry Schmidt-Leukel of Glasgow University, Paul Knitter of Xavier University (Cincinnati), Leonard Swidler of Temple University (Philadelphia), and John Hick of Birmingham University. My own account of the purpose of the conference is that we are academics who are committed and practicing believers within but not official representatives of (in rough order of origin) the Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian (both Catholic and Protestant), Muslim, and Sikh faiths.We are acutely aware that throughout history almost all human conflicts have been validated and intensified by a religious sanction. God has been claimed to be on both sides of every war. This has been possible because each of the great world faiths has either assumed or asserted its own unique superiority as the one and only true faith and path to the highest good—in familiar Christian terms, to salvation. These exclusive claims to absolute truth have exacerbated the division of the human community into rival groups, and have repeatedly been invoked in support of oppression, slavery, conquest, and exploitation.The second half of twentieth century saw both a worldwide development of interreligious dialogue, coinciding with considerable east-to-west migration, and also a strong contrary growth of aggressive fundamentalism in powerful elements within each tradition. But dialogue has led to a much greater mutual knowledge and appreciation between the world faiths, so that it is now possible for leaders of the religious institutions to meet in mutual amity and respect. However they still, for the most part, retain as their bottom line a conviction of the unique centrality and priority of their own tradition. Sharing in this way the same fundamental conviction as their militant fundamentalist elements, they lack any principled ground on which to oppose them.We offer for discussion, as the fruit of our deliberations, a step beyond this unstable situation. We note that the world religions share the basic belief in a higher reality, of limitless importance to us, that transcends the material universe and yet can [End Page 253] be encountered through the depth of our own being. They also share the basic belief that this present life is not the entirety of human existence but part of a much larger life. And they share the central values of love, compassion, and justice within the human community here on earth.We note that the deepest thinkers within each tradition express a profound sense of mystery, insisting that the ultimate reality to which their faith is oriented lies in its fullness beyond the range of our comprehension. We humans can describe it, not as it is in itself, but as great revelatory moments have caused it to be variously conceived and experienced within the different ways of being human that are the great cultures of the world. The religions, then, are different and unique totalities, each with its own founding events, paradigmatic figures, sacred writings, remembered history, spiritual practices, intellectual formulations, distinctive ethos, and institutional forms. We believe that they are different responses to the universal presence of the ineffable ultimate reality.Although individual conversions between the faiths have always occurred, in the vast majority of cases religious believers are born into and are formed by a particular tradition. It therefore fits them and they fit it, so that it is for them the right and true religion. We should therefore each normally stay within our inherited tradition, using its spiritual resources to the fullest. We must also, however, recognize that the same principle holds for the hundreds of millions who have been born into and formed by other traditions. We should see those religions as independently authentic and valid, of equal value with our own, welcoming mutual enrichment from one another's traditions and also allowing for the raising of critical questions about... (shrink)

A set of routine academic controversies has recently been fanned into a cause célèbre. I call the controversies 'routine' because they concern the design of curricula and syllabi, the regulation of campus life, and the recruitment of faculty and students. These are important but ordinary affairs for a college or university. They call for choices that arise from fundamental convictions on the purpose of education, the nature of knowledge, the firmness of standards, the value of community, and the (...) mission of the institution. So dealing with these routine affairs is routinely attended with controversy. What is new is that the public is watching closely as academics thrash through these controversies nowadays. At least some journalists and politicians are watching closely and talking loudly about what they see. These conflicts would be what they ought to be, occasions for self-examination and growth, if they were not absolutized by observers who have raised the stakes by raising their voices and simplifying the issues. (shrink)

Berkeley belonged to the days when it was possible to write philosophy without being learned, when it was sufficient to have fundamental convictions and to be able to write about them clearly. His contribution to the stock of philosophical possibilities was substantially complete when he was twenty-five, at which age no man can or should be learned. Not until he became a bishop did he pile up the burden of scholarship, and the work in which he expressed it, (...) the Siris, has remained a stumbling-block to his expositors. In his day philosophy was not learning but culture and wisdom. He. (shrink)

This fundamental thesis of the essential interconnectedness of particular occasions is reiterated by Whitehead in a variety of formulations throughout his later works, all expressing the same basic conviction. To say that all the relations which an event has are internal to it is also to say that it is essential to it that the other entities which form the opposite termini of these relations be just as they are; for unless the other relata were just as they are, (...) the event could not have just the relationships it has. Thus Whitehead can express the doctrine of internal relations by saying that every actual entity requires all other actualities in order to be what it is. "Every actual occasion exhibits itself as a process, it is a becomingness. In so disclosing itself, it places itself as one among a multiplicity of other occasions, without which it could not be itself." The same truth can be stated in another way by the concept of relevance. "It will be presupposed that all entities or factors in the universe are essen- tially relevant to each other's existence." In other words, if we take any given actuality, all other entities in the universe are essentially relevant to it in the sense that since it essentially involves its relations to them, it could not be, nor be fully understood, without them. Finally, "an event has to do with all that there is, and in particular with all other events"; "has to do" in the sense that its transactions or dealings with other things are constitutive of its own nature. (shrink)

Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their fundaments are often surprisingly fragile. Because of the conspicuous role that nationalisms, populisms, and fundamentalisms have in our globalizing world it is essential not to take their strength for granted, but to acknowledge that conviction and doubt are part of the same dynamic. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that doubt and hesitation are daily concerns even among the Maoist movement in India, right-wing populists in Europe and newly pious Somali (...) Muslims in London. In fact, new converts are often such stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. By studying everyday doubt this volume unravels the mechanisms by which convictions gain and lose their force, and analyzes the dynamics that propel loosely held ideas into committed action. Whereas a focus on overcoming doubt highlights the exclusionary effects of committed action, attention to the breakdown of belief serves to better understand the cycles of hope, conviction, and disillusion that bespeak the human condition. This is the central theme in several chapters looking at ideological break-down. The collapse of communism, for instance, produced an epistemological crisis in which all knowledge became unstable, prompting gold-miners in Mongolia to go as far as to doubt the cosmos. The post-ideological environment of Western democracies also produces anxieties, as the break-down of the bonds of trust between governments and citizens results in feelings of betrayal. Questions of truth and action are always related: if nothing is worth fighting for then apathy and hopelessness may become symptomatic. By paying attention to the mechanisms and dynamics by which specific ideas gain and lose their credibility this volume sheds important new light on the role of ideas in social and political action. (shrink)

A fundamental principle of the Christian faith is that man is saved by the grace and by faith in the Triune God, not by deeds. Yet, James emphasises the importance of works after the Christian has been saved. Jesus said during his ministry on earth that he did not come to be served, but to serve. Faith is therefore seen in deeds, specifically deeds of love, that is, deeds that indicate that the Christian is not leading an egocentric life (...) anymore, but a life characterised by considering his or her fellow human beings and reaching out to them. Eighteen years after apartheid, South Africa is still a country striving to build a nation and to be healed. Marches and protests against poor public service deliveries have become a well-known sight in society. Despite the larger picture of inadequate service, there are those who serve their fellow humans and society every day. The Mamas Africa utilising the minimum resources available, are examples of people who make a difference in society every day. The concept Mama Africa indicates all women from all races who are making a difference in the South African society by promoting mutual bonding. The motivation for their deeds is a deep faith in God, who is the source of hope and a conviction that a Christian has to serve others. (shrink)

The title reflects my conviction that, viewed semantically,modal logic is fundamentally dialogical; this conviction is based on the key role played by the notion of bisimulation in modal model theory. But this dialogical conception of modal logic does not seem to apply to modal proof theory, which is notoriously messy. Nonetheless, by making use of ideas which trace back to Arthur Prior (notably the use of nominals, special proposition symbols which ‘name’ worlds) I will show how to lift the dialogical (...) conception to modal proof theory. I argue that this shift to hybrid logic has consequences for both modal and dialogical logic, and I discuss these in detail. (shrink)

Understand the fundamental principles of lawyering and how to apply them to professional conductEthics and Legal Professionalism in Australia introduces students to the ethics and professional responsibilities that they will encounter in practice. It outlines the concepts, rules and conflicts relating to legal ethics in addition to exploring the ambiguous ethical aspects associated with being a lawyer. The text offers a thematic approach, with each chapter focusing on one theme and how it relates to lawyers' professional obligations. It aims (...) to encourage the development of students' 'moral compass', guiding them on how they might address ethical dilemmas and difficult situations before they are faced with these in reality.This third edition retains the original focus and principles of the previous editions but has been thoroughly updated to address the considerable changes to the legal profession and the environment.NEW TO THIS EDITIONUpdated to reflect rapid technological advances and ongoing globalisation processesStronger focus on health and wellbeing, addressing the mental health issues amongst lawyersMore case studies included throughoutSignificant updates to chapters:2: The Framework of Lawyering - updated to include the application of Uniform Law in Western Australia5: Loyalty to the Client - References to Lawyer X (Nicola Gobbo) case - Gobbo, while representing a number of significant criminal identities, also acted as a police informant providing information that contributed to the arrest and conviction of those clients6: Confidentiality - More detail relating to the Lawyer X case, and a discussion of the case of Collaery. The case is ongoing at the time of writing. It concerns the Commonwealth Government's action in seizing documents from an Australian lawyer representing Timor-Leste. Documents seized included a brief relating to a then current action against the Australian Government before the International Court of Justice7: Competence - more detail added on a lawyer's competence as to understanding and using technology, detailed discussion of mental health issues raised in misconduct proceedings and updated to include the relationship of wellbeing to competence9: Service and Access to Justice - updated to include more on seeking to define access to justice and identifying types of vulnerability. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can (...) happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

This paper analyses the international media coverage of the dispute surrounding the pardons the Polish President granted in 2015 to two politicians, arrested almost a decade later. However political this case has become, it is underlain by a specific interpretive problem concerning the presidential pardon power under the Constitution, particularly whether it can be exercised before a final conviction (the so-called ‘individual abolition’). This question has long been controversial in scholarship and, in recent years, has been addressed by top Polish (...) courts, passing conflicting rulings. Attempting to probe into the intersection of journalism, politics, law and linguistics, this paper evaluates the issue’s portrayal in 37 articles published on major news websites around the time of the arrest. It is argued that when reporting local legal news, international media engage in a dual translation, rendering legal communications in one language into media communications in another. While ‘lossless’ transfer cannot be expected, this research shows that certain limits should not be crossed to maintain journalistic standards. In particular, most articles entirely omit the scholarship and rulings confirming the validity of the pardons. Consequently, readers are not given an opportunity to become aware of all relevant facts and perhaps seek further information. On the positive side, it has been found that simple and accessible language does not necessarily mean material distortions in the coverage of legal issues. The research thus suggests that reporting domestic legal news for international audiences requires understanding the source context, conscious language use and a reliable selection of information. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophies versus Philosophy:In Defense of a Flexible DefinitionRein RaudIt is strange that no one has taken up Carine Defoort's clearly formulated and timely argument about the intercultural tensions in interpreting what philosophy is, although the issue deserves at least a roundtable, if not an international conference.1 I doubt that this is because there is a general consensus that the matter is now settled, and I would therefore like to (...) develop the argument a bit further and offer a few additional factors to consider. It is also obvious that the problem is not limited to the subject of Chinese philosophy alone: all traditions of thought from all over the world, but most notably the Indian, Islamic, and Japanese heritages, are affected by the positions we adopt. As in most debates about the commensurability of cultural traditions, we can find differences when we look for them, and similarities if these are what we would like to see, so the "conflict of sensitivities"2 is also a matter of attitudes. My own position is that regardless of what we prefer to call the practice of deeper thought (and 'philosophy' is a very good name), it would be extremely useful for all of its participants, whatever their origin and upbringing, to find a common denominator for them to be able to exchange ideas and mutually enrich each other on its basis. In what follows I shall try to sketch a perspective from which this could, in my opinion, be theoretically grounded.Four PositionsDefoort has identified four possible points of view on the problem of whether classical Chinese thought could or should be called 'philosophy,' which could be summarized as follows.1. Chinese classical thought is not philosophy, because it does not satisfy the conditions of philosophy as it is generally and traditionally understood in the West.2. Chinese classical thought is philosophy, because it reveals the necessary characteristics if analyzed with the help of an appropriate (Western-type) observation language.3. Chinese classical thought can be called philosophy, but only if we redefine philosophy in order to accommodate some of its nontypical or clearly deviant features.4. Chinese classical thought should not be called philosophy, because philosophy is a culturally closed Western phenomenon with a limited scope and incapable of understanding fundamentally different modes of thought. [End Page 618]If we dismiss the birthright variety of the first position, we could label it essentialist, and its weakest point is certainly that Western philosophy has not remained unchanged during the course of history. It is highly doubtful that Socrates, Diogenes, scholastics, Nietzsche, and Gareth Evans could all be members of the same set if the same strict criteria were applied to all periods and all cultural settings in the same way, and, as Defoort herself stresses,3 the fact that seventeenth-century Jesuits (the basis of whose original worldview, we should think, was much farther from the Chinese than ours) had no problem in calling Chinese thought philosophy should show us that the paradigm shift of the thing called 'philosophy' has occurred in the West and is, so to speak, our problem and not theirs.Now, it is also possible that in some circles even some prominent names in the Western tradition do not qualify as real philosophers, in the sense in which Hegel was treated by Bertrand Russell4 and Heidegger was dismissed by Alfred Ayer5 in their respective histories of philosophy (while they nevertheless felt compelled to include chapters or passages on them). A definition of philosophy that puts forward such criteria that a considerable number of thinkers would have to remain outside its borders should be labeled sectarian-and it can still be met, even if ever less often, in some analytical schools of philosophy. It is my conviction, however, that in our globalizing world any definition that would leave non-European philosophy outside the borders of 'philosophy proper' should be considered sectarian in nature. The main problem that I have with Defoort's family model6 is precisely that in it the head of the family, who makes the decisions as to who can be adopted and who cannot, is always Western, and the... (shrink)

Justice, equality, and righteousness—these are some of our greatest moral convictions. Yet in times of social conflict, morals can become rigid, making religious war, ethnic cleansing, and political purges possible. Morality, therefore, can be viewed as pathology-a rhetorical, psychological, and social tool that is used and abused as a weapon. An expert on Eastern philosophies and social systems theory, Hans-Georg Moeller questions the perceived goodness of morality and those who claim morality is inherently positive. Critiquing the ethical "fanaticism" of (...) Western moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, Lawrence Kohlberg, John Rawls, and the utilitarians, Moeller points to the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of "moral foolishness," or moral asceticism, extracted from the "amoral" philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Niklas Luhmann. The moral fool doesn't understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn't convinced that the moral perspective is always positive. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer's crude moral theater. Comparing and contrasting the religious philosophies of Christianity, Daoism, and Zen Buddhism, Moeller presents a persuasive argument in favor of amorality. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead published no book or article strictly on aesthetics. Nonetheless, in his philosophical writings he mentions several times that aesthetic experience is the key to his metaphysics. In fundamental places of his philosophical system, moreover, he uses expressions like ‘aesthetic experience’, ‘aesthetic fact’, ‘aesthetic unity’, and ‘aesthetic order’. These expressions do not, however, refer to human conscious experience alone, but to all entities of the universe. That has led some scholars to the conviction that these terms are (...) used in a purely technical sense and therefore do not refer to the sphere of aesthetics. The author of the current article seeks to demonstrate that these terms do refer to the sphere of aesthetics. The argument set out here consists in three steps. In the first, the author presents Whitehead’s philosophical method of imaginative generalization. In the second step, the author presents the fundamental ontological unit (the actual occasion) of Whitehead’s philosophy, and points out that Whitehead describes it using aesthetic terms that are employed in a broad sense. In the third step the author presents Whitehead’s view of aesthetic understanding. At the end of the article, it is demonstrated that although Whitehead did not develop his analysis of aesthetic understanding into a consistent theory, it forms the background to all his metaphysical books. (shrink)

This paper is aimed at assessing how power, control, and resistance come into play and how resistance counteracts power and control in police investigative interviewing. Considering that the Philippines was once a colony of the United States, it is essential to compare the two samples as the Philippine legal system is highly patterned after the American jurisprudence (Mercullo in JForensicRes 11:1–4, 2020). Highlighting the existing and emerging power relations between the police interviewer and the interviewee, the study employed Sacks, Schegloff, (...) and Jefferson’s ( Recuenco, A. (2022). Cops to undergo investigation retraining to improve conviction rate. Manila Bulletin. https://mb.com.ph/2022/07/21/cops-to-undergo-investigation-retraining-to-improve-conviction-rate/ ) Conversation Analysis (CA) and Fairclough’s (Ehrlich in Coulthard and Johnson (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Routledge, 2010) Critical Language Studies (CLS) as general frameworks. A total of 10 Philippine and American police interviews were examined. While the Philippine corpus was obtained from the Pasay City Police Station, Metro Manila, the American corpus was culled from forensicling.com, an open-access website containing forensic linguistic data. Findings revealed that power and control were employed by the police in both contexts with 109 evidential markers (50.7%) and 2,443 representative speech acts (63.3%) having the highest frequency of occurrence. What is striking is the fact that police officers in both Philippine and American contexts show power and control in their utterances to be able to achieve the goal of police interviewing, that is, to gather information and elicit voluntary responses from the interviewees. Through this study, it is hoped that interviewers will be able to explore a better system of the questioning process that may lead the interviewees to cooperate more with them and arrive at a more accurate information. (shrink)

The article analyses the problems and possibilities of forming a general methodological paradigm for the study, explanation and forecasting of social processes – in the context of the philosophical concepts of G. Hegel and F. Nietzsche. In particular, a fundamental possibility for forming a general methodological paradigm based on a dynamic balance of not optimal, but possible is analysed. The paper outlines the positive and negative aspects of the methodological paradigms of rationalism and irrationalism (postmodernism); points out the possibility (...) of terminological discourse in determining the content of concepts and categories; emphasises the efficiency of the methodological paradigm of rationalism on the example of the analysis and implementation of the philosophical category ‘measure’; substantiates the need for improvement of the spiritual priorities of various groups of the population – with a special emphasis on the layer of politicians. (shrink)

Advancing the reductionist conviction that biology must be in agreement with the assumptions of reductive physicalism (the upward hierarchy of causal powers, the upward fixing of facts concerning biological levels) A. Rosenberg argues that downward causation is ontologically incoherent and that it comes into play only when we are ignorant of the details of biological phenomena. Moreover, in his view, a careful look at relevant details of biological explanations will reveal the basic molecular level that characterizes biological systems, defined by (...) wholly physical properties, e.g., geometrical structures of molecular aggregates (cells). In response, we argue that contrary to his expectations one cannot infer reductionist assumptions even from detailed biological explanations that invoke the molecular level, as interlevel causal reciprocity is essential to these explanations. Recent very detailed explanations that concern the structure and function of chromatin—the intricacies of supposedly basic molecular level—demonstrate this. They show that what seem to be basic physical parameters extend into a more general biological context, thus rendering elusive the concepts of the basic level and causal hierarchy postulated by the reductionists. In fact, relevant phenomena are defined across levels by entangled, extended parameters. Nor can the biological context be explained away by basic physical parameters defining molecular level shaped by evolution as a physical process. Reductionists claim otherwise only because they overlook the evolutionary significance of initial conditions best defined in terms of extended biological parameters. Perhaps the reductionist assumptions (as well as assumptions that postulate any particular levels as causally fundamental) cannot be inferred from biological explanations because biology aims at manipulating organisms rather than producing explanations that meet the coherence requirements of general ontological models. Or possibly the assumptions of an ontology not based on the concept of causal powers stratified across levels can be inferred from biological explanations. The incoherence of downward causation is inevitable, given reductionist assumptions, but an ontological alternative might avoid this. We outline desiderata for the treatment of levels and properties that realize interlevel causation in such an ontology. (shrink)

More than a school of philosophy with a defined set of beliefs and convictions, classical Cynicism represents an unconventional sect of philosophers and a way of life. This is a complete account of classical Cynicism from its beginnings in the Socratic circle to its extinction in late Roman times. In this thoroughly documented study, Navia explores various issues related to the sources of information about the Cynics, the development of Cynicism, and the principal representatives of classical Cynicism. Exploring the (...) relationship between classical Cynicism and cynicism as understood in its ordinary modern sense, the author argues that despite their common designation, they represent significantly different philosophical attitudes. This book explicates the main ideas associated with classical Cynicism and argues that, its shortcomings notwithstanding, classical Cynicism furnishes us with a wealthy source of philosophical enlightenment. Individual chapters are devoted to Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates, the three principal classical Cynics. Attention is given to the development and application of certain fundamental Cynic ideas and to the transformation of these ideas throughout the eight centuries during which Cynicism was an influential philosophical movement. The book provides abundant references to primary and secondary sources and includes a bibliography of over five hundred entries. (shrink)

Consciousness seems to be an enigmatic phenomenon: it is difficult to imagine how our perceptions of the world and our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings could be related to the immensely complicated biological organ we call the brain. This volume presents the thoughts of some of the leading philosophers and cognitive scientists who have recently participated in the discussion of the status of consciousness in science. The focus of inquiry is the question: "Is it possible to incorporate consciousness into science?" (...) Philosophers have suggested different alternatives -- some think that consciousness should be altogether eliminated from science because it is not a real phenomenon, others that consciousness is a real, higher-level physical or neurobiological phenomenon, and still others that consciousness is fundamentally mysterious and beyond the reach of science. At the same time, however, several models or theories of the role of conscious processing in the brain have been developed in the more empirical cognitive sciences. It has been suggested that non-conscious processes must be sharply separated from conscious ones, and that the necessity of this distinction is manifested in the curious behavior of certain brain-damaged patients. This book demonstrates the dialogue between philosophical and empirical points of view. The writers present alternative solutions to the brain-consciousness problem and they discuss how the unification of biological and psychological sciences could thus become feasible. Covering a large ground, this book shows how the philosophical and empirical problems are closely interconnected. From this interdisciplinary exploration emerges the conviction that consciousness can and should be a natural part of our scientific world view. (shrink)