In his recent book on revelation, Jorge Gracia rejects the authorial intention view of textual interpretation, arguing that the only interpretation that makes sense for texts regarded as divinely revealed is theological interpretation. Both his position and the authorial view face the problem of the Hermeneutical Circle. I contend that the arguments he provides in his own defense do not successfully avoid the circularity present in his own view. His thesis about expected behavior might provide resources for a solution, (...) but this thesis in turn can be used to respond to his own objections against the authorial intention view of interpreting divinely revealed texts. (shrink)

This article compares the work of Jakob von Uexkull and Charles S. Peirce to elucidate two contrasting yet connected images of ecosemiotics. The intent is not simply to oppose their work, but to explore a tension which has implications for the ethical dimension of this emerging discipline. Uexkull’s functional cycle is associated with the image of a circle, which, while emphasizing the integration of organism and environment, is shown to invoke solipsism, and an overly deterministic depiction of ecological relations. (...) Peirce’s drawing of a labyrinth is taken to represent a maze, which, while exemplifying the evolutionary play of ecosystems, may entail a level of unpredictability that is catastrophically chaotic. The root of these diverging depictions is identified with the role of subjectivity in engendering semiotic relations in the work of both Uexkull and Peirce. Where the more regressive aspects of Uexkull’s theoretical biology are mitigated by a teleological interpretation of life’s underlying causality, orientating agency within Peirce’s work depends upon attention to the idea of the self in his philosophy of signs. In conclusion, Eduardo Kohn’s conception of an ‘ecology of selves’ is cited, and the status of the organism as a living symbol of its environment is reaffirmed. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary by design and intent, this volume brings together nine essays by established and new scholars from Russia, Britain, and North America to explore the historical contexts and current relevance of the work of the Bakhtin Circle for social theory, philosophy, history, and linguistics. The articles demonstrate that exploring the background of Bakhtinian thought is a better way of appreciating their significance for the analysis of contemporary social and cultural phenomena.

At the centre of Adorno’s critical theory of society lies the problem of Bann or Bannkreis: why do individuals systematically act in ways that reinforce conditions that are obviously incompatible with their freedom and pursuit of happiness? Despite criticism of Dewey’s experimentalism by several Frankfurt School critical theorists claiming that the American pragmatist fails to account for systematic blockages to critique, Dewey does in fact formulate his approach to social critique as a response to the problem that social life might (...) be made immune to transformative claims. In Human Nature and Conduct, thirty years prior to Adorno’s Bannkreis, he conceptualizes a ‘vicious circle’ in which attempts to transform social life seem to be caught and points to a way out. This article shows that Adorno and Dewey share in a project at the heart of critical theory, the project of a disclosing critique of society. In different and mutually completing ways, the Frankfurt School critical theorist and the American pragmatist point out the extent to which their contemporary societies are caught in antagonistic and painful vicious circles and thereby point to the objective possibility of another form of social life. The article is historical, but it is animated by the intent to brush a fruitful path for disclosing critique today. From Adorno, this critical practice gains the idea that theory of society can be a disclosing gesture, which presents an important corrective to Dewey’s failure to trace the eclipse of the public. From Dewey, it gets a reminder that these theories must find ways to continue into ordinary life experience through group action for their disclosure to come full circle. (shrink)

At the centre of Adorno’s critical theory of society lies the problem of Bann or Bannkreis: why do individuals systematically act in ways that reinforce conditions that are obviously incompatible with their freedom and pursuit of happiness? Despite criticism of Dewey’s experimentalism by several Frankfurt School critical theorists claiming that the American pragmatist fails to account for systematic blockages to critique, Dewey does in fact formulate his approach to social critique as a response to the problem that social life might (...) be made immune to transformative claims. In Human Nature and Conduct, thirty years prior to Adorno’s Bannkreis, he conceptualizes a ‘vicious circle’ in which attempts to transform social life seem to be caught and points to a way out. This article shows that Adorno and Dewey share in a project at the heart of critical theory, the project of a disclosing critique of society. In different and mutually completing ways, the Frankfurt School critical theorist and the American pragmatist point out the extent to which their contemporary societies are caught in antagonistic and painful vicious circles and thereby point to the objective possibility of another form of social life. The article is historical, but it is animated by the intent to brush a fruitful path for disclosing critique today. From Adorno, this critical practice gains the idea that theory of society can be a disclosing gesture, which presents an important corrective to Dewey’s failure to trace the eclipse of the public. From Dewey, it gets a reminder that these theories must find ways to continue into ordinary life experience through group action for their disclosure to come full circle. (shrink)

The distinction of whether real or counterfactual history makes sense only post factum. However, modal history is to be defined only as ones’ intention and thus, ex-ante. Modal history is probable history, and its probability is subjective. One needs phenomenological “epoché” in relation to its reality (respectively, counterfactuality). Thus, modal history describes historical “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense and would need a specific application of phenomenological reduction, which can be called historical reduction. Modal history doubles history just as the recorded history (...) of historiography does it. That doubling is a necessary condition of historical objectivity including one’s subjectivity: whether actors’, ex-ante or historians’, post factum. The objectivity doubled by ones’ subjectivity constitute “hermeneutical circle”. (shrink)

The work's central thesis is that meaningful discourse would be impossible unless the discoursers had distributive access to realities structured independently of language, such an access in fact as can service a metaphysically significant correspondence theory of truth. The thesis is deployed against the view, advanced by Hilary Putnam and by Richard Rorty, that we cannot exit the circle of words so as to secure any version of external realism. ;To establish the thesis, an intentionalist hermeneutics is developed: Due (...) to the plasticity of lexical meanings, the meaning of a text cannot be compositionally derived from linguistic conventions alone; the author's intentions, constituted in part by the extra-linguistic narrative matrices framing his life, must be consulted. The finding that a text's ontological commitments are determined by authorial intentions blocks Putnam's attempt to derive the ontological indeterminacy of human discourse from the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem. And his charge that this appeal to intentions is circular is faulted for its reliance on an inadequate, psycholinguistic model of intentions. ;It is then argued that meaningful discourse must be anchored, through narratively coherent transactions conducted without words, to realities structured beyond words: Our pre-linguistic ancestors could never have developed a meaningful description scheme unless its terms elicited among its original users sub-linguistic reality-negotiating strategies appropriate to encountered realities, strategies like those displayed by alexic brutes. The internal realist's claim that our grasp of reality is everywhere structured by language is consequently afforded a corrective supplement: That our grasp of language is everywhere structured by a sub-linguistic grasp of reality. The strategies our pre-linguistic ancestors used to locate and manage encountered realities indispensably underlie our present use of language and provide us with an extra-linguistic access to those realities, an access that is sufficient, it is argued, to support a substantive correspondence theory of truth: An assertion corresponds to reality as long as the reality-negotiating strategies it conjugates can be successfully implemented. And this truth-conferring conception of correspondence, constituted by an appropriateness to reality, can arguably sustain a robust version of realism. (shrink)

SummaryP. Vardy asserts the thesis that the vicious circle principle has the same structure as Russell's paradox. But structure is not the thing itself. It is the thing objectivated from the wiewpoint of a mathematician. So this structure can be expressed in a mathematical formalism, e. g. the Λ‐calculus. Russell's paradox is understood as a result of the error of taking purely logical concepts, like negation, as lkiewise formalisable without change of meaning. The illusion of meaning in the liar's (...) proposition: Yl'am telling a lie can also be explained be the formalisable self‐referential structure of this proposition. Yet it remains an illusion because the logical intention cannot follow the structure.ResumeLe « Principe du cercle vicieux » a la même structure que le paradoxe de Russel: c'est une thèse de P. Várdy. Mais la structure n'est pas la chose même. Elle est la chose objectivée du point de vue du mathématicien et peut done être exprimée dans un formalisme mathématique, p. ex. le Λ‐calcul. L'erreur qui conduit au paradoxe de Russel, c'est de juger des concepts purement logique, p. ex. la négation, comme étant également exprimable dans un formalisme sans que leur sens ne change.L'illusion de sens que donne l'énoncé«je mens» dans le paradoxe du menteur peut aussi être expliquée par la structure formalisable d'autoréférence de cette proposition. Mais l'illusion persiste, parce que l'intention logique ne peut pas suivre la structure.ZusammenfassungRussells «Vicious circle principle» hat dieselbe Struktur wie die Russellsche Antinamie. So lautet die These P. Várdys. Aber die Struktur ist nicht die Sache selbst, sondern nur die vom mathematischen Standpunkte aus objektivierte Sache, die in einem Formalis‐onus ausgedrückt werden kann. Die Antinomie Russells wird Als Folge der irrigen Auffassung verstanden, rein logische Begriffe, wie z. B. die Negation, konnten formalisiert werden, ohne dass dabei ihr Sinn verwandelt würde. Die Sinnillusion des Satzes «Ich lüge» kann dann auch aus der selbstbezüglichen formalen Struktur des Satzes erklärt werden. Doch bleibt dies blosse Illusion, weil die logische Intention der Struktur nicht gerecht werden kann. (shrink)

SummaryP. Vardy asserts the thesis that the vicious circle principle has the same structure as Russell's paradox. But structure is not the thing itself. It is the thing objectivated from the wiewpoint of a mathematician. So this structure can be expressed in a mathematical formalism, e. g. the Λ‐calculus. Russell's paradox is understood as a result of the error of taking purely logical concepts, like negation, as lkiewise formalisable without change of meaning. The illusion of meaning in the liar's (...) proposition: Yl'am telling a lie can also be explained be the formalisable self‐referential structure of this proposition. Yet it remains an illusion because the logical intention cannot follow the structure.ResumeLe « Principe du cercle vicieux » a la même structure que le paradoxe de Russel: c'est une thèse de P. Várdy. Mais la structure n'est pas la chose même. Elle est la chose objectivée du point de vue du mathématicien et peut done être exprimée dans un formalisme mathématique, p. ex. le Λ‐calcul. L'erreur qui conduit au paradoxe de Russel, c'est de juger des concepts purement logique, p. ex. la négation, comme étant également exprimable dans un formalisme sans que leur sens ne change.L'illusion de sens que donne l'énoncé«je mens» dans le paradoxe du menteur peut aussi être expliquée par la structure formalisable d'autoréférence de cette proposition. Mais l'illusion persiste, parce que l'intention logique ne peut pas suivre la structure.ZusammenfassungRussells «Vicious circle principle» hat dieselbe Struktur wie die Russellsche Antinamie. So lautet die These P. Várdys. Aber die Struktur ist nicht die Sache selbst, sondern nur die vom mathematischen Standpunkte aus objektivierte Sache, die in einem Formalis‐onus ausgedrückt werden kann. Die Antinomie Russells wird Als Folge der irrigen Auffassung verstanden, rein logische Begriffe, wie z. B. die Negation, konnten formalisiert werden, ohne dass dabei ihr Sinn verwandelt würde. Die Sinnillusion des Satzes «Ich lüge» kann dann auch aus der selbstbezüglichen formalen Struktur des Satzes erklärt werden. Doch bleibt dies blosse Illusion, weil die logische Intention der Struktur nicht gerecht werden kann. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is to illustrate the crucial role played by the Umwelt theory in zoomusicological (and, more generally, zoosemiotic) studies. Too much, in fact too little, has been written on the relationship between non-human animals and music. Most of these writings do not explicitly aim at contributing to the actual problem (a good example being the reflections on birdsong contained in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Some are, so to speak, a little folkloristic, quite a (...) few broach the problem in strictly scientific terms, and very few take a clearly zoomusicological approach. In an attempt to understand all the possible ways in which the problem can be analysed, it turns out that all these contributions — in spite of their reciprocal diversity — have points in common, leading to three main categories of approach: discontinuity, gradualism, and pluralism (or Umwelt theory). The discontinuist attitude is by definition opposed to the intent of a zoomusicological research, which in fact defends the thesis that music is not specific only to humans. On the other hand, one might share the gradualist assumption that musicality departs from a basis common to many animal species (at least, all those provided with vocal apparatuses). However, such a basis cannot be interpreted as monolithic (i.e., as having developed in a unique and indivisible way), carrying, as a result, qualitative differences in music between species. For the above-mentioned reasons, and for others to be illustrated in the present paper, it becomes clear that the approach to zoomusicology must necessarily be pluralistic. The most suitable framework seems to be that postulated by Jakob von Uexküll, and known as the theory ofUmwelt. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is to illustrate the crucial role played by the Umwelt theory in zoomusicological (and, more generally, zoosemiotic) studies. Too much, in fact too little, has been written on the relationship between non-human animals and music. Most of these writings do not explicitly aim at contributing to the actual problem (a good example being the reflections on birdsong contained in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Some are, so to speak, a little folkloristic, quite a (...) few broach the problem in strictly scientific terms, and very few take a clearly zoomusicological approach. In an attempt to understand all the possible ways in which the problem can be analysed, it turns out that all these contributions — in spite of their reciprocal diversity — have points in common, leading to three main categories of approach: discontinuity, gradualism, and pluralism (or Umwelt theory). The discontinuist attitude is by definition opposed to the intent of a zoomusicological research, which in fact defends the thesis that music is not specific only to humans. On the other hand, one might share the gradualist assumption that musicality departs from a basis common to many animal species (at least, all those provided with vocal apparatuses). However, such a basis cannot be interpreted as monolithic (i.e., as having developed in a unique and indivisible way), carrying, as a result, qualitative differences in music between species. For the above-mentioned reasons, and for others to be illustrated in the present paper, it becomes clear that the approach to zoomusicology must necessarily be pluralistic. The most suitable framework seems to be that postulated by Jakob von Uexküll, and known as the theory ofUmwelt. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is to illustrate the crucial role played by the Umwelt theory in zoomusicological (and, more generally, zoosemiotic) studies. Too much, in fact too little, has been written on the relationship between non-human animals and music. Most of these writings do not explicitly aim at contributing to the actual problem (a good example being the reflections on birdsong contained in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Some are, so to speak, a little folkloristic, quite a (...) few broach the problem in strictly scientific terms, and very few take a clearly zoomusicological approach. In an attempt to understand all the possible ways in which the problem can be analysed, it turns out that all these contributions — in spite of their reciprocal diversity — have points in common, leading to three main categories of approach: discontinuity, gradualism, and pluralism (or Umwelt theory). The discontinuist attitude is by definition opposed to the intent of a zoomusicological research, which in fact defends the thesis that music is not specific only to humans. On the other hand, one might share the gradualist assumption that musicality departs from a basis common to many animal species (at least, all those provided with vocal apparatuses). However, such a basis cannot be interpreted as monolithic (i.e., as having developed in a unique and indivisible way), carrying, as a result, qualitative differences in music between species. For the above-mentioned reasons, and for others to be illustrated in the present paper, it becomes clear that the approach to zoomusicology must necessarily be pluralistic. The most suitable framework seems to be that postulated by Jakob von Uexküll, and known as the theory ofUmwelt. (shrink)

In two independent yet complementary studies, the current research explored the developmental changes of young children’s conceptualization of learning, focusing the role of knowledge change and learning intention, and its association with their developing theory of mind ability. In study 1, 75 children between 48 and 86 months of age judged whether a character with or without a genuine knowledge change had learned. The results showed that younger children randomly attributed learning between genuine knowledge change and accidental coincidence that did (...) not involve knowledge change. Children’s learning judgments in familiar contexts improved with age and correlated with their ToM understanding. However, the correlation was no longer significant once age was held constant. Another sample of 72 children aged between 40 and 90 months participated in study 2, where children were asked to judge whether the story protagonists intended to learn and whether they eventually learned. The results suggested that children over-attributed learning intention to discovery and implicit learning. Stories with conflict between the learning intention and outcome appeared to be most challenging for children. Children’s intention judgment was correlated with their ToM understanding, and ToM marginally predicted intention judgment when the effect of age was accounted for. The implication of the findings for school readiness was discussed. Training studies and longitudinal designs in the future are warranted to better understand the relation between ToM development and children’s learning understanding. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to mine, reconstruct, and evaluate the phenomenological notion of practical intentionality. It is claimed that the phenomenologists of the Munich and Göttingen Circles substantially modify the idea of practical intentionality originally developed by Franz Brentano. This development, it is further contended, anticipates the switch that occurred within contemporary theory of action from a belief-desire to a belief-desire-intention model of deliberation. While Brentanoâ s position can be interpreted as a variant of the BD model, early (...) phenomenologists propose a general theory of deliberation that, in line with the BDI account, puts the notion of intention at the very core of practical intentionality. On their understanding, the concept of intention points to a primitive kind of mental state that cannot be reduced to a combination of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

In recent years, a significant amount of research has investigated the Vienna Circle’s ramifications. Otto Neurath has received much attention as one of the most prominent and energetic adherents, but less conspicuous philosophers now find themselves at the center of historical research. This article’s aim is to investigate Arne Naess’s connection to Logical Empiricism. Two crucial influences on Naess’s work are identified: Otto Neurath and the psychologist Egon Brunswik. This article’s most significant contributions are that, from the perspective of (...) a historian of philosophy of science, (a) Brunswik’s notion of “depth of intention” and his scientific methodological standards are reflected in Naess’s philosophy, (b) both Naess and Brunswik are adherents of Neurath’s physicalism, (c) Naess explicates Neurath’s notoriously vague concept of “congestions” in his “empirical semantics,” and (d) the latter is applied in Naess’s deep-ecology approach. (shrink)

My final aim in this paper is to show that Descartes is not guilty, as is so often maintained, of circular argumentation in the Meditations. But first it is important to uncover and remove certain tenacious misconceptions and confusions concerning what goes on in the Meditations which lend credence to the charge of circular argumentation. In this connection Mr. Harry Frankfurt's recent article, “Memory and the Cartesian Circle,” is peculiarly instructive; for it presents not only a completely untenable defence (...) of Descartes but one that, implicitly at least, rests on the very misconceptions that give substance to the notion of a Cartesian Circle. With the intention, then, of clearing the ground for the construction of my own defence of Descartes, I shall spend the first part of this paper examining Frankfurt's central thesis, the errors contained in it, and their sources. This thesis is contained in his statement, which I shall henceforth designate by the letter “J,” “Descartes did not attempt to justify present clear and distinct perceptions.”. (shrink)

Although it claims to provide “no definitive exposition of any part”, this book is intended to be “a compact overview of the whole of Hegel’s system, for those who have some familiarity with Hegel’s thought”. To preserve its compactness, the book neither deals with nor mentions other commentators and critics; for the same reason, it offers no criticisms of its own and the rapprochement between Hegel and his predecessors is kept to a minimum. Instead, the author’s stated intentions in his (...) exposition are two: 1) to isolate Hegel’s account of finitude and infinity and show that it is the system in embryonic form; then, in order to let this embryo grow, 2) to demonstrate how concepts like “finite” and “infinite” contribute to the development of spirit; in other words, what is also needed is an explanation of how the system operates, and with this in mind Hegel’s treatment of temporality is brought to the fore. (shrink)

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three (...) concentric circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

David Hoy’s book is a readable and generally clear introduction to the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and to the contemporary debate surrounding Gadamer’s contribution to the theory of interpretation. Hoy begins with a chapter on a work familiar to American readers and antithetical to Gadamer—E. D. Hirsch’s Validity in Interpretation. Hirsch is shown to be in some respects a follower of the hermeneutics of Schliermacher and Dilthey in that his defense of authorial intention approximates the "empathy" of nineteenth-century hermeneutics. Hoy (...) makes a careful analysis of the problems involved in Hirsch’s distinction between "meaning"—"the meaning of [an author’s] utterance is the meaning he wills to convey" —and significance—the relation between meaning and some other, extra-textual, element or system. Hoy properly questions the view of language inherent in Hirsch’s contention that verbal meaning is entirely determined by an individual will. He notes that Hirsch neglects meaning determined by the semantics of units of text larger than the sentence. Hoy also argues persuasively that Hirsch’s claim to base his meaning/significance distinction in Frege’s opposition between Sinn and Bedeutung constitutes a misreading of Frege, and shows an ambiguity in Hirsch’s conception of the author, sometimes presented as an historical being with a will and intention and at others as the equivalent of the persona or dramatic speaker of the New Critics. (shrink)

In recent years, the United Nations has taken a lead in advocating public-private partnerships (PPPs), and various UN entities actively seek partnerships and alliances with transnational corporations and other companies. Although there has been a rapid growth of PPPs, relatively little is known about their contribution to basic UN goals associated with inclusive, equitable and sustainable development. In response to this situation, there are increasing calls for impact assessments. This article argues that such assessments need to recognize the range of (...) ideational, institutional, economic and political factors and forces underpinning the turn to PPPs, and the very different logics and agendas involved, some of which seem quite contradictory from the perspective of equitable development and democratic governance. The article examines these different forces and logics, focusing on (a) the institutional turn towards "good governance", (b) economic contexts that relate to the very mixed "fortunes" of UN agencies and corporations, (c) structural determinants associated with "corporate globalisation" and (d) political drivers that relate to the struggle for hegemony and legitimisation. The article ends by reflecting critically on the tendency within mainstream development institutions and some strands of academic literature to highlight logics associated with good governance and pragmatism, and to disregard those associated with the strengthening of corporate interests and the neoliberal policy regime. It is argued that knowledge networks associated with the UN need to go beyond "best practice learning" and embrace "critical thinking", which has waned within UN circles since the 1980s. (shrink)

Media has paid more attention recently on environmental issues caused by construction companies which imposes public opinion pressure on construction companies and could potentially impact their decision-making processes for green innovations. However, research on the relationship between public opinions pressure and construction company green innovation behavior is still limited. To understand how such public opinions pressure can impact construction companies' green transition and formulate advice accordingly, it is necessary to use empirical data to find the correlations. Therefore, this research has (...) gathered questionnaire data of the construction companies in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle of China to study the influencing mechanism of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior, analyzes the realization path of leaders' environmental intention as a mediating variable in the impact of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior, and reveals the role boundary of environmental regulation as a moderating variable in the impact of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior. The results show that environmental public opinion pressure has a significant positive impact on enterprise green innovation behavior. More specifically, enterprise green innovation behavior is affected by leaders' environmental intention and the latter plays a partial mediating role between environmental public opinion pressure and enterprise green innovation behavior. Environmental regulation also enhances the sensitivity of companies to environmental public opinion pressure, and therefore can significantly strengthen the relationship between environmental public opinion pressure and enterprise green innovation behavior. Further research find that, compared with incentive-based environmental regulations, mandatory environmental regulations make companies more sensitive to environmental public opinion pressure and has a more significant positive moderating effect. The research conclusions could be used to provide theoretical reference with empirical data for accelerating the green innovation transformation and promoting the high-quality development in the construction industry. (shrink)

By describing the aim of triangulation as locating the objects of thoughts and utterances, Davidson has given in the double role of accounting for both the individuation of content and the sense in which content necessarily is public. The focus of this article is on how triangulation may contribute to the individuation of content. I maintain that triangulation, interpreted in terms of joint attention, may serve to break into the intentional circle of meaning and belief, yet without forcing (...) us to renounce the claims concerning the interdependence of meaning and belief and the irreducibility of meaning. (shrink)

L’intention de cette étude est de montrer que la seconde section de Vérité et méthode élabore, à partir d’une réflexion sur l’histoire, une interrogation sur la « subjectivité » dont l’être est de participer à ce qui se présente. Le sujet a ainsi le statut de theoros. Cette interrogation s’articule en trois moments qui sont autant d’étapes approfondissant le questionnement sur la « subjectivité » : le cercle herméneutique, qui montre le caractère dérivé de l’opposition sujet/objet ; le préjugé, qui (...) met en évidence l’enracinement historique du « sujet » ; la dialectique de la question et de la réponse qui révèle le « sujet » comme une question à lui-même.The purpose of this article is to show that the second section of Truth and Method elaborates an interrogation on « subjectivity », based on a meditation about history. The being of « subject » consists to take part in the presence. In this way, the « subject » has the status of theoros. This interrogation includes three moments which are related steps going further into the question of the being of « subjectivity » : the hermeneutical circle, which shows the derivated aspect of the opposition subject/object ; the prejudice, highlighting the historical incarnation of the « subject » ; the dialectic of question and answer, which reveals the being of « subject » as a question. (shrink)

According to behavioural theories deriving from pragmatism, gestalt psychology, existentialism, and ecopsychology, knowledge about the world is gained by intentional action followed by learning. In terms of the neurodynamics described here, if the intending of an act comes to awareness through reafference, it is perceived as a cause. If the consequences of an act come to awareness through proprioception and exteroception, they are perceived as an effect. A sequence of such states of awareness comprises consciousness, which can grow in (...) complexity to include self-awareness. Intentional acts do not require awareness, whereas voluntary acts require self-awareness. Awareness of the action/perception cycle provides the cognitive metaphor of linear causality as an agency. Humans apply this metaphor to objects and events in the world to predict and control them, and to assign social responsibility. Thus, linear causality is the bedrock of technology and social contracts. Complex material systems with distributed non-linear feedback, such as brains and their neural and behavioural activities, cannot be explained by linear causality. They can be said to operate by circular causality without agency. The nature of self-control is described by breaking the circle into a forward limb, the intentional self, and a feedback limb, awareness of the self and its actions. The two limbs are realized through hierarchically stratified kinds of neural activity. Intentional acts are produced by the self-organized microscopic neural activity of cortical and subcortical components in the brain. Awareness supervenes as a macroscopic ordering state, that defers action until the self-organizing microscopic process has reached closure in reflective prediction. Agency, which is removed from the causal hierarchy by the appeal to circularity, re-appears as a metaphor by which events in the world are anthropomorphized, making them appear subject to human control. (shrink)

This article goes into the intentions and motives behind De Veritate (1627), famous apologetic work by the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). De Veritate will be compared with two other seminal works written by Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis (1625) and the Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (1641-1650). The focus will be on one particular aspect that comes to the fore in all three works: the way Grotius reduced the Christian faith to a minimal religion by singling out (...) the essential tenets this faith had in common with other religions. The core of Grotius’s argumentation consists in the idea that believers and, in particular, civil authorities have to distinguish between a few essential religious tenets that could be made rationally acceptable, and a set of supernatural dogmas, derived from divine revelation, that did not pass a certain, albeit very high degree of probability. As far as the second category was concerned, civil tolerance was called for. As becomes clear from contemporary correspondences, Grotius did not develop these rather controversial ideas in an intellectual vacuum. During his exile in Paris, he fostered contacts with members of the circle that formed around the French monk Marin Mersenne (1588-1648). This circle functioned as a kind of hothouse for the development of a minimal Christian creed. Members of this group saw promotion of a minimal creed as a solution to current religious controversies and the ensuing political turmoil and (civil) war, which were abhorred for their detrimental effects on the advancement of learning in the first place. On the other hand, it is also apparent that overt adherence to such an ideal was considered to be dangerous, because it would at least evoke the embarrassing and even repressive attention of the authorities in Church and government. An additional problem was that by defending such a religious stance, members of Mersenne’s circle laid themselves open to accusations of endorsing ‘rational beliefs’ like Socinianism, generally considered to be the worst heresy among all Christian denominations. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotny explores one of the most controversial topics of Suarez's philosophy: "beings of reason." Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle.

Geoengineering – roughly “the intentional manipulation of the planetary systems at a global scale” (Keith 2000) – to combat climate change is often introduced as a “plan B”: an alternative solution in case “plan A”, reducing emissions, fails. This framing is typically deployed as part of an argument that research and development is necessary in case robust conventional mitigation is not forthcoming, or proves insufficient to prevent dangerous climate impacts. Since coming to prominence with the release of the Royal (...) Society report in 2009 (Shepherd et al. 2009, v), the Plan B framing has proved popular with scientists, in policy circles, and in the news media (see Nerlich and Jaspal 2012; Luokkanen, Huttunen, and Hilden 2014). Though sometimes used to refer to geoengineering as a whole, it is associated particularly strongly with stratospheric sulfate injection (SSI) techniques. Consequently, these will be our focus here. We argue that the plan B framing is particularly ill-suited to the integrative assessment of options within climate policy, because it oversimplifies a complex issue in a misleading and deceptive way. For instance, it highlights extreme positions, presents SSI as an alternative independent from mainstream policies, ignores the multiplicity of options available, and neglects threats of morally indecent SSI in a context of ongoing political inertia. We are particularly concerned about the way ‘Plan B’ risks conveying an implicit hyper-optimism about SSI, and so obscures the need for ethical standards. (shrink)

The Kristeva Circle Conference of 2017 in Pittsburgh confirmed that writers throughout the world have been engaging with Julia Kristeva’s thought in large numbers and in ways relevant to “an ethics of inclusion,” the topic of the Conference. The question of race arguably came to a head at the conference when one of the founders of the Kristeva Circle, Fanny Söderbäck, commented on the paper just delivered by Kristeva via Skype, “The Psychic Life--A Life in Time: Psychoanalysis and (...) Culture.” According to Söderbäck, we run the risk of reinforcing Islamophobic views that equate terrorism with Islam if we focus on young women intent on jihad without simultaneously addressing the behavior of white men bent on white supremacist violence and terrorism. Kristeva did not directly address the issue of her lecture’s reinforcement of Islamophobic views in her response. Instead, she spoke at some length about a patient whose confrontation with Arabic poetry led to improvement in her psychic health. I introduce the following papers in part as a dialogue with Kristeva on race and as a response to Söderbäck’s comments. The essays all make reference to questions of race and ethnicity in Kristeva’s work. They do so in ways that provoke thought on the contributions of psychoanalytic writing, appreciated and also criticized for its universalizing tendencies, which may in part explain its vulnerability to charges of racism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

This paper explores nicknaming practices, focusing on their capacity to derogate and establish power differentials within a group. By examining ethnographic and psychological data, this paper contends that pejorative nicknames can contribute to unjust intra-group hierarchies and thus operate analogously to slurs within small social circles. Like expressions targeting social groups based on gender or ethnicity, pejorative nicknames can indeed elicit deep offence regardless of the speaker’s intentions or whether they occur within speech reports. Moreover, this paper advances a framework (...) suggesting i) that both forms of verbal aggression index multiple dimensional qualities such as “negative valence”, “neutral arousal,” and “high dominance” rather than discrete emotional categories such as “contempt” or “anger”, and ii) that the expression of high dominance in social interactions underlies their capacity to offend. Additionally, it translates this hypothesis into a Bayesian model of sociolinguistic variation inspired by Heather Burnett’s work on identity construction, thus integrating pragmatic reasoning into a psychologically informed framework for interpreting emotional cues. (shrink)

Within academic circles, the “deficit” model of public understanding of science has been subject to increasing critical scrutiny by those who favor more constructivist approaches. These suggest that “the public” can articulate sophisticated ideas about the social and ethical implications of science regardless of their level of technical knowledge. The seminal studies following constructivist approaches have generally involved small-scale qualitative investigations, which have minimized the pre-framing of issues to a greater or lesser extent. This article describes the Gene Week Project, (...) sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, which attempted to extend this work to a large-scale consultation on genetics and health through the medium of a local daily newspaper. Readers were invited to respond to a set of open-ended questions that accompanied stimulus material published each day for five consecutive weekdays. The articles were written with the intention of extending the limited range of discourses around genetics and biotechnology that are usually presented by the popular media. Responses raised overarching issues about the place of emerging health technologies in society reminiscent of previous open-ended consultations in this field. The paper ends with a critical discussion about the potential of this method to contribute to the further development of open-ended public consultations. (shrink)

Rorty's Neopragmatism and the Imperative of the Discourse of African Epistemology Pragmatism, as a philosophical movement, was a dominant orientation in the Anglo-American philosophical circles in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Pragmatism, as expressed by its classical advocates, namely, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, emphasized the primacy of practice or action over speculative thought and a priori reasoning. The central thesis of pragmatism (though there exist other variants) is the belief that the meaning of (...) an idea or a proposition lies in its "observable practical consequences", And as a theory of truth, it diverges from the correspondence and coherence theories which see truth in terms of correspondence of a proposition to facts and coherence of propositions to other propositions within the web respectively, but instead contends that "truth is to be found in the process of verification". In other words, pragmatists would emphasize the practical utility or "cash value", as it were, of knowledge and ideas as instruments for understanding reality. Neopragmatism is used to refer to some contemporary thinkers whose views incorporate in a significant way, though with minor differences bordering on methodology and conceptual analysis, the insights of the classical pragmatists. Our intention in this paper is to explore Rorty's neopragmatism, particularly his critique of analytic philosophy and then argue that his views have potential for the establishment of African epistemology as an emerging discourse within the African philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1725–1782), born Ziegler, is the author of the first metaphysical treatise intended specifically for women. In the preface of this treatise, published in 1751, she justifies her ‘unhabitual’ enterprise, emphasizing that her intention is not to instruct but only to please her female readership. A closer glance, however, reveals a genuine philosophical intention and an active participation in the debate on popular philosophy and aesthetics in Halle. Challenging an all-too narrow and all-too mathematical conception of practical philosophy, (...) Unzer advocates a dynamic model of philosophy as a love of wisdom, and a philosophy of beauty, poetry, and aesthetics. Fundamentally, these are ancient and mostly Platonic ideas, and among her intellectual circle Unzer stands out as a modern Diotima. But on account of their distinctively modern premises, these ideas likewise take a particularly modern shape, and they illustrate a certain Platonic reversal incipient in Wolffianism itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 273-274 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman, editors. Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. viii + 610. Cloth, $186.00. The nineteen papers of this weighty (handsomely produced, but expensive) volume are mostly devoted to the views of one thinker or group of persons on "corpuscularism" (see 17ff.), in (...) either physics or mathematics, with few synthetic or diachronic studies. Only a quarter of the volume is devoted to the medieval period: Danielle Jacquart on minima in the Salerno school of medicine (twelfth century); the late George Molland on Roger Bacon's and Grosseteste's "corpuscular tendencies"; Charles Lohr on Ramon Lull; John Murdoch on minima naturalia in the medieval and Renaissance periods; and the greater part of William Newman's study of corpuscularian conceptions in "Aristotelian alchemy" from Geber to Sennert. The early-modern part includes studies on mostly expected figures: Francesco Patrici, Giordano Bruno, the Northumberland circle, Francis Bacon, David Gorlaeus (a little-known Dutch theology student; 1591-1612, sic), Daniel Sennert, Honoré Fabri, Galileo, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Locke, and Homberg. Alan Gabbey more generally distinguishes different patterns of explanations in mechanical philosophy.As far as I can judge, the authors are knowledgeable and competent, and the studies make important contributions. But just because this is a high-quality volume produced with the ambition of making a step toward rewriting the history of a major chapter in the history of science, its two significant and principled deficiencies must be pointed out.The volume follows the intention of "show[ing] the debt of early-modern matter theory to previous traditions and thereby [explaining] its bewildering heterogeneity" (back cover). Now, the study of the corpuscular traditions in the pre-modern period is certainly an important desideratum (although this volume again attends chiefly to the early modern corpuscularians). But the motivation and perspective here announced—the medieval period [End Page 273] is to be studied because early modern science is indebted to it—are astoundingly Whiggish. Worse: the study of the entire Arabic-Islamic tradition is dismissed, on the grounds that "Islamic atomism does not seem to have been of any influence upon Christian fourteenth-century atomism" (8): this is not only Whiggism, but also frank and explicit euro- and Christian-centrism, which in the beginning of the twenty-first century is simply stunning. The method amusingly consists in affirming the consequent: presupposing that "Islamic atomism" did not influence the West and early-modern science, no scholar was asked to examine whether or not this was indeed the case, with the congenial result that the volume seemingly confirms the initial presupposition. Q.E.D. Similarly and no less regrettably, the fact that (ps.-) Geber's Summa Perfectionis is not, as Lasswitz had thought, the translation of an Arabic work is here used as grounds on which to dismiss altogether his claim concerning the importance of the Arabic input (13, but see also 293). This way, incomprehension between civilizations is reinforced instead of being reduced, and I believe we did not need September 11 to know this.The thusly dismissed Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology had important repercussions in Judaism, so that referring to it as "Islamic atomism" is misleading (see notably Hagai Ben-Shammai, "Studies in Karaite Atomism," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 [1985]: 243-93). The volume's forty-page cumulative bibliography, for which the editors are to be congratulated, reflects the volume's parochial viewpoint: H. A. Wolfson's important The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), with some 150 pages on atomism, is not included; nor is the (English version of the) landmark study by the late S. Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997; the original 1936 German version is mentioned). Wolfson's study, incidentally, shows that the editors' presupposition (8) that the Kalâm tradition could have influenced the West only via the Latin translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is unwarranted, for Isaac... (shrink)

Although cognitivism has lost some ground recently in the philosophical circles, it is still the favorite view of many scholars of emotions. Even though I agree with cognitivism's insight that emotions typically involve some type of evaluative intentional state, I shall argue that in some cases, less epistemically committed, non-propositional evaluative states such as mental pictures can do a better job in identifying the emotion and providing its intentional object. Mental pictures have different logical features from propositions: they (...) are representational, and some may or may not portray actual objects aptly. Yet, unlike propositional attitudes, mental pictures do not allow for objective criteria by which one can judge that a certain picture is an apt portrait of someone or something. (shrink)

Excerpt from Discourses of Epictetus Thus we owe to an accident the existence of these "Discourses," which form one of the world's vital books. The "Manual" is a collection of aphorisms taken substantially from the larger work. Epictetus was not the founder of a new philosophy. Zeno, the originator of the Stoic system, was his master, and Zeno himself derived his fundamental principles from Antisthenes, the author of the cynic school and the friend of Socrates. The Greeks are the creators (...) of philosophy, and their earliest attempt at systematic thought was an effort to understand Nature. But they soon learned that it was necessary to begin from within, since to know anything man must first know himself. Thus the problem of the conduct of life forced itself upon them. This is the constant preoccupation of Socrates, who was born five hundred years before Epictetus. He taught that the good is to be sought not in outward things, nor in the indulgence of appetite, but in virtue, which for him, however, is an intellectual rather than a moral habit. His calm and rational temper led him to the belief that man always acts in accordance with his knowledge, does what insight shows him to be useful to himself. He who does evil, does it from a mistake of judgment. Sin is error. Virtue, then, being chiefly knowledge, may be taught, and to teach it is the philosophers life work. But Socrates moved in a circle from which there was no escape. To know the useful is virtue. But what is the useful? That which makes for virtue. Antisthenes does not attempt to determine the meaning of the good. He simply declares that virtue is the only good, and, in his view, virtue is the intelligent conduct of life. Right life is the essential good; virtue is its own reward, and one need not look to its results. It is, in the midst of whatever vicissitudes, a sure possession. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

There is a certain tangle of philosophical questions around which much philosophy, especially in our time, has circled, to the point where now there is something that deserves to be called a holding pattern around these issues: What are causes? How do they compare with reasons? What is Reason, with a capital R? How does it participate in the production of intentions that lead to action, particularly in arenas rife with uncertainty? Where do formal systems of symbols come into all (...) of this? And how - if at all - can formal methods be harnessed to serve science and public policy, through guiding belief formation and decision-making? Henry Kyburg, Jr., has himself circled around this tangle of questions, at least once or twice. And so in his honor, and in the no-nonsense spirit of empiricism that marks his work as the work of a scientist, I'd like to sketch a way to cut through some of the Gordian knots at the center of this tangle. The theme will be that natural science has much of value to offer that has been willfully neglected by philosophers. This by itself is nowise surprising, as philosophy, particularly in the most exclusive parts of the academy, has suffered from an excessive transcendentalism - a theme to which I will return in this piece periodically. Now Kyburg has not been guilty of contributing to the causes for the decline of philosophy. He has, instead, been courageously working out the implications of his convictions regarding the virtues of vigorous formal systems, contributing to the advancement of empiricist methodologies, and generously supporting the causes of realism. In emulation of that courage, I offer this essay in the service of bold and vigorous formal systems, realism and - most emphatically - empiricism. (shrink)

Hackles have been raised in biosemiotic circles by T. L. Short’s assertion that semiosis, as defined by Peirce, entails “acting for purposes” and therefore is not found below the level of the organism (2007a:174–177). This paper examines Short’s teleology and theory of purposeful behavior and offers a remedy to the disagreement. Remediation becomes possible when the issue is reframed in the terms of the complexity sciences, which allows intentionality to be understood as the interplay between local and global aspects of (...) a system within a system. What is called “acting for purposes” is not itself a type of behavior so much as a relationship between a dynamic system that “exists for a purpose” and its microprocesses that “serve purposes.” The “intentional object” of philosophy is recast here as the holistic self-organized dynamics of a system, which exists for the purpose of self-maintenance, and that constrains the parts’ behaviors, which serve the purpose of forming the system. (A “system” can be any emergent, e.g. an abiotic form, an adapted species, a self, a conditioned response, thought, or a set of ideas.) The self-organized whole, which is represented to the parts in their own constrained behaviors, assumes the guiding function so long attributed to the mysterious “intentional object.” If emergent self-causation is not disallowed, creative originality, as well as directionality, becomes part of the definition of purposeful behavior. Thus, key tools used here, required for understanding emergence, come from poetics rather than semoitics. In the microprocesses of self-organization, I find what I call “accidental” indices and icons — which are poetic in the sense that they involve mere metonymic contiguity and metaphoric similarity — and which are preferentially selected under constrained conditions allowing radically new connections to habituate into an “intentional” self-organized system that, not coincidentally, has some of the emergent characteristics of a conventional symbolic system. (shrink)

It is always great good fortune for an author to have his writings meet with a receptive circle of readers who take them up in their own work and clarify them further. Indeed, it may even be the secret of all theoretical productivity that one reaches an opportune point in one's own creative process when others' queries, suggestions, and criticisms give one no peace, until one has been forced to come up with new answers and solutions. The four essays (...) collected here, in any event, jointly represent an ideal form of such a challenge: I am now compelled to make further theoretical developments and clarifications that lead me to a whole new stage of my own endeavours, well beyond what I initially had in mind in The Struggle for Recognition . For this reason, I will not concentrate here on interpretative issues regarding my earlier work but will instead take up the problems and challenges that have occasioned several revisions on my part. For this reason, it makes sense to begin (in section I) with the points that Carl-Göran Heidegren makes, in terms of a history of social theory, regarding my proposed theory of recognition. The issues that still motivate me today can best be expressed via an engagement with the conscientious interpretations he offers. The core of this rejoinder is based on Heikki Ikäheimo's and Arto Laitinen's suggestions and corrections, which they have used to develop my initial approach further, to the point where the theoretical outlines of a precise and general concept of recognition come into view. It is primarily these two contributions that helped me develop a productive elaboration of my originally vague intuitions (section II). By way of conclusion (in section III), I take up the penetrating questions raised by Antti Kauppinen regarding the use of the concept of recognition in the broader context of social criticism; he has compelled me to take on several extremely helpful clarifications, and they give me the opportunity, in conclusion, to summarize my overarching intentions. (shrink)

En este trabajo se expone el debate entre Neurath y Horkheimer como ejemplo de recuperación de los aspectos políticos del Círculo de Viena, olvidados en la visión tradicional, que ayudarán a tener una mejor comprensión de las diversas posiciones de los miembros del Círculo. Se intenta mostrar que gran parte del debate se debe a las diferencias políticas entre los contendientes y a sus diferentes concepciones sobre la filosofía, la ciencia y la razón, pero no a la falta de intereses (...) políticos de Neurath y del Círculo de Viena. In this work we will summarize the Neurath-Horkheimer debate as an example of the recovery of the Vienna Circle's political aspects that were forgotten in the traditional view, so as to achieve a better understanding of the different positions assumed by the Circle's members. Our intention is to show that much of this debate stems from their political differences and the contenders' diverse conceptions of philosophy, science and reason, but not from the lack of political interests in Neurath and the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

Excerpt from Outlines of Logic, Psychology and Ethics The following pages do not lay claim to originality of thought, or even of language. But they cover the whole ground of the Mental and Moral Philosophy Course for the London University Pass B.A., and, in manuscript form, have been found useful by students preparing for that examination. In later years the questions on each branch of the course appear to have been set from a constantly enlarging circle of text-books; and (...) the student who confines himself to one or two authorities, however excellent these may be, is sure to meet with many questions for which he is totally unprepared; while, if he extends the range of his reading, he is very likely to concentrate his attention on what is superfluous and, for his immediate purpose, without value. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur held the conference on attention at Rennes, on the 2nd of March 1939, before the Philosophical Circle of the West. At the time, Ricœur, aged 26, was a teacher of philosophy at Lorient, in the south of Brittany. The text published here, which is available in the Paris Archives, is Ricœur’s extended version of this conference. His careful analysis of attention is impressive in its phenomenological emphasis: from the first lines, he draws relations between attention and perception, (...) considering their intentional character, and continues by distinguishing attention from anticipation, preperception and waiting. A particular concern is given to the relation between attention and temporal duration – a question that will be reworked later in his philosophy of the will. After questioning how attention implies the notion of truth (not without reminding the contributions of Descartes, Thomas, Malebranche and Berkeley), he concludes by meditating upon the relation between attention and liberty. (shrink)