Leibniz' remarkable understanding of Chinese culture was not merely the result of his own acumen, but also of the knowledgeable sources of information available to him through published works and personal correspondence. Most of the materials are preserved in the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek Hannover. Working from the Systematischen Bandkatalog compiled by Daniel Eberhard Baring in 1720 shortly after Leibniz' death, it is possible to know with some accuracy which books were available for Leibniz' reference. This author has complied a list of (...) 78 such works, most of which were either written by or derived from Christian missionaries in China, of whom the Jesuits were the most prominent. While some of Leibniz' correspondents such as Andreas Müller of Berlin were sinological amateurs and enthusiasts, others such as the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet were learned men, living in intimate contact with the Chinese emperor in Peking. Their letters guaranteed that Leibniz' information on China was among the most accurate available in Europe at that time. (shrink)

Presents nicholas malebranche's interpretation of chinese philosophy as found in his "entretien d'un philosophe chretien et d'un philosophe chinois" (1708). Treats background (transition from 17th century insular to 18th century cosmopolitan eurocentrism), Sources (primarily artus de lionne, Bishop of rosalie and former missionary to china), And motivation (defense of his philosophy against the charge of spinozism). Discusses malebranche's interpretation of neo-Confucian terms "li" and "ch'i" and their relationship to his definition of god. Places the "entretien" in the context of the (...) malebranche-Leibniz correspondence and interprets the work as a stimulus for leibniz' more substantive "discours sur la theologie naturelle des chinois" (1716). (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 3, May 2020, Page 365-367.

My intention in this paper is to present a schema for understanding �sthetic transactions. (By '�sthetic transactions' I mean to refer to the artist's creation of a work of art and the audience's appreciation of it). For Kant a schema was a rule or principle that enables the under- standing to apply its categories. I am using this term in a narrower sense but in the same spirit : The schema to be considered is to serve as a principle which (...) will allow us to grasp in a definitive fashion the special character of �sthetic transactions. (shrink)

I would like to begin by welcoming all of you and by saying how nice it is to be President of the AAP NZ DIV or (the altervative Title) and to be addressing you tonight in that capacity. As I began writing this it occurred to me that every former Secretary of this Association must have asked themselves at some time just how meaningful this automatic honour of becoming President the following year actually is. Certainly it is an advantage to (...) be able to deliver your paper first, and to command a decent audience, but I feel that occupying the office of President could be made into something rather special if the following practice, which I intend to inaugurate tonight, were to become an established custom. (shrink)

The fundamental issue dividing Pro- and Anti-abortionists is the question of whether or not the foetus/unborn child is to be regarded as a human being, a person with a right to life. An answer to this question which would satisfy both disputants must be developed in a consistent way from beliefs that are shared between them. I outline these shared beliefs (viz., attitudes towards potential life, and, how and when the value of life is realised by an individual) and argue (...) that the quickening of the foetus is the point at which the adoption of a moral attitude towards it is consistent with both the Pro- and the Antiabortionist standpoint. (shrink)

We review the major phenomena of skilled typing and propose a model for the control of the hands and fingers during typing. The model is based upon an Activation‐Trigger‐Schema system in which a hierarchical structure of schemata directs the selection of the letters to be typed and, then, controls the hand and finger movements by a cooperative, relaxation algorithm. The interactions of the patterns of activation and inhibition among the schemata determine the temporal ordering for launching the keystrokes. To account (...) for the phenomena of doubling errors, the model has only “type” schemata—no “token” schemata—with only a weak binding between the special schema that signals a doubling, and its argument. The model exists as a working computer simulation and produces an output display of the hands and fingers moving over the keyboard. It reproduces some of the major phenomena of typing, including the interkeystroke interval times, the pattern of transposition errors found in skilled typists, and doubling errors. Although the model is clearly inadequate or wrong in some of its features and assumptions, it serves as a useful first approximation for the understanding of skilled typing. (shrink)

This collection of Habermas's recent essays on philosophical topics continues the analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In a short introductory essay, he outlines the sources of twentieth-century philosophizing, its major themes, and the range of current debates. The remainder of the essays can be seen as his contribution to these debates.Habermas's essay on George Herbert Mead is a focal point of the book. In it he sketches a postmetaphysical, intersubjective approach to questions of individuation and subjectivity. In (...) other essays, he develops his distinctive, communications-theoretic approach to questions of meaning and validity. The book as a whole expands on his earlier efforts to define a middle ground between nostalgic revivals of metaphysical conceptions of reason and radical deconstructions of reason. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt.The Essays: The Horizon of Modernity is Shifting. Metaphysics after Kant. Themes in Postmetaphysical Thinking. Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning. Peirce and Communication. The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices. Individuation through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead's Theory of Subjectivity. Philosophy and Science as Literature? (shrink)

David E. Cooper elucidates Nietzsche's educational views in detail, in a form that will be of value to educationalists as well as philosophers. In this title, first published in 1983, he shows how these views relate to the rest of Nietzsche's work, and to modern European and Anglo-Saxon philosophical concerns. For Nietzsche, the purpose of true education was to produce creative individuals who take responsibility for their lives, beliefs and values. His ideal was human authenticity. David E. Cooper (...) sets Nietzsche's critique against the background of nineteenth-century German culture, yet is concerned at the same time to emphasize its bearing upon recent educational thought and policy. (shrink)

This popular book has now been revised to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the growing number of people interested in all the main philosophical ...

Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world. Or so most of the authors in this book claim. While Calvinism has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years amongst theologians and laypersons, many philosophers have yet to follow suit. The reason seems fairly clear: Calvinism, many think, cannot handle the problem of evil with the same kind of plausibility as other (...) more popular views of the nature of God and the nature of God's relationship with His creation. This book seeks to challenge that untested assumption. With clarity and rigor, this collection of essays seeks to fill a significant hole in the literature on the problem of evil. (shrink)

Nonprofit organizations play a crucial role in society. Unfortunately, many such organizations are chronically underfunded and struggle to meet their objectives. These facts have significant implications for corporate philanthropy and Kant’s notion of imperfect duties. Under the concept of imperfect duties, businesses would have wide discretion regarding which charities receive donations, how much money to give, and when such donations take place. A perceived problem with imperfect duties is that they can lead to moral laxity; that is, a failure on (...) the part of businesses to fulfill their financial obligations to nonprofit organizations. This article argues the problem of moral laxity rests on a misinterpretation of Kantian ethics and, therefore, is really not a problem at all. As such, we argue corporate philanthropy while an imperfect duty should be interpreted more akin to perfect duties and, as a consequence, moral laxity does not arise for those corporations committed to acting on the basis of the moral law. More specifically, firms have duty-based obligations on the basis of benevolence, and as good corporate citizens, to help fund non-profit organizations. (shrink)

In his quest to solve 'the ever-disquieting riddle of existence', Schopenhauer explored almost every dimension of human existence, developing a darkly compelling worldview that found deep resonance in contemporary literature, music, philosophy, and psychology. This is the first comprehensive biography of Schopenhauer written in English. Placing him in his historical and philosophical contexts, David E. Cartwright tells the story of Schopenhauer's life to convey the full range of his philosophy. He offers a fully documented portrait in which he explores (...) Schopenhauer's fractured family life, his early formative influences, his critical loyalty to Kant, his personal interactions with Fichte and Goethe, his ambivalent relationship with Schelling, his contempt for Hegel, his struggle to make his philosophy known, and his reaction to his late-arriving fame. (shrink)

Discussions of “indeterminacy” customarily distinguish two putative types: semantic indeterminacy (SI)—indeterminacy that’s somehow the product of the semantics of our words/concepts—and metaphysical indeterminacy (MI)—indeterminacy that exists as a mind/language-independent feature of reality itself. A popular and influential thought among philosophers is that all indeterminacy must be SI. In this paper we challenge this thought. Our challenge is guided by the question: What, exactly, does it take for a case of indeterminacy to count as SI? We argue that the only satisfactory (...) answer to this question must take SI to be grounded in a more basic type of MI. We conclude that SI cannot be made sense of without implicating MI. If there’s any indeterminacy, there must be indeterminacy in the world itself. (shrink)

The current literature on indeterminacy centers around two projects. One concerns the logic of indeterminacy; the other concerns its nature or source. The aim of this paper is to introduce, motivate and go some way toward addressing a new, third project: that of providing what I call a minimal characterization of indeterminacy. An MC, to a first approximation, is a relatively pre-theoretical characterization of indeterminacy that is neutral between the various substantive theories of the nature and logic of indeterminacy. An (...) MC thus captures a generic sense of indeterminacy that, at least in principle, is recognized by all parties to the debate over the phenomenon’s underlying nature and logic. I begin by introducing the concept of an MC and outlining some of the main theoretical virtues of providing an MC. I then establish some desiderata on a suitable MC, and use these desiderata to rule out various initially attractive proposals. In the final part of the paper I sketch the beginnings of my own MC and defend it against objections. (shrink)

We are reporting on how involved the mentor was in promoting responsible research in cases of research misconduct. We reviewed the USPHS misconduct files of the Office of Research Integrity. These files are created by Institutions who prosecute a case of possible research misconduct; ORI has oversight review of these investigations. We explored the role of the mentor in the cases of trainee research misconduct on three specific behaviors that we believe mentors should perform with their trainee: (1) review source (...) data, (2) teach specific research standards and (3) minimize stressful work situations. We found that almost three quarters of the mentors had not reviewed the source data and two thirds had not set standards. These two behaviors are positively correlated. We did not see convincing evidence in the records that mentors were causing stress, but it was apparent in the convicted trainees’ confessions that over 50% experienced some kind of stress. Secondary data, while not created for this research purpose, allows us to look at concrete research behaviors that are otherwise not very researchable. We believe it is important for mentors and institutions to devote more attention to teaching mentors about the process of education and their responsibilities in educating the next generation of scientists. This becomes a critical issue for large research groups who need to determine who is in charge educating, supervising and assuring data integrity. (shrink)

A property analysis of the U.K. Biobank reveals a new imagination of the genomic biobank as a national commonpool resource. U.K. Biobank's treatment of property and governance exhibit both strengths and weaknesses that may be instructive to genome project planners around the world.

Although scientific and commercial excitement about genomic biobanks has subsided since the biotech bust in 2000, they continue to fascinate life scientists, bioethicists, and politicians alike. Indeed, these assemblages of personal health information, human DNA, and heterogeneous capital have become and remain important events in the ethics and politics of the life sciences. For starters, they continue to reveal and produce the central scientific, technological, and economic paradigms so ascendant in biology today: genome, infotech, and market. Biobanks also illustrate what (...) might be called the new distributive politics of biomedical research. Within those politics, the commodification of persons – or at the very least, of their informational representations – has challenged the ontological, ethical, and political underpinnings of the social contract between researchers and their human research subjects. In brief, biobanks are unsettling relations between genes, tissue, medical records, and persons. But it is also clear that these relations are increasingly being restructured by new rights of control, access, exclusion, and use known as “property,” both material and intellectual. (shrink)