In the following essay, I consider the character, and implications, of the idea of God in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. I first consider the idea of God in the Critique of Pure Reason, in which it is first established within the systematic structure of Kant’s critical philosophy. In this context, I show that Kant recognized, depicted, and subjected to critique not one, but two such ideas or concepts of God: to evince this point, I examine the more thorough treatment of the (...) concept of God contained in the Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion. I then suggest that the full significance of this critique can be comprehended by tracing its effects across the series of texts that constitutes Kant’s philosophy of religion as a unified whole. Herein, I cannot accomplish such a synoptic view: the positive position of the “postulates” of God and the soul in the Critique of Practical Reason, and the “definition of the concept of religion” in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, for example, will not be considered. Herein, I focus on the Conflict of the Faculties, through which late text I hope to advance a more ample critical context for this, Kant’s redefinition and reposition of the idea of God, in both an intellectual and an institutional acceptation. While in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant attacks rational theology as such, in the Conflict of the Faculties he attacks the rational and biblical theologian, and the place thereof both in an intra- and an extrauniversity economy. This application, then, evinces the significance of Kant’s idea of God as an element not only of his philosophy of religion narrowly construed, but also as an element of his philosophy of culture more broadly construed. In conclusion, I reflect on the importance of this second, broad acceptation of Kant’s philosophy of religion for contemporary work in the field. (shrink)

The title already announces Henrich’s methodological reorientation, from the trajectory von Kant bis Hegel, to a constellation of post-Kantian theoretical philosophies comprehended as “three comparable and competing positions [those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel] that cannot be reduced to each other”. Chapters 1 through 3 provide the context for the later content of the work by introducing the theme of the formal interdependence of mind and world, of “internal experience” and our experience of a law-governed world external to us. This (...) co-relation Henrich understands as fundamental to both Kant’s own and post-Kantian philosophy, theoretical and practical. Henrich takes as basic “the insight that mental activity always implies a world within which such activity occurs.” This yields the claim that “the concept of mind as the subject of knowledge is not possible without the idea of a world that laws govern”. Henrich then adumbrates the ways in which Kant’s account of the structure and dynamics of this relation were taken to be either problematic or insufficient in theoretical philosophy between Kant and Hegel. (shrink)

Michel Henry’s “Destruction ontologique” does not interpret itself. In the following interpretive essay, I will attempt to articulate its basic structure, to address its principal engagements, and, on this basis, to interpret its defining themes and positions. In the course of this attempt, I will comment also on the importance of this work in the context of Henry’s œuvre, and contemporary scholarship thereupon. One need not accept every assertion, or agree with every position, in this article to recognize its importance. (...) This importance is both greater, and different, than the reader may expect. (shrink)

In this paper, the thematic context for Fichte’s early concern with the character of the forms of intuition, and specifically inner intuition, is adumbrated. This context is provided by means of a brief exposition of Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense, and its dual role; its positive role in the “order of (synthetic) cognition” or ordo cognoscendi, and its negative role in the critique of Seelenlehre or “doctrine of the soul.” It is then argued, on this (...) basis, that Fichte’s critique of Kant’s doctrine can serve as a principle for our understanding both of the context for, and the content of, Fichte’s early, propaedeutic writings, and thus of the character of the development of post-Kantian theoretical philosophy and doctrine of knowledge. The paper develops in three parts; through (1) an introduction, in which the importance of the theme to the development of German idealism is intimated, to (2) an exposition of the basic theses of Kant’s Sinnenlehre in the Critique of Pure Reason, and to (3) a summary of Fichte’s critique thereof, as this is set out in the Grundriss. (shrink)

In his commentary, Oaksford makes two main claims: (1) that the externalisation method used by Green, Over, and Pyne (1997) enforces the correlation observed between probability estimates and selection, and (2) that these estimates support the prediction of a downward revision of P(p) when P(p) > P(q). In this reply, we rebut claim 1 by describing the instructions more comprehensively, and claim 2 by reiterating the importance of making certain theoretical distinctions which Oaksford does not make. Our interest is (...) the psychological process of reaching decision: externalisation methods provide a means of exploring this process and of assessing the value of Bayesian approaches. (shrink)

Mesoscale modeling is often considered merely as a practical strategy used when information on lower-scale details is lacking, or when there is a need to make models cognitively or computationally tractable. Without dismissing the importance of practical constraints for modeling choices, we argue that mesoscale models should not just be considered as abbreviations or placeholders for more “complete” models. Because many systems exhibit different behaviors at various spatial and temporal scales, bottom-up approaches are almost always doomed to fail. Mesoscale models (...) capture aspects of multi-scale systems that cannot be parameterized by simple averaging of lower-scale details. To understand the behavior of multi-scale systems, it is essential to identify mesoscale parameters that “code for” lower-scale details in a way that relate phenomena intermediate between microscopic and macroscopic features. We illustrate this point using examples of modeling of multi-scale systems in materials science and biology, where identification of material parameters such as stiffness or strain is a central step. The examples illustrate important aspects of a so-called “middle-out” modeling strategy. Rather than attempting to model the system bottom-up, one starts at intermediate scales where systems exhibit behaviors distinct from those at the atomic and continuum scales. One then seeks to upscale and downscale to gain a more complete understanding of the multi-scale system. The cases highlight how parameterization of lower-scale details not only enables tractable modeling but is also central to understanding functional and organizational features of multi-scale systems. (shrink)

Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

Are the words that a novelist uses adequate to his or her elusive subject&—the human condition? Are they pertinent, accurate, invariably fair, unflinchingly honest? Or do the novelist's words execute essentially formal maneuvers, engaging our interest through their patterns rather than their reach? And what about a possible third, synthesizing option? Robert W. Greene discovers that the two apparently divergent intentions in question (metalinguistic vs. moralistic) often paradoxically coexist in French fiction. Also, no doubt because it is more consistently self-conscious (...) than that of any previous era, the fiction of twentieth-century France seems to illustrate this convergence with special brillance. From L'lmmoralist (1902) to L'Usage de la parole (1980) Greene explores combinations and permutations of moralistic analysis and metalinguistic commentary in a particular sequence of prose narrative. Along the way, he observes Gide, Proust, Malraux, Camus, Duras, and Sarraute, each in his or her own fashion, moving ceaselessly back and forth between soundings of the heart and diagnoses of the tongue. (shrink)

Living organisms are the ultimate survivalists, having evolved phenotypes with unprecedented adaptability, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and versatility compared to human technology. To harness these properties, functional descriptions and design principles from all sources of biodiversity information must be collated − including the hundreds of thousands of possible survival features manifest in natural history museum collections, which represent 12% of total global biodiversity. This requires a consortium of expert biologists from a range of disciplines to convert the observations, data, and hypotheses into (...) the language of engineering. We hope to unite multidisciplinary biologists and natural history museum scientists to maximize the coverage of observations, descriptions, and hypotheses relating to adaptation and function across biodiversity, to make it technologically useful. This is to be achieved by developments in meta‐ taxonomic classification, phylogenetics, systematics, biological materials research, structure and morphological characterizations, and ecological data gathering from the collections − the aim being to identify and catalogue features essential for good biomimetic design. (shrink)

Top-down causation is often taken to be a metaphysically suspicious type of causation that is found in a few complex systems, such as in human mind-body relations. However, as Ellis and others have shown, top-down causation is ubiquitous in physics as well as in biology. Top-down causation occurs whenever specific dynamic behaviors are realized or selected among a broader set of possible lower-level states. Thus understood, the occurrence of dynamic and structural patterns in physical and biological systems presents a problem (...) for reductionist positions. We illustrate with examples of universality and functional equivalence classes how higher-level behaviors can be multiple realized by distinct lower-level systems or states. Multiple realizability in both contexts entails what Ellis calls “causal slack” between levels, or what others understand as relative explanatory autonomy. To clarify these notions further, we examine procedures for upscaling in multi-scale modeling. We argue that simple averaging strategies for upscaling only work for simplistic homogenous systems, because of the scale-dependency of characteristic behaviors in multi-scale systems. We suggest that this interpretation has implications for what Ellis calls mechanical top-down causation, as it presents a stronger challenge to reductionism than typically assumed. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this book, Arnold Green discusses the standards that define moral appraisal. Standards assume roles of conduct which can be imposed during socialization only within the traditional family. Otherwise, the basis of order, which is not collective but individual, is undermined by the extreme degree of disaffection we now face. All the panaceas offered, and in some cases enforced, by one intellectual minority or another, will inevitably have a destructive impact upon our communication with one another. Contents: Perception and (...) Ideology; Self and Family; Relativism and the Family Institution; Religion as Vital Force; Social Class and Prejudice. (shrink)

This paper was originally a discussion proposal but data has been collected since June and we would like to share some results in this proceedings article. Our goal is to link the CSR literature with the social entrepreneurship literature by studying the growth of an international organization and discuss our methodologies and findings to date.

The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

We examine how opinion on a controversial real-world issue shifts as a function of reading relevant arguments and engaging in a specific mental simulation about a future, fictional state of affairs involving the target issue. Individuals thought either counterfactually about a future event (“if only X had not happened …”) or semifactually about it (“even if X had not happened …”). In Experiment 1, as expected, individuals became more in favour of a course of action (the electronic tagging of children) (...) after reading relevant supporting arguments. They also became more in favour after they thought counterfactually how a negative future event could have been avoided if only electronic tagging had not been banned some years earlier. The effects of argument relevance and type of mental simulation were additive. Using a similar procedure but a different target issue (whether the UK should join the Economic Monetary Union), Experiment 2 confirmed that the type of mental simulation exerts a substantial effect on the impact of relevant arguments. Much weaker effects arose when the mental simulation was not relevant to the target issue. We set and discuss our results in terms of dual-processing theory. (shrink)

Two experiments, using a mock legal case, confirmed the causal role of arguments in verdict decisions and explored the process involved. Experiment 1 showed that verdicts varied with the strength of counter-arguments and Experiment 2 showed that the use of background information that undermined such arguments determined the verdict reached. Such results confirm the causal role of arguments but do not speak to the representations constructed. In both experiments we analysed the reasons proposed for verdicts. Participants generally represented the state (...) of affairs, and conjectured state of affairs, to which the arguments referred. Experiment 2 also asked participants about the number of causal possibilities they envisaged. Confidence in the verdict was moderated by the strength of counter-arguments but in different ways for those who envisaged a single causal account as opposed to two causal accounts. In the former case, confidence decreased with the rated strength of counter-arguments. In the latter case, confidence increased. We suggest that verdicts are abductive explanations of the events generated through a process of mental simulation. (shrink)

Two experiments using a realistic version of the selection task examined the relationship between participants' probability estimates of finding a counter example and their selections. Experiment 1 used everyday categories in the context of a scenario to determine whether or not the number of instances in a category affected the estimated probability of a counter-example. Experiment 2 modified the scenario in order to alter participants' estimates of finding a specific counter-example. Unlike Kirby 1994a, but consistent with his proposals, both studies (...) showed that probability estimates significantly predicted selection. Overall results point to the value of understanding selections in terms of their subjective expected utility. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Advanced Cell Technology's Ethics Advisory Board has been called window dressing for a corporate marketing plan. But the scientists and managers have paid attention, and the lawyers have gone along.

This study examines firms that have experienced an industrial and/or environ-mental crisis and proposes that top management team (TMT) characteristics will affect a firm's ability to minimize the severity of these crisis events. Specifically, heterogeneity in the TMT will exhibit a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship with the severity of firm crises. Our results suggest that a moderate level of age and tenure heterogeneity are positively related to a firm's ability to successfully minimize the severity of crises. Variance in educational backgrounds was (...) unrelated to crisis severity. Functional background heterogeneity exhibited a curvilinear relationship with crisis severity but was not U-shaped as hypothesized. (shrink)

The social impacts of computer technology are often glorified in public discourse, but there is growing concern about its actual effects on society. In this article, we ask: how does “consent” as an analytical framework make visible the social dynamics and power relations in the capture, extraction, and labor of data science knowledge production? We hypothesize that a form of boundary violation in data science workplaces—gender harassment—may correlate with the ways humans’ lived experiences are extracted to produce Big Data. The (...) concept of consent offers a useful way to draw comparisons between gender relations in data science and the means by which machines are trained to learn and reason. Inspired by how Big Tech leaders describe unsupervised machine learning, and the co-optation of “revolutionary” rhetoric they use to do so, we introduce a concept we call “techniques of invisibility.” Techniques of invisibility are the ways in which an extreme imbalance between exposure and opacity, demarcated along fault lines of power, are fabricated and maintained, closing down the possibility for bidirectional transparency in the production and applications of algorithms. Further, techniques of invisibility, which we group into two categories—epistemic injustice and the Brotherhood—include acts of subjection by powerful actors in data science designed to quell resistance to exploitative relations. These techniques may be useful in making further connections between epistemic violence, sexism, and surveillance, sussing out persistent boundary violations in data science to render the social in data science visible, and open to scrutiny and debate. (shrink)

Hardman in press claims that the results of Green and Larking 1995 favour a mental rules theory account of performance in the selection task over a mental model theory account. This reply rebuts his claim.