Criminal law and the proceedings surrounding it work, at least in theory, much like an author works when writing a play or a novel. Both the lawyer and the writer follow traditional formulae that allow them to create and express a vision of reality. When done well, the reality created is virtually seamless. This, however, is the point at which law and literary works diverge. Although we embrace creativity in literary endeavors, we would prefer that the foundation of our legal (...) system be something more substantial. Unfortunately, where US. criminal HIV exposure statutes are concerned, there appears to be little if any concrete connection between proscribed behaviors and what we know about HIV transmission risk. Twenty-four states in the U.S. make it a criminal offense for a person who has HIV to expose another to the virus through consensual sexual activities. The relationship between the activities prohibited by these laws and actual risk of virus transmission is tenuous at best. (shrink)

Criminal law and the proceedings surrounding it work, at least in theory, much like an author works when writing a play or a novel. Both the lawyer and the writer follow traditional formulae that allow them to create and express a vision of reality. When done well, the reality created is virtually seamless. This, however, is the point at which law and literary works diverge. Although we embrace creativity in literary endeavors, we would prefer that the foundation of our legal (...) system be something more substantial. Unfortunately, where US. criminal HIV exposure statutes are concerned, there appears to be little if any concrete connection between proscribed behaviors and what we know about HIV transmission risk. Twenty-four states in the U.S. make it a criminal offense for a person who has HIV to expose another to the virus through consensual sexual activities. The relationship between the activities prohibited by these laws and actual risk of virus transmission is tenuous at best. (shrink)

Twenty-four U.S. states have enacted HIV exposure laws that prohibit HIV-positive persons from engaging in sexual activities with partners to whom they have not disclosed their HIV status. There is little standardization among existing HIV exposure laws, which vary substantially with respect to the sexual activities that are prohibited without prior serostatus disclosure. Logical analysis and mathematical modeling were used to explore the HIV prevention effectiveness of two types of HIV exposure laws: “strict” laws that require HIV-positive persons to disclose (...) their serostatus to prospective partners prior to any sexual activity and “flexible” laws that require seropositive status disclosure only prior to high-risk sex . These laws were compared relative to each other and to a no-law alternative. The results of these analyses indicate that, under most circumstances, both strict and flexible exposure laws can be expected to reduce HIV transmission risk relative to the no-law alternative, with flexible exposure laws producing the greater reduction in risk. This study demonstrates how logical analysis and mathematical modeling techniques can make an important contribution to the construction of a rational basis for decisions about a highly contested public health policy issue. (shrink)

Twenty-four U.S. states have enacted HIV exposure laws that prohibit HIV-positive persons from engaging in sexual activities with partners to whom they have not disclosed their HIV-status. From a public health perspective, HIV serostatus exposure laws can be viewed as structural interventions that seek to limit the spread of HIV by acting at the policy level. A central premise of these laws is that informed partners are more likely to protect themselves by declining sex, by substituting less risky activities for (...) higher-risk ones, or by using condoms, than are uninformed partners. However, the effectiveness of these laws at preventing HIV transmission is not known.There is little standardization among existing HIV exposure laws, which vary substantially with respect to the sexual activities that are prohibited without prior serostatus disclosure. Among the strictest laws are those in Arkansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio which mandate disclosure prior to almost any type of sexual contact. (shrink)

There are three theories of luck in the literature, each of which tends to appeal to philosophers pursuing different concerns. These are the probability, modal, and control views. I will argue that all three theories are irreparably defective; not only are there counterexamples to each of the three theories of luck, but there are three previously undiscussed classes of counterexamples against them. These are the problems of lucky necessities, skillful luck, and diachronic luck. I conclude that a serious reevaluation of (...) the role of luck in philosophy is called for. (shrink)

The present paper offers an analogical support for the use of rational intuition, namely, if we regard sense perception as a mental faculty that (in general) delivers justified beliefs, then we should treat intuition in the same manner. I will argue that both the cognitive marks of intuition and the role it traditionally plays in epistemology are strongly analogous to that of perception, and barring specific arguments to the contrary, we should treat rational intuition as a source of prima facie (...) justified beliefs. There are two main arguments against the intuition-perception analogy that I will consider and find lacking. First is that while we do use perceptions as evidence to believe certain propositions, in fact no one ever does use intuition evidentially. The second argument, stemming from experimental philosophy, grants that philosophers do use intuitions evidentially, but this practice is fatally unlike that of perception, in that perception yields warranted beliefs and intuition does not. (shrink)

Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits.

Motive and Rightness is the first book-length attempt to answer the question, Does the motive of an action ever make a difference in whether that action is morally right or wrong? Steven Sverdlik argues that the answer is yes. His book examines the major theories now being discussed by moral philosophers to see if they can provide a plausible account of the relevance of motives to rightness and wrongness. Sverdlik argues that consequentialism gives a better account of these matters (...) than Kantianism or certain important forms of virtue ethics. In carrying out the investigation Sverdlik presents an analysis of the nature of motives, and he considers their relations to normative judgments and intentions. A chapter is devoted to analyzing the extent to which motives are 'available' to rational agents, and the importance of feelings and unconscious motives. Historical figures such as Kant, Bentham, Mill and Ross are discussed, as well as contemporary writers like Korsgaard, Herman, Hurka, Slote and Hursthouse. Motive and Rightness is unusual in its interweaving of ethical theory, both historical and contemporary, with moral psychology, action theory, and psychology. (shrink)

The present paper poses a new problem for moral luck. Defenders of moral luck uncritically rely on a broader theory of luck known as the control theory or the lack of control theory. However, there are are two other analyses of luck in the literature that dominate discussion in epistemology, namely the probability and modal theories. However, moral luck is nonexistent under the probability and modal accounts, but the control theory cannot explain epistemic luck. While some have posited that “luck” (...) is ambiguous, so that one theory of luck is operative with epistemic luck and a different theory works for moral luck, there are both semantic and philosophical reasons to reject luck ambiguity. Defenders of moral luck must engage with the broader literature on luck and either provide a comprehensive defense of the control theory or concede that moral luck is not a genuine thing in its own right. (shrink)

Humanity has thrown everything we have at implacable luck—novel theologies, entire philosophical movements, fresh branches of mathematics—and yet we seem to have gained only the smallest edge on the power of fortune. The Myth of Luck tells us why we have been fighting an unconquerable foe. Taking us on a guided tour of one of our oldest concepts, we begin in ancient Greece and Rome, considering how Plato, Plutarch, and the Stoics understood luck, before entering the theoretical world of probability (...) and exploring how luck relates to theology, sports, ethics, gambling, knowledge, and present-day psychology. As we travel across traditions, times and cultures, we come to realize that it’s not that as soon as we solve one philosophical problem with luck that two more appear, like heads on a hydra, but rather that the monster is altogether mythological. We cannot master luck because there is nothing to defeat: luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion. By introducing us to compelling arguments and convincing reasons that explain why there is no such thing as luck, we finally see why in a very real sense we make our own luck, that luck is our own doing. The Myth of Luck helps us to regain our own agency in the world - telling the entertaining story of the philosophy and history of luck along the way. (shrink)

A discussion of Rose's new theory which argues that life depends on the interactions within cells, organisms and ecosystems and is not wholly dependent on DNA.

There are two main theories about the persistence of objects through time: endurantism and perdurantism. Endurantists hold that objects are three-dimensional, have only spatial parts, and wholly exist at each moment of their existence. Perdurantists hold that objects are four-dimensional, have temporal parts, and only partly exist at each moment of their existence. In this paper we argue that endurantism is poorly suited to describe the persistence of objects in a world governed by Special Relativity, and can accommodate a relativistic (...) world only at a high price, one that we argue is not worth paying. Perdurantism, on the other hand, fits beautifully with our current scientific understanding of the world. Furthermore, we make this argument from implications of the Lorentz transformations, without appeals to geometrical interpretations, dimensional analogies, or auxillary premises like temporal eternalism. (shrink)

_A Companion to Relativism_ presents original contributions from leading scholars that address the latest thinking on the role of relativism in the philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics. Features original contributions from many of the leading figures working on various aspects of relativism Presents a substantial, broad range of current thinking about relativism Addresses relativism from many of the major subfields of philosophy, including philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics.

When do descriptive regularities become prescriptive norms? We examined children's and adults' use of group regularities to make prescriptive judgments, employing novel groups that engaged in morally neutral behaviors. Participants were introduced to conforming or non-conforming individuals. Children negatively evaluated non-conformity, with negative evaluations declining with age. These effects were replicable across competitive and cooperative intergroup contexts and stemmed from reasoning about group regularities rather than reasoning about individual regularities. These data provide new insights into children's group concepts and have (...) important implications for understanding the development of stereotyping and norm enforcement. (shrink)

The idea of nirvana is alluring but elusive for non-specialists and specialists alike. Offering his own interpretation of key texts, Steven Collins explains the idea in a new, accessible way - as a concept, as an image, and as an element in the process of narrating both linear and cyclical time. Exploring nirvana from literary and philosophical perspectives, he argues that it has a specific role: to provide 'the sense of an ending' in both the systematic and the narrative (...) thought of the Pali imaginaire. Translations from a number of texts, including some dealing with past and future Buddhas, enable the reader to access source material directly. This book will be essential reading for students of Buddhism, but will also have much to teach anyone concerned with Asia and its religions, or indeed anyone with an interest in the ideas of eternal life or timelessness. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

Philosophers have developed three theories of luck: the probability theory, the modal theory, and the control theory. To help assess these theories, we conducted an empirical investigation of luck attributions. We created eight putative luck scenarios and framed each in either a positive or a negative light. Furthermore, we placed the critical luck event at the beginning, middle, or end of the scenario to see if the location of the event influenced luck attributions. We found that attributions of luckiness were (...) significantly influenced by the framing of the scenario and by the location of the critical event. Positively framing an event led to significantly higher lucky ratings than negatively framing the same exact event. And the closer a negative event was placed toward the end of a scenario, the more unlucky the event was rated. Overall, our results raise the possibility that there is no such thing as luck and thereby pose serious challenges to the three prominent theories of luck. We instead propose that luck may be a cognitive illusion, a mere narrative device used to frame stories of success or failure. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotional distractors can impair perception of subsequently presented targets, a phenomenon called emotion-induced blindness. Do emotional distractors lose their power to disrupt perception when appearing with increased frequency, perhaps due to desensitisation or enhanced recruitment of proactive control? Non-emotional tasks, such as the Stroop, have revealed that high frequency distractors or conflict lead to reduced interference, and distractor frequency appears to modulate attentional capture by emotional distractors in spatial attention tasks. But emotion-induced blindness is thought to reflect perceptual competition between (...) targets and emotional distractors, and it is unclear whether high frequency emotional stimuli cause less disruption at this relatively early stage of processing. In four experiments, participants searched streams of images for a rotated target image. A negative or neutral distractor appeared before the target, and their relative frequency was manipulated. Across all exper... (shrink)

In the present paper, I offer a new argument to show that presentism about time is incompatible with time travel. Time travel requires leaving the present, which, under presentism, contains all of reality. Therefore to leave the present moment is to leave reality entirely; i.e. to go out of existence. Presentist “time travel” is therefore best seen as a form of suicide, not as a mode of transportation. Eternalists about time do not face the same difficulty, and time travel is (...) compossible with eternalism. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy relies heavily on the use of rational intuition to establish theses and conclusions. This essay takes up the matter of intuition and argues for a stunning conclusion: appeal to rational intuition is epistemically justified only if a form of foundationalism is true. This type of foundationalism is the thesis that there is at least one proposition whose justification depends on nothing other than itself. The article also argues that unless we can establish that some intuitions are justified, philosophy (...) as an enterprise that provides non-empirical knowledge is impossible. Not to put too fine a point on it then: philosophy is possible only if foundationalism is true. Whether this should be construed as the strongest possible defense of foundationalism, or the greatest objection to the pretensions of philosophy is left to the reader. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers, including A.J. Ayer and Derek Parfit, have offered the evidentiary requirements for believing human personality can reincarnate, and hence that Cartesian dualism is true. At least one philosopher, Robert Almeder, has argued that there are actual cases which satisfy these requirements. I argue in this paper that even if we grant the empirical data-a large concession-belief in reincarnation is still unjustified. The problem is that without a theoretical account of the alleged cases of reincarnation, the empirical evidence (...) alone does not license giving up materialist theories of the mind. (shrink)

This paper proposes a contextualist solution to the puzzle about free will. It argues that the context-sensitivity of statements about freedom of the will follows from the correct analysis of these statements. Because the analysis is independently plausible, the contextualism is warranted not merely in virtue of its capacity to solve the puzzle.

In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

This paper argues that recent treatments of ethics in sport have accorded too much importance to the promotion and portrayal of a sport’s excellences, and too little to the consent of participants First, I consider and reject a fundamental challenge to the idea that consent should play a central role in determining the morality of action in sport – namely, Sean McAleer’s argument to the effect that consent is incapable of rendering normally impermissible actions permissible in sport. I then offer (...) a preliminary examination of the proper relation in the moral evaluation of action in sport between considerations of consent and ‘internalist’ considerations regarding the nature and purpose of sport. Taking as my starting point J.S. Russell’s treatment of this topic, I argue that consent is the more weighty, and in many cases the more fundamental, value and that when it conflicts with internalist considerations, it is consent that takes moral priority. (shrink)

The ability of the Society of Jesus to engage in a broad and enduring tradition of scientific activity is here addressed in terms of its programmatic commitment to the consolidation and extension of the Catholic confession and its mastery of the administrative apparatus necessary to operate long-distance networks. The Society's early move into two major apostolates, one in education and the other in the overseas missions, brought Jesuits into regular contact with the educated elites of Europe and at the same (...) time placed the Society's missionaries in remote parts of the natural world. The modes of organization of travel and communication required by the Society's long-distance networks not only facilitated scientific communication and collaboration within the order, it also provided Jesuits with the resources they needed to engage successfully in 'ministries among the learned'. Evidence of a sustained attempt by Jesuit authors to assume the role of Kulturträger is found in the several genres of scientific publications that dominate the Society's scientific corpus. Thus the Society's early recognition of the "apostolic value" of scientific publications in recruiting friends and allies among Europe's intellectual elites, I argue, allowed a robust interest in natural knowledge to emerge as a legitimate part of the Jesuit vocation. (shrink)

In a number of publications, Gerald Gaus has presented an ambitious account of political morality that gives the ideal of public justification pride of place. This article critically discusses Gaus’s characterization and defense of the ideal of public justification in politics. It also presents an account and an argument in support of first-person political justification.

In this article, I explore the field of metatheory with two goals. My first goal is to present a clear understanding of what metatheory “is” based on a collection of over twenty definitions of the term. My second goal is to present a preliminary investigation into how metatheory might be understood as a science. From that perspective, I present some strengths and weaknesses of our field and suggest steps to make metatheory more rigorous, more scientific, and so make more of (...) a contribution to the larger community of the social sciences. (shrink)

Pre-publication certification through peer review stands in need of philosophical examination. In this paper, philosopher-psychologist Steven James Bartlett recalls the arguments marshalled four hundred years ago by English poet John Milton against restraint of publication by the "gatekeepers of publication," AKA today's peer reviewers.

This is the introduction to Self-reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, edited by Steven James Bartlett and Peter Suber. The introduction identifies and describes a wide range of varieties of self-reference, some which have become important topics of investigation in philosophy, and others which are of significance in other disciplines. /// The anthology is the first published collection of essays to give a sense of depth and breadth of current work on this fascinating and important set of issues. The volume contains (...) 13 essays by well-known authors in this field, written on special invitation for this collection. In addition, the book includes the first general bibliography of works on self-reference, comprising more than 1,200 citations. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how methods of investigation can allow us either to appreciate the intact cognitive and social abilities of people with Alzheimer’s disease or unwittingly obscure those same abilities. Specifically, I shall assert that (1) the biomedical- quantitative approach, while being generally appropriate for drug efficacy studies, does not allow us to appreciate the many significant strengths possessed by people diagnosed with dementia, (2) qualitative/narrative approaches do so admirably, and (3) understanding the cognitive and social strengths of (...) people diagnosed is of paramount importance for developing optimal care giving approaches and reveals strikingly the shared humanity of those diagnosed with dementia and those deemed healthy. (shrink)

I call for “postnaturalism” in environmental philosophy—for an environmental philosophy that no longer employs the concept nature. First, the term is too ambiguous and philosophically dangerous and, second, McKibben and others who argue that nature has already ended are probably right—except that perhaps nature has always already ended. Poststructuralism, environmental history, and recent science studies all point in the same direction: the world we inhabit is always already one transformed by human practices. Environmental questions are social and political ones, to (...) be answered by us and not by nature. Many will worry that this conclusion leads to environmentally pernicious consequences, and to problems of relativism and idealism, but I argue that it does not. Practices are real, not ideal, and not all practices are equal: those that acknowledge human responsibility for transforming the world are preferable to those that don’t. Environmental harm results when we do not recognize our own responsibility for the world our practices create. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Within the context of national traditions in colonial science, the scientific activities of Jesuit missionaries present us with a unique combination of challenges. The multinational membership of the Society of Jesus gave its missionaries access to virtually every Portuguese, Spanish, and French colony. The Society was thus compelled to engage an astonishingly diverse array of cultural and natural environments, and that diversity of contexts is reflected in the range and the complexity of Jesuit scientific practices. Underlying that complexity, however, (...) was what I see as a unique combination of institutional structures; namely, European colleges, overseas mission stations, and the regular circulation of personnel and information. With this institutional framework as a backdrop, I briefly trace what I see as the most salient themes emerging from recent studies of Jesuit overseas science: 1) the Societys ability to use scientific expertise to its advantage amid the complex web of dependencies upon which it missionary activities rested; 2) the ability of its missionaries to become intimate with a wide range of cultures and to appropriate natural knowledge held by indigenous peoples, especially in the fields of material medica and geography; and 3) the different ways Jesuits used published accounts of “remote nature” (i.e., natural histories of overseas colonies) to advance their corporate and religious causes. (shrink)

From a Kuhnian perspective, a paradigmatic revolution in management science will significantly improve our understanding of the business world and show practitioners (including managers and consultants) how to become much more effective. Without an objective measure of revolution, however, the door is open for spurious claims of revolutionary advance. Such claims cause confusion among scholars and practitioners and reduce the legitimacy of university management programs. Metatheoretical methods, based on insights from systems theory, provide new tools for analyzing the structure of (...) theory. Propositional analysis is one such method that may be applied to objectively quantify the formal robustness of management theory. In this chapter, I use propositional analysis to analyze different versions of a theory as it evolves across 1,500 years of history. This analysis shows how the increasing robustness of theory anticipates the arrival of revolution and suggests an innovative and effective way for scholars and practitioners to develop and evaluate theories of management. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging and field-changing work Steven Collins argues that the study of Theravada Buddhism needs to separated from the rather dated and stagnant field of textual history and approached both "civilizationally" and as a "practice of the self." By civilizationally, he means that instead of seeing Buddhism as a set of "original" teachings of the so-called historical Buddha from the 5th century BC to the present, it should rather be viewed as an effort by many teachers and visionaries (...) over time to make sense of what it means to lead a worthy life. The purveyors of Buddhist philosophy did not consider themselves to be preservers of an archaic body of rules and ethical guidelines; they were designing a dynamic way of living and confronting human problems in a timeless way. Using approaches to the very idea of the self promoted by Foucault and Hadot, he compares Theravada Buddhist ways of understanding and "practicing" the self to modernist and postmodernist ideas about "philosophy as a way of life." Rather than applying positivist and historicist approaches, Buddhism should be assessed philosophically, literarily, and ethically, using its own vocabulary and rhetorical tools. Treated in this manner, Buddhist notions of the self can be applied to contemporary ideas of self-care and the promotion of human flourishing. The book covers topics such as spiritual practice, ultimate versus provisional truth, systematic versus narrative thinking, meditation versus virtue, and history versus philosophy. It is a bold and complex way of understanding the impact that Buddhist ways of knowing can have in the world today, bringing them into conversation with modern psychology, literary studies, ethics, gender and sexuality studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

This book provides an innovative, critical textual and literary analysis, in light of Song dynasty (960-11279) Chinese cultural and intellectual historical trends, of the Blue Cliff Record, the seminal Chan/Zen Buddhist collection of commentaries on one hundred gongan/koan cases long celebrated for its intricate and articulate interpretative methods.

In his late work, Rawls makes strong claims about the status of political liberty. These claims, if accepted, would have significant implications for the content of "justice as fairness." I discuss the nature of these claims, clarifying Rawls's fair value guarantee of the political liberties and critically discussing the arguments that he and others have given for assigning special importance to the political liberties. I conclude that justice as fairness, properly understood, is not a deeply democratic conception of justice.

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can (...) serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

Bell’s theorem is purported to demonstrate the impossibility of a local “hidden variable” theory underpinning quantum mechanics. It relies on the well-known assumption of ‘locality’, and also on a little-examined assumption called ‘statistical independence’ (SI). Violations of this assumption have variously been thought to suggest “backward causation”, a “conspiracy” on the part of nature, or the denial of “free will”. It will be shown here that these are spurious worries, and that denial of SI simply implies nonlocal correlation between spacelike (...) degrees of freedom. Lorentz-invariant theories in which SI does not hold are easily constructed: two are exhibited here. It is conjectured, on this basis, that quantum-mechanical phenomena may be modeled by a local theory after all. (shrink)