In an article published in 2003, Klaus Jacobi—using texts partially edited in De Rijk's _Logica Modernorum_—demonstrated that twelfth-century logic contains a tradition of reflecting about some of the transcendental names. In addition to reinforcing Jacobi's thesis with other texts, this contribution aims to demonstrate two points: 1) That twelfth-century logical reflection about transcendental terms has its origin in the _logica vetus_, and especially in a passage from Porphyry _Isagoge_ and in Boethius's commentary on it. In spite of the (...) loss of the major part of the Aristotelian corpus, the twelfth-century masters in logic still received some Aristotelian theses concerning the notions of one and being via Porphyry and Boethius; on the basis of such theses, they were able to elaborate a sort of proto-theory of the transcendentals as trans-categorical terms. 2) That this theory is centred on the idea that there exists a particular group of names which have the property that they can be said of everything; this group includes "being", "one", "thing" and "something". Twelfth-century masters in logic try to question the thesis that these terms are equivocal, although they do not deny it completely. (shrink)

In his profound and deeply personal new book, New York Times bestselling author Rob Bell explores the endless dynamic questions and connections that have shaped his life to provide powerful insight into understanding your purpose and place in the world. Our home is a universe of endless dynamic connections that never stop inviting us to participate in the great mysterious love at the heart of it all. Everything is Spiritual is a brief history of how these ideas (...) about creation, love, and connection shaped the author--and can shape every one of us. In this book, Rob Bell explores the concept that what people really want, more than anything, is to understand their purpose here--so much so that it gives them an abiding sense of awe and wonder. And when you embrace where and who you come from and your wounds and pains and regrets, you will discover that there's an invitation lurking there in the mess of life: an invitation to expand just like the universe has been doing for 13 billions years. There is a space beyond all the parts and divisions and differences and polarization where you see that it's all one connected whole and it's all rigged in favor of your growth, expansion, and joy. (shrink)

The idea that perceptual experience is transparent is generally used by naïve realists and externalist representationalists to promote an externalist account of the metaphysics of perceptual experience. It is claimed that the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience can be explained solely with reference to the externally located objects and properties which (for the representationalist) we represent, or which (for the naïve realist) partly constitute our experience. Internalist qualia theorists deny this, and claim that the phenomenal (...) character of our perceptual experience is internally constituted. However, my concern in this paper is not with the metaphysical debate, but with transparency as a phenomenological feature of perceptual experience. Qualia theorists have presented a number of examples of perceptual experiences which, they claim, do not even seem to be transparent; these experiences involve objects or properties which seem to be internally realized. I argue, contrary to the qualia theorist’s claim, that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience can in fact be characterized solely with reference to externally located objects and properties, and the sense in which some features of our perceptual experiences do not seem external is due to cognitive, not perceptual, phenomenology. (shrink)

We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not (...) nonsense, but obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects--whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human--are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything. (shrink)

Following an idea from Gödel and Carnap we show how we can speak with absolute generality even if we cannot quantify with absolute generality.

Whole Brain Emulation has been championed as the most promising, well-defined route to achieving both human-level artificial intelligence and superintelligence. It has even been touted as a viable route to achieving immortality through brain uploading. WBE is not a fringe theory: the doctrine of Computationalism in philosophy of mind lends credence to the in-principle feasibility of the idea, and the standing of the Human Connectome Project makes it appear to be feasible in practice. Computationalism is a popular, independently plausible (...) theory, and Connectomics a well-funded empirical research program, so optimism about WBE is understandable. However, this optimism may be misplaced. This article argues that WBE is, at best, no more compelling than any of the other far-flung routes to achieving superintelligence. Similarly skeptical conclusions are found regarding immortality. The essay concludes with some positive considerations in favor of the Biological Theory of consciousness, as well as morals about the limits of Computationalism in both artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind more generally. (shrink)

From the New York Times bestselling author of Eating the Sun and Lost in Translation, a gorgeously illustrated love letter to everything that is beautiful, and a manifesto for those who are struggling to remember or recognize what beauty is. People are increasingly baffled as to what they can call beautiful, what they should call beautiful, and whether or not they are able to apply beautiful to themselves or to the things around them. Our outdated yet hugely pervasive (...) modern notions of beauty provide one of the greatest sadnesses of all-an intensely human emptiness that we are mistakenly trying to fill with objects and hollow promises. To be able to find our way back to beauty is a deceptively urgent task in the world today. Everyone deserves revelations, the kind that are daily, hugely personal, and very often ephemeral. We are surrounded by beauty-beauty that isn't something we can buy: spiderwebs only seen in the sunlight, the greenish glow of a fox's eyes watching in the dark, or the comforting screech of the subway that takes you to your many futures. Part meditation, part self-help guide, and part interactive journal, Everything, Beautiful explores what beauty is, why it matters, and how we can find it in our everyday lives. Filled with thoughtful, intimate, and brilliant insights, inspirational quotes, breathtaking illustrations, and space for readers to write, draw, and reflect on their own ideas of beauty, Everything, Beautiful is for anyone who feels they cannot point to beauty any longer, are struggling to see it, or feel that it has left them behind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Everything is Breath":Critical Plant Studies' Metaphysics of MixtureElisabeth Weber (bio)In her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin W. Kimmerer contrasts two creation stories that are thoroughly incompatible. One starts with an all-powerful male creator calling the world and its vegetation and animals into existence through words, and forming the first human beings from clay; the other starts with Skywoman tumbling (...) through the air with seeds in her fist from the Tree of Life growing in Skyworld. One ends with the condemnation of woman to give birth in "very severe" pains, with the cursing of the ground ordered to "produce thorns and thistles" as punishment for man who will eat his food only after "painful toil," and the expulsion from the garden; the other ends in gratitude for the collective caring of the animals, with the creation of "a garden for the well-being of all." One includes an original fall from grace whose burden will be passed down from generation to generation; the other acknowledges suffering without a trace of the burden of unearned guilt. One predicts death as a return to the dust from whence mankind was created; the other imagines death as becoming plant and fruit, as becoming gift, a rejoining the spirits of all ancestors, human and others, who surround the living in everything that is. The threat of one is the inexorability of a trajectory "from dust to dust" and the latter's association, with Plato, of something so diffuse that it doesn't merit a concept or idea; the promise of the other is an abiding relationship with all that is, the reciprocity of giving and gratitude, and the gladly assumed responsibility for the "inspirited" land.Kimmerer comments:Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road [...].1 [End Page 117]Cosmologies express collective imaginairies that have evolved over hundreds, even thousands of years. The Iroquois story recounted and rendered accessible by Kimmerer is one of countless creation stories that constitute an "important genre in many preliterate traditions" (Zolbrod 5). Kimmerer suggests that even though the Judeo-Christian creation story may have receded into the background of Western collective consciousness, it plays a role in the planet's devastation. What strikes the reader in the story of Skywoman is the centrality of reciprocity, of relation, and, as the woman's name indicates, the significance of the sky. While this might mean, on planet Earth, the atmosphere–the Earth's sky is blue because of the surrounding atmosphere–the implications of the sky's preponderance reach beyond the planetary into the cosmological. The "sky is not what is above. The sky is everywhere: it is the space and the reality of mixture and movement, the definite horizon starting from which everything has to draw itself" (Coccia 218-219) in order to breathe and live.In order to continue to breathe, breathe in the long-term, the long-term, that is, as Barbara Kingsolver put it in one of her poems, "from a tree's / way of thinking" (7), non-human kin's "way of thinking" will need to play a role in humans' self-understanding. Kyle Whyte underlines that it is not enough to respond with urgency to specific ecological crises (fires, flooding, etc.) alone, but, rather, "urgency must be aimed at addressing ecological and relational tipping points together":U.S. settler colonialism, for example, in a short period of time, inflicted displacement, drastic ecological changes, and lost or disrupted relationships with hundreds of species that indigenous peoples depended on through kinship ties for generations. These changes are more extreme than what many nonindigenous persons fear most about moving beyond... (shrink)

Seemingly contrary ideas of Nirvana are found in early Buddhist literature. Whereas some texts describe one who attains Nirvana as being conscious of everything, others depict Nirvana as a state in which consciousness has no object but emptiness or Nirvana. In this paper I deal with this paradox of Nirvana consciousness by exploring the correlations between several statements in early Buddhist texts. A number of sutta passages are cited to show that they contain doctrinal elements which, when considered (...) collectively, may cast valuable light on how to reconcile this paradox. Two pivotal notions are ‘non-abiding consciousness’ and ‘consciousness that is infinite, pervasive all around’. These two notions are connected to each other and seem to subsume or bridge the two strikingly distinct forms of Nirvana consciousness mentioned above. Nirvana consciousness said to be ‘non-abiding’, which is analogous to ‘without object’, does ‘not abide’ in any objects in the sense that it does not cling to them or rest on them. The ‘infinite, all-pervasive’ consciousness, based on stopping normal consciousness, does not depend on any sense objects, and hence it is unconditioned by them and operates unhindered. Nirvana consciousness thus constitutes the infinite realization free from all conditioning and hindrance. This resonates with the idea that one who attains Nirvana is conscious of everything. (shrink)

September 11, 2001, may have marked the end of the nuclear power era. Although there are still a large numbe of reactors operating worldwide, the idea that there will be a vast new generation of nuclear reactors is no longer valid given the new world reality. Nuclear power will now be dominated by questions of decommissioning, waste storage, cleanup, and the threat reactors pose to our national security because each is a virtual nuclear weapon, offering a myriad of (...) opportunities for potential terrorism. Despite the obvious security risks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently began a program to let the utilities essentially judge their own security capabilities—a form of self-regulation designed to achieve reassuring public relations results, not actual security improvements. Significant and realistic alternatives to nuclear power, including transitional options such as natural gas and large-scale wind, as well as longer term, noncentral station systems, are explored. (shrink)

Philosophy has sometimes been described as the discipline in which you can never be wrong, as the reserve of absentminded professors, aloof academics and purveyors of obscure ideas or interesting opinions. Quite the contrary. Philosophy answers the hard questions: Does everything happen by chance? Is there anything more than matter in the universe? Are humans in the same class as animals? Is there a God? Can we know the correct answer to these questions? The answers to these questions matter. (...) We are all philosophers even though we are not aware of the fact. We each have a set of ultimate priorities and principles, answers to these questions, a big picture that determines our everyday thoughts, decisions, and actions. In this book Brian Cronin uses the ideas of Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, to argue methodically towards a correct, critical, comprehensive worldview, an answer to those big questions which is the precise task of first philosophy. This book is an accessible and readable presentation of Lonergan's metaphysics, a somewhat neglected topic. Science and philosophy are complementary. Scientists answer the concrete, detailed questions about everything around us: the parts. Philosophy integrates all these into a correct worldview of the whole: of everything. (shrink)

More has been said about the Hart-Fuller debate than can be considered healthy or productive even within the precious world of jurisprudential scholarship – too much philosophising about how law has revelled in its own abstractness and narrowness. But the mission of this book is distinctly and determinedly different – it is not to rework these already-rehashed ideas, but to reject them entirely. Rather than add to the massive jurisprudential literature that has been generated by all and sundry, the (...) book criticises and abandons the project that Hart and Fuller set in motion. It contends that the turn that was taken in 1957 has led down a series of cul-de-sacs, blind alleys, and dead-ends to nowhere useful or illuminating. It is more than past time to leave their debate behind and strike out in an entirely new and more promising direction. The book insists that not only law, but also all theorising about law, is political in all its derivations, dimensions, and directions. (shrink)

Recent epidemiological research on the social determinants of health has been used to attack an important framework, associated with Norman Daniels, that depicts healthcare as special. My aim is to rescue the idea that healthcare has special importance in society, although specialness will turn out to be mainly limited to clinical care. I build upon the link between Daniels's theory and the work of John Rawls to develop a conception of public justification liberalism that is suitable (...) to the field of justice and health. I argue that, from the perspective of public justification liberalism, (clinical) healthcare deserves special status. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction generated by the notion of nothingness by claiming that the contradiction shows the indefinite extensibility of the concept of object. The second step consists in showing that, having accepted the idea of indefinite extensibility, we can have absolute generality without the emergence of the contradiction connected (...) to the absolute notion of nothingness. The idea of indefinite extensibility allows us to have our cake and to eat it too. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction generated by the notion of nothingness by claiming that the contradiction shows the indefinite extensibility of the concept of object. The second step consists in showing that, having accepted the idea of indefinite extensibility, we can have absolute generality without the emergence of the contradiction connected (...) to the absolute notion of nothingness. The idea of indefinite extensibility allows us to have our cake and to eat it too. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction generated by the notion of nothingness by claiming that the contradiction shows the indefinite extensibility of the concept of object. The second step consists in showing that, having accepted the idea of indefinite extensibility, we can have absolute generality without the emergence of the contradiction connected (...) to the absolute notion of nothingness. The idea of indefinite extensibility allows us to have our cake and to eat it too. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction generated by the notion of nothingness by claiming that the contradiction shows the indefinite extensibility of the concept of object. The second step consists in showing that, having accepted the idea of indefinite extensibility, we can have absolute generality without the emergence of the contradiction connected (...) to the absolute notion of nothingness. The idea of indefinite extensibility allows us to have our cake and to eat it too. (shrink)

Theory change is a slow, tortuous process. Problems associated with how we communicate ideas and how these ideas are received by our peers become catalysts for change in how we ourselves perceive and sanction what the discipline is capable of doing. Some parts of semiotics, and particularly biosemiotics, have come under critical scrutiny because of their heavy commitment to Peircean philosophy, but at the same time, the contributions of Peircean philosophy are almost impossible to discount. The ripples of this situation (...) are quite visible in the emergence of code biology as a post-semiotic research programme. Yet there is a general balance between those who do not put that much stock in Peircean concepts and those who cannot conceive semiotics without these.This paper will ask whether a biosemiotics after Peirce is possible at all in the sense of acknowledging Peirce’s contributions to the field while also taking to heart the criticisms raised by those skeptical of the implications of Peircean semiotics. While the answer is most likely positive, it depends on what background our concept of meaning relies on and how it may bleed into the other areas of semiotics that biosemiotics may claim a stake on. Being able to discuss potential theoretical distinctions across semiotics while also allowing communication between the areas caught in this differentiation will be crucial for the health of the discipline as the gap between theories becomes more profound. (shrink)

‘Cataracts’ in Stevens’ poems are falling waters—here a river flowing near a mountain. The ‘apostrophe that was not spoken’ may be an address that was not made, perhaps an unspoken affirmation of nature’s beauty. And the river that ‘is never the same twice’ can only be the flowing river Plato claimed Heraclitus used as a simile for all existing things: ‘Heraclitus says somewhere that everything gives way and nothing remains, and likening existing things to the (...) flow of a river, he says that you cannot step twice into the same river’ (Cratylus, 402a). There are five respects in which ‘This Solitude of Cataracts’ displays affinities with Heraclitean ideas: its use of a river as a simile for human experience, the poet’s desire to express the real nature of things, rivers and mountains as polar opposites, the exploitation of ambiguities, and the use of particulars as emblematic of general truths. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of manifolds was developed for the first time in a very short form in the Prolegomena to his Logical Investigations, §§ 69–70 (pp. 248–53), then repeatedly discussed in Ideas I, §§ 71–2 (pp. 148–53), in Formal and Transcendental Logic, §§ 51–4 (pp. 142–54), and finally in the Crisis, § 9 (pp. 20–60). Husserl never lost sight of it: it was his idée fixe. He discussed this theme over forty years, expressing the same, in principle, ideas on it in (...) different terms and versions. His discussions of it, however, were always cut short and inconclusive, so that he never developed his theory of manifolds in detail. Main claim in this essay is that Husserl’s theory of manifolds is twofold. It is (1) a theory of theories, advanced in the good German tradition of Wissenschaftslehre, launched first by Bernard Bolzano. The latter, in turn, is an offspring of the ancient tradition of mathesis universalis, explored in the modernity by Descartes and Leibniz. Further, (2) the theory of manifolds is also a formal theory of everything. Its objective is to provide a systematic account of how the things in the world (its parts) hang together in wholes of quite different kind. It is to be noted that Husserl explicitly speaks about (1) and only implicitly about (2). In this paper we shall also show that the theory of everything is intrinsically connected with the theory of theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hard on Everything but the BodyJillian GuizzottiIn the fall of 2011, my first year of college, I took a course on Asian religions at Alfred University. I became interested in different kinds of religions, especially Buddhism. I was lucky that the professor who taught Asian religions also offered an introductory class on Buddhism the following semester. It was an upper-level course, generally not open to first-year students, (...) but the instructor let me enroll. The class met twice a week for two hours. At first it did not seem different in any way from my other classes, but during the second half of the semester, we spent fifteen to twenty minutes at the beginning of every class in meditation.Before I came to college, I believed I had decent reasoning and interpretive skills; intellectually I knew I could go toe-to-toe with alien concepts and master them. But I had heard from my sister and my two eldest cousins that college was a different world from high school; I should expect my perceptions to change. Every time I was told something like this I shrugged it off. The suggestion that a class could affect my core beliefs seemed far-fetched. I did not think college would change me that much, but the Buddhism course and the meditation practice affected me in ways I did not expect: academically, spiritually, and emotionally. The process was gradual. By the end of the spring semester, there were big dents in my usual ways of thinking about the world and about myself.Buddhism is a complex religion and some of its core ideas, such as the nature of human suffering, are not so easy to explain. Unlike other classes where I learn in traditional academic ways, meditation gave me an opportunity to understand Buddhism in new ways, more challenging and personal ways. After it was incorporated into the class, everything developed more color: things I thought I knew no longer seemed so black and white. I stopped feeling that tests and homework were the most important things about my classes; what matters is what I learn. And what I learn depends on me.Unlike a straightforward academic class, in which I usually regurgitate what I read in books and hear in lectures, meditation caused me to focus on myself. I have not had a class before or since that has seeped into my life outside the classroom so much. (How often can people say that a class they took comes back to haunt them, in a good way?) None of my other classes has made me think so hard, either. I felt as though I was problem solving on a whole new level. [End Page 115]Because I was a first-year student and most of the other students were juniors and seniors, in the beginning I felt as though I was barely holding on to everyone else’s coattails; they seemed to be grasping the material so much better. Reviewing the text only helped a little. I needed something to “click” so I could understand Buddhism better. I did not see how meditation could help anyone, however. I just saw it as a time to sit still and collect swarming thoughts. I did not get how it was supposed to advance anyone along their “path.” I doubted it would help me learn anything about Buddhism, let alone help me pass the course. Although I was wary, I was willing to try. After I did experience it for myself, the lessons became more comprehensible, because I could relate them to my own life and experiences. This made the class feel less stressful as well.After about a week of doing meditation, a few friends asked me how it felt. I told them it felt very foreign to go to class and sit in front of a white wall for fifteen to twenty minutes and count my breaths. It was very different from immediately taking out paper and pen and starting to take notes. Sitting for those minutes was sometimes rather fun, relaxing. It made me want to go to class more because I had something to look forward to. I told... (shrink)

"From all things One and from One all things," wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. You might read this as a platitude, or as a pleasant spiritual or philosophical idea. You probably wouldn't read it as a more-or-less accurate scientific statement about the nature of the universe. Particle physicist Heinrich Päs, however, does. In The One, Päs makes the surprising and compelling case for monism-the philosophical idea that one single, all-encompassing thing underlies everything we experience-rehabilitating the (...) idea's reputation and reclaiming it for science. At first glance, the idea that "all is one" seems patently absurd. But Päs reveals that monism follows logically from certain principles of quantum mechanics once they are applied to the entire universe. He shows how monism is not only a feasible theory from a scientific perspective but a potentially powerful solution to the stagnation of thought in contemporary physics, arguing that if physics is ever to progress, physicists must learn to embrace insights from outside the narrow silo of experimental knowledge. Along the way, Päs traces monism's often-buried 3000-year history, passing through the lives of a diverse array of great thinkers, including Plato, Galileo, Spinoza, and Goethe, and the churchmen, philosophers, and physicists who fought against monism as well. The result is an epic and expansive journey through thousands of years of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. Equal parts physics, philosophy, and history of ideas, The One is of the rare sort of book that can both the first-time reader with its marvels and revolutionize the worldview of even the most experienced physics buff. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent discussion of the social effects of “liberalism,” which are said to include a growth in out-of-wedlock childbirth, repudiation of traditions, a rise in populism, increased reliance on technocracy, inequality, environmental degradation, sexual promiscuity, deterioration of civic associations, a diminution of civic virtue, political correctness on university campuses, and a general sense of alienation. There is good reason for skepticism about these claims. Liberalism is not a person, and it is not an agent in history. Claims (...) about the supposedly adverse social effects of liberalism are best taken not as causal claims at all, but as normative objections that should be defended on their merits. These propositions are elaborated with reference to three subordinate propositions: liberalism, as such, does not lack the resources to defend traditions; liberalism, as such, hardly rejects the idea of “constraint,” though the domains in which liberals accept constraints differ from those of antiliberals, and vary over time; liberalism, as such, does not dishonor the idea of “honor.” There is a general point here about the difficulty of demonstrating, and the potential recklessness of claiming, that one or another “ism” is causally associated with concrete social developments. (shrink)

This article critically investigates the landscape of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, especially Gadamerian hermeneutics. This investigation reveals that one of the central trends in recent decades has been to construe hermeneutics as, instead of an ongoing and substantive philosophical research project, rather an amorphous current or nebulous spirit of intellectual life and culture—what this article refers to as the sense of hermeneutics as an attitude. The “effective history” of this characterization of hermeneutics is traced to polemical references to hermeneutics by (...) Alain Badiou and Richard Rorty, which have negatively contributed to the reception of the hermeneutical movement. The article suggests that hermeneutics should aim to be neither a vague sensibility nor, in what ultimately amounts to a reaction against the idea of hermeneutics as an attitude, a rigorous “method” of interpretation, but rather an ongoing philosophical research program. To unpack this suggestion, the article concludes by providing “foundations for a contemporary hermeneutics” with reference to six contributions from promising recent work in hermeneutics. (shrink)

Russian idea as philosophy of longing future of Russia was formed by humanists in opposition to real state of life in the country. Beginning from Moscow kingdom in Russia there were often oppression, injustice, loutishness, bribery, cultural backwardness, lack of education. The number of civilized, highly educated, high-moral people was very narrow. But the part they played in the history was extremely great; they were always the social vanguard of our motherland. They themselves brought really human properties for their (...) country, which would be developed later and would be discovered in the lives of majority of the population of our country. What is really human or simply human in opposition to inhuman in a person? Everything is very simple. Good will in people appears when they begin to follow the commandments: don’t kill, don’t tempt, don’t steal, don’t use foul language etc. And vice versa, if a person breaks these rules, he loses his humanity. Its essence is simple; the main idea is that it is important for the highest moral principles to become the attribute of life for the majority of people in the country, just like mobile phone or computer became an integral part of people’s life today. Today Russian idea becomes global one. One cannot use other people for achieving their goals. It means that while different nations and states treat each other cautiously and suspiciously, with secret desire to gain something by deception, to acquire something fraudulently, to make a fortune by fraud, none of global problems will be solved positively. (shrink)

Kant afirma que Dios conoce todo a priori, que tiene un intelecto intuitivo y puro; pero el sistema crítico enseña que este aspecto de la divinidad no es cognoscible por nosotros. Entonces, ¿cómo determinar los atributos del intelecto divino si Dios mismo no puede ser objeto de conocimiento? Algunos sostienen que este modo de concebir este atributo divino debe ser comprendido a partir de las convicciones religiosas del filósofo. Por el contrario, mostraremos que este peculiar modo de concebir el intelecto (...) de Dios está fundado en un argumento que Kant expone in extenso en las Lecciones de teología filosófica. Throughout his work, Kant states that God knows everything a priori, that He has pure and intuitive cognition. However, the Kantian critical system claims that the intellect of God cannot be known by our human cognition. Thus, the question that must be answered is how are we to determine God's intellectual attributes, consider-ing that God him/herself cannot be an object of our knowledge whatsoever. Some scholars claim that the way in which Kant determines God's mind should be understood in relation to Kant's religious convictions. On the contrary, we sustain that this peculiar way of conceiving the intellect of God is supported by an argument that Kant develops in extensor in his Lectures on Philosophical Theology. (shrink)

The article examines the messianic idea in philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinas. It analyzes the continuities and discontinuities between the views of Levinas and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, and explores the implications of their messianic conception. It suggests that Levinas has offered a conception of messianic thinking as philosophy rather than of messianic philosophy in his Talmudic readings.

Hedgehog (HH) signaling is a conserved pathway that drives developmental growth and is essential for the formation of most organs. The expression of HH target genes is regulated by a dual switch mechanism where GLI proteins function as bifunctional transcriptional activators (in the presence of HH signaling) and transcriptional repressors (in the absence of HH signaling). This results in a tight control of GLI target gene expression during rapidly changing levels of pathway activity. It has long been presumed (...) class='Hi'>that GLI proteins also repress target genes prior to the initial expression of HH in a given tissue. This idea forms the basis for the limb bud pre‐patterning model for regulating digit number. Recent findings indicate that GLI repressor proteins are indeed present prior to HH signaling but contrary to this model, GLI proteins are inert as they do not regulate transcriptional responses or enhancer chromatin modifications at this time. These findings suggest that GLI transcriptional repressor activity is not a default state as assumed, but is itself regulated in an unknown fashion. We discuss these findings and their implications for understanding pre‐patterning, digit regulation, and HH‐driven disease. (shrink)

If God is good, then why did he do that? Violent wars, harsh laws, pronounced judgments. Christianity proclaims God's goodness, yet the Bible is filled with passages that seem to paint a different picture. On the surface, such depictions can hinder our confidence in God's goodness. But when we're willing to look deeper, we discover a consistent purpose behind everything God does--and that he is greater than we could ever imagine. Alongside bestselling author Josh McDowell, Matthew (...) Tingblad invites you to discover how a good God has good reasons for his challenging actions in the Bible. Throughout, you will uncover the reality of God's consistent motives and purposes: holiness, justice, and radical mercy. Whether you have your own questions about God or are ministering to those who do, Matthew and Josh will guide you through these difficult passages and ideas, all the while pointing to God's power and redeeming love. Find confidence and joy in discovering that God is good--always good--even in the passages of Scripture that appear to convey otherwise." - back cover. (shrink)

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything (...) resembles God. Since God is wholly good in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value. (shrink)

Contemporary debate over laws of nature centers around Humean supervenience, the thesis that everything supervenes on the distribution of non-nomic facts. The key ingredient of this thesis is the idea that nomic-like concepts—law, chance, causation, etc.—are expressible in terms of the regularities of non-nomic facts. Inherent to this idea is the tacit conviction that regularities, “constant conjunctions” of non-nomic facts do supervene on the distribution of non-nomic facts. This paper raises a challenge for this (...) conviction. It will be pointed out that the notion of regularity, understood as statistical correlation, has a necessary conceptual component not clearly identified before—I shall call this the “conjunctive relation” of the correlated events. On the other hand, it will be argued that there exists no unambiguous, non-circular way in which this relation could be determined. In this regard, the notion of correlation is similar to that of distant simultaneity where the necessary conceptual component is the one-way speed of light, whose value doesn’t seem to be determined by matters of facts. (shrink)

HISTORIANS of psychology are almost unanimously agreed on one point: that psychology is a relatively new science. There may be some disagreement as to when it started--with Weber, or Fechner, or Wundt, or James--but there is almost no dissent from the proposition that psychology as a scientific discipline is less than one and one-half centuries old. Many earlier writers are often discussed in histories of psychology, but invariably they are called speculators, or philosophers, as opposed to scientists. We (...) believe that this is an incorrect appraisal of the career of psychological research. To demonstrate our point, we propose to show how one key psychological idea from Descartes' work has had an extensive and robust scientific history. If it is true that this Cartesian idea has had great influence in science, then many claims concerning the history of psychology will need to be reconsidered. Not everything which happened in psychology prior to the nineteenth century was speculative, nor is everything which happened later scientific. Even more importantly, if Descartes' idea has been of such central concern to several hundred years of research, it must be treated as an important claim about the way the world is, as a law of nature. (shrink)

In the modern world of total technologization, scientific knowledge devoid of worldview correction (humanitarian expertise) carries a threatening tendency of self-denial: without a constant, philosophically correct transformation of objective knowledge about certain fragments (branches) of the surrounding reality into human knowledge (questions) about itself, the practical effectiveness of such knowledge inevitably accumulates in itself the threat of practical helplessness. Aim and the tasks of the research. Based on an in-depth analysis of the category of existence, as well as on modern (...) philosophical reflections on the methodological and cognitive insolvency of the idea of the world, to find out the real meaning of those changes that this idea meaningfully undergoes in the conditions of the modern total technologization of human life. The research methodology. From a methodological point of view, the author prefers a dialectical approach, considering the analyzed phenomena, regardless of the mode of their reality, in their development and internally contradictory essence. H. Plesner’s theory of eccentric positionality serves as a certain base point for the analysis of human nature and, accordingly, the world of human existence. Research results: The problematic existence of the world and the epistemological «failure» of the corresponding category, declared in some modern philosophical reflections, are connected exclusively with its anthropological and worldview function, which is based on the fundamental uncertainty of a man’s place in the world. The «worthlessness» («futility») of worldview thematization is derived from the allencompassing inability of the human figure in the world, from that «emptiness» and «invisibility» (specific own transparency) of the spiritual dimension of human existence, on which, however, this existence is based. Discussion. The human «option» of fulfilling the unity of living being can be characterized as extremely intense. In this variant, the phylogenetic line of development turns into an ontogenetic point of worldliness devoid of predetermined content, a fundamentally new type of integration. The horizons of such integration far exceed primarily because of its understanding. And the subject of such a meaningful life is forced to integrate everything that happens to him every time into a certain system (synthesis) of the world. That subjectivity the world has distinguishes the subject from the thing. Subjectivity and the world mutually belong to each other - they are correlative. A thing exists because it is what it is. The subject (and with it his world) does not exist like that. A subject is how and to what it relates. But the relation «how» and «to what» is not carried out completely anew and isolated every time, but exists in its multiplicity in a certain relationship. Each individual case, each individual action (method of action) acquires its meaning from a wider, structured context – in whole or in part. This context is the «world», the «life world» of the real subject, or the «world» as an anthropological idea. Conclusions. The task of modern humanitarianism is not only to find opportunities for rational use of the fact of the fundamental openness of the human being, but also to cultivate the ability to reconcile a man with himself, to accept himself. This gives us certain reasons to hope for the enduring significance of worldview thematization. Criticism regarding the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that to become a man, one must already be one, could be considered fair, but only if one does not take into account the principled nature of such an aphoristic position, because this is exactly how the human world exists - as the art of tolerance uncertainty. (shrink)

In Furnishing the mind, I argued that concepts are couched in representational formats that are indigenous to sensory systems. I called this thesis "concept empiricism," because I think it is was a central tenet of the philosophical program defended by classical British empiricists, such as Locke and Hume. I still think that concept empiricism is true, and more empirical evidence has accrued since the book went to press. That's the good news. The bad news is (...) class='Hi'>that able critics have marshaled a variety of powerful arguments against empiricism. Sarnecki and Markman and Stilwell have devised a battery of challenging objections. Their commentaries are charitable and incisive. They represent my proposals accurately, and they raise serious worries. I cannot do justice to everything they say in this response, but I will try to indicate where I would make concessions and where I would dig in my heels. I will begin with a few introductory remarks to motivate empiricism, and then address objections. (shrink)

In social cognition, knowledge-based validation of information is usually regarded as relying on strategic and resource-demanding processes. Research on language comprehension, in contrast, suggests that validation processes are involved in the construction of a referential representation of the communicated information. This view implies that individuals can use their knowledge to validate incoming information in a routine and efficient manner. Consistent with this idea, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that individuals are able to reject false assertions efficiently (...) when they have validity-relevant beliefs. Validation processes were carried out routinely even when individuals were put under additional cognitive load during comprehension. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the rejection of false information occurs automatically and interferes with affirmative responses in a nonsemantic task. Experiment 4 also revealed complementary interference effects of true information with negative responses in a nonsemantic task. These results suggest the existence of fast and efficient validation processes that protect mental representations from being contaminated by false and inaccurate information. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ontological Status of Malebranchean IdeasMonte CookOnce again... we are brought back to a fundamental problem in Malebranche’s theory of ideas. What is the ontological status or nature of ideas? They are neither substances nor modifications of any substance. Yet in the Cartesian schema these are the only alternatives: something is either a substance or a modification of a substance. And Malebranche, however modified his Cartesianism, is at least (...) explicit in accepting this ontological dualism.(Steven Nadler, Malebranche and Ideas, 96.)Nadler nicely states a problem for Malebranchean scholarship: What, for Malebranche, is the ontological status of ideas? Despite their importance to his theory of vision in God, Malebranche seems to leave no metaphysical place for them. He seems to hold three jointly inconsistent positions—that everything is either a substance or a modification of a substance, that ideas are not sub-stances, and that ideas are not modifications.1 Since he clearly denies both that ideas are substances and that they are modifications, on the face of it the only way out of this apparent inconsistency is for him to reject the principle that everything is either a substance or a modification of a substance. And indeed, according to one common interpretation Malebranche restricts the dualism of substances and modifications to created things, thus excluding ideas.2I shall argue that Malebranche can and does consistently hold all three [End Page 525] positions. He escapes inconsistency by maintaining that although ideas fit into the category of substance, they are not different substances. Rather than being substances (plural), they are identical with one substance, God.I am of course not alone in seeing this identification of ideas with the substance of God. Nadler, for example, notes it but thinks that it fails to get Malebranche out of the problem of holding three jointly inconsistent positions.3 Nicholas Jolley not only notes it, but also thinks that it provides Malebranche an escape from inconsistency, if only on a surface level. For Jolley, the real problem is that ideas have features incompatible with their being identified with God: in particular, ideas are abstract entities whereas God is not an abstract entity. Though Malebranche admittedly does identify ideas with the substance of God, then, there is a sense in which he cannot really do this.4The problem Jolley raises is part of the larger problem of how ideas can be identical with the substance of God. Though I will not discuss Jolley’s problem directly, I hope that my discussion of the relation between ideas and the substance of God will throw light on what Jolley takes to be the real problem with identifying ideas with God. I will content myself with showing that Malebranche does hold all three positions in question and explaining how he develops his identification of ideas with the substance of God. In what follows, then, I shall first establish that Malebranche holds the three positions in question, and in particular that he does not restrict the principle that everything is either a substance or a modification to created things. I shall then show how he identifies ideas with the substance of God. Finally, I shall discuss a contrary passage in which Malebranche explicitly denies that intelligible extension (i.e., the idea of extension) is either a substance or a modification.11.1.Malebranche states the principle that everything is either a substance or a mode (or equivalently, a being or a mode) throughout his writings.5 Though he occasionally uses the principle only as it applies to the created world (see LO 237), he almost always states it as applying to everything, created or uncreated: “everything which is, whether it actually exists or not, and consequently [End Page 526] everything intelligible, reduces to being and mode” (LO 639).6 He treats it as a conceptual matter, and thus a necessary truth, that everything must be one or the other: everything “is necessarily either a substance or a mode of being. For in the end all that is can either be conceived of alone or it cannot; there is no middle in contradictory propositions” (LO 513).Reflecting on how Malebranche understands the principle makes... (shrink)

We first start by clarifying what axiomatizing everything can mean. We then study a famous case of axiomatization, the axiomatization of natural numbers, where two different aspects of axiomatization show up, the model-theoretical one and the proof-theoretical one. After that we discuss a case of axiomatization in a sense opposed to the one of arithmetic, the axiomatization of the notion of order, where the idea is not to catch a specific structure, but a notion.

We first start by clarifying what axiomatizing everything can mean. We then study a famous case of axiomatization, the axiomatization of natural numbers, where two different aspects of axiomatization show up, the model-theoretical one and the proof-theoretical one. After that we discuss a case of axiomatization in a sense opposed to the one of arithmetic, the axiomatization of the notion of order, where the idea is not to catch a specific structure, but a notion. A third mathematical (...) case is then examined, the one of identity, a simple and obvious notion, but that cannot be axiomatized in first-order logic. We then move on to more general notions: the axiomatization of causality and the universe. To end with we deal with an even more tricky question: the axiomatization of reasoning itself. In conclusion we discuss in the light of our investigations the relation between axiomatization and understanding. (shrink)

The beginning of the journey -- What this book is about : using ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics to tackle the big questions in philosophy : what is real? what can we know? what is the difference between right and wrong? and how should we live? -- Reality and unreality -- On what there is -- Why is there something instead of nothing? the best answer I have : mathematics exists because it must and everything else exists because (...) it is made of mathematics, with an excursion into artificial intelligence -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from chapter two : the nature and purpose of economic models -- How Richard Dawkins got it wrong -- Why Dawkins's argument against intelligent design can't be right and a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God -- Belief -- Daydream believers -- Most beliefs are ill-considered because most false beliefs are costless to hold -- The next several chapters will explore the consequences of this observation before we return to the question of where our beliefs and knowledge come from -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : how color vision works, sound, and water waves, the sheer craziness of economic protectionism -- Do believers believe? -- Our ill-considered beliefs about religion : why I believe that almost nobody is deeply religious -- On what there obviously is -- Our ill-considered beliefs about free will, ESP, and life after death -- Diogenes's nightmare -- How is legitimate disagreement possible if you're arguing with someone who is as intelligent and informed as you are, shouldn't you put just as much weight on your opponent's arguments as your own? -- The fact that we persist in disagreeing is strong evidence that we don't really care what's true -- Knowledge -- Knowing your math -- Where mathematical knowledge comes from and logic and why evidence and logic are not enough -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : the tale of hercules and the hydra, with an excursion into the lore of very large numbers -- Incomplete thinking -- Godel's incompleteness theorem and what it doesn't say about the limits of human knowledge -- The rules of logic and the tale of a Potbellied pig -- The power of logical thought, with excursions into the most counterintuitive theorem in all of mathematics and the tale of a potbellied pig -- The rules of evidence -- What we can and can't learn from evidence, with excursions into the value of preschool and how internet porn prevents rape -- The limits to knowledge -- What physics does and doesn't tell us about what we can and cannot know -- Understanding Heisenberg's uncertainty principle -- Unfinished business -- The oddness of the quantum world and why it matters to game theorists -- Right and wrong -- Telling right from wrong -- Some hard questions about right and wrong and about life and death -- The economist's golden rule -- A rule of thumb for good behavior -- How to be socially responsible -- Putting the rule of thumb into practice -- On not being a jerk -- Goofus and gallant on immigration policy -- The economist on the playground -- Our ill-considered beliefs about fairness in the market place and in the voting booth, contrasted with our carefully considered beliefs about fairness on the playground -- Unfinished business -- How ancient talmudic scholars anticipated modern economic theory -- The life of the mind -- How to think -- Some basic rules for clear thinking, mostly about economics, but also about arithmetic, neurobiology, sin, and eschewing blather -- What to study -- Advice to college students : stay away from the English department and approach the philosophy department with caution, with an excursion into the remarkable life of Frank Ramsey. (shrink)

In The Christian Idea of Man Josef Pieper brings off an extraordinary feat. He acknowledges that whoever introduces the theme of "virtue" and "the virtues" can expect to be met with a smile - of various shades of condescension. He then proceeds to single out "prudence" as the fundamental virtue on which the other cardinal virtues are based. In defining it, he does away with the shallow connotations which have debased it in modern times. Similarly, he manages to (...) divest it of all traces of "moralism," which, to a large extent has become identified with the Christian idea of virtue and has made it fall into general disrepute. For Pieper, prudence is fundamentally based on a clear perception of reality - of things as they are - and the prudent person is the one who acts in accordance with this perception. It has nothing to do with knowing how to avoid decisions which might be to one's disadvantage. Similarly, justice, which is based on prudence, involves acting toward other persons according to one's perception of the truth of the circumstances - again, a perception of things "as they are." This is not a reference to any "status quo," but to the reality as constituted by the Creator. In referring to courage [fortitude], Pieper discusses the overcoming of fear. This does not imply having no fear but, precisely, overcoming it. With regard to the fundamental fear of death, Pieper rejects the approaches which contend that there is nothing to fear in death. On the contrary, there is everything to fear in death: it concerns the question of possible absolute annihilation! Here Pieper introduces the consideration of the "theological" virtues of faith, hope, and love [charity]. When confronted with the question of possible annihilation, the Christian's faith is paramount. Belief in God lets him confront danger and overcome even the most radical fear - through hope in God. His love of God does not wipe out fear but gives him courage. Moderation is seen as the last in the hierarchy of the cardinal virtues. Through its manifestation, in recent Christian thinking, with chastity and abstinence, it became in the Christian mind the most prominent characteristic of the Christian idea of man and one that dominated everything else. It has been reduced to the status of the most private of the virtues and is combined with a moralistic conception of the good. Pieper's analysis of moderation shows how this virtue needs to be rethought, although, even then, it will remain the last in the hierarchy of virtues. (shrink)

DI.1 On everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea – an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, (...) also, living souls dominating dying bodies – living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air. DI.2 Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning glory vines up over a second story balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened, some cutworm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead, – all but the top which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and tied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid NIGHT, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. (shrink)

Had I not read that book in the months leading up to my university finals I might never have gained that real enthusiasm and excitement for ideas which has possessed me ever since. Before that time I played with the academic world in a desultory fashion, moving the thoughts, thinkers and theories in front of me as though they were merely so many counters. After I read Collingwood everything changed, and I believe the same can be (...) true for any of its readers. (shrink)

Had I not read that book in the months leading up to my university finals I might never have gained that real enthusiasm and excitement for ideas which has possessed me ever since. Before that time I played with the academic world in a desultory fashion, moving the thoughts, thinkers and theories in front of me as though they were merely so many counters. After I read Collingwood everything changed, and I believe the same can be (...) true for any of its readers. (shrink)

The privacy, real or illusory, afforded by the personal letter allows each participant the philosophical freedom to explore a range of possible opinions, to experiment with different ideas, to hesitate, and to change his or her mind in ways that published articles and books discourage. The private letter also allows the use of language and style of writing to be altered to suit the particular recipient. This is especially evident in Leibniz's correspondence with Des Bosses. Sometimes, however, the intended (...) recipient is not the addressee, as when Leibniz engaged with Locke through Thomas Burnett of Kemney. This situation was not an isolated occurrence in Leibniz's dealings with Locke. In this chapter, we shall see how Leibniz attempted to engage with Locke through a second correspondence and how he adapted the style and presentation of his views, not for the main correspondent, Lady Masham, but for the other intended recipient. We shall also see that the views Leibniz presents confirm his loyalty during this period to an ontology of embodied, perceiving substances. -/- The correspondence with Damaris Masham began shortly after Lady Masham sent Leibniz a copy of her father's The True Intellectual System of the Universe (TIS) at the end of 1703. Learning that the book was on its way, Leibniz's first letter was intended to thank her in advance. (shrink)

This paper presents ethical dilemmas concerning the termination of pregnancy, the management of childbirth, and the withdrawal of life-support from infants in special care, for a small sample of British Pakistani Muslim parents of babies diagnosed with fatal abnormalities. Case studies illustrating these dilemmas are taken from a qualitative study of 66 families of Pakistani origin referred to a genetics clinic in Southern England. The paper shows how parents negotiated between the authoritative knowledge of their doctors, religious experts, and senior (...) family members in response to the ethical dilemmas they faced. There was little knowledge or open discussion of the view that Islam permits the termination of pregnancy for serious or fatal abnormality within 120 days and there was considerable disquiet over the idea of ending a pregnancy. For some parents, whether their newborn baby would draw breath was a main worry, with implications for the baby's Muslim identity and for the recognition of loss the parents would receive from family and community. This concern sometimes conflicted with doctors' concerns to minimize risk to future pregnancies by not performing a Caesarean delivery if a baby is sure to die. The paper also identifies parents' concerns and feelings of wrong-doing regarding the withdrawal of artificial life-support from infants with multiple abnormalities. The conclusion considers some of the implications of these observations for the counselling and support of Muslim parents following the pre- or neo-natal diagnosis of fatal abnormalities in their children. (shrink)

“That’s Africa”, or words to that effect, have been directed at me a number of times recently as some form of justification of things not working. Africa is broken and we have to work with what we have got, is the idea. Is this acceptance of the way things are a way of surviving and working in difficult environments or is it actually wrong and medically negligent to accept substandard practice? In many ways, this dilemma can be (...) applied to any part of the world, both developing and developed, but it is most acute in Africa.While observing medical ward rounds in a public hospital in Malawi, I came across two kinds of doctor. One kind would accept the way things were and work within the constraints; the other kind would always be battling against the constraints. I was told that “we can’t give an intravenous infusion because the nurses cannot count the number of drops …” Really? Why can’t they count the number of drops? I see no reason, aside from a complete lack of time . This attitude included everything from delivering blood samples to the laboratory to accessing drugs. …. (shrink)

Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically untestable, or metaphysical thesis. It thus lies beyond the scope of science. Only when physics has formulated a testable unified theory of everything which has been amply corroborated empirically will science be in a position to declare that (...) it has established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible. But this argument presupposes a widely accepted but untenable conception of science which I shall call standard empiricism. According to standard empiricism, in science theories are accepted solely on the basis of evidence. Choice of theory may be influenced for a time by considerations of simplicity, unity, or explanatory capacity, but not in such a way that the universe itself is permanently assumed to be simple, unified or physically comprehensible. In science, no thesis about the universe can be accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Granted this view, it is clear that science cannot have established that the universe is physically comprehensible. Standard empiricism is, however, as I have indicated, untenable. Any fundamental physical theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy two criteria. It must be (1) sufficiently empirically successful, and (2) sufficiently unified. Given any accepted theory of physics, endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted – disunified because they assert that different dynamical laws govern the diverse phenomena to which the theory applies. These disunified rivals are not considered for a moment in physics, despite their greater empirical success. This persistent rejection of empirically more successful but disunified rival theories means, I argue, that a big, highly problematic, implicit assumption is made by science about the cosmos, to the effect, at least, that the cosmos is such that all seriously disunified theories are false. Once this point is recognized, it becomes clear, I argue, that we need a new conception of science which makes explicit, and so criticizable and improvable the big, influential, and problematic assumption that is at present implicit in physics in the persistent preference for unified theories. This conception of science, which I call aim-oriented empiricism, represents the assumption of physics in the form of a hierarchy of assumptions. As one goes up the hierarchy, the assumptions become less and less substantial, and more and more nearly such that their truth is required for science, or the pursuit of knowledge, to be possible at all. At each level, that assumption is accepted which (a) best accords with the next one up, and (b) has, associated with it the most empirically progressive research programme in physics, or holds out the greatest hope of leading to such an empirically progressive research programme. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created, high up in the hierarchy, within which much more substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods, low down in the hierarchy, can be changed, and indeed improved, as scientific knowledge improves. One assumption in this hierarchy of assumptions, I argue, is that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – that is, such that some yet-to-be-discovered unified theory of everything is true. Hence the conclusion: improve our ideas about the nature of science and it becomes apparent that science has already established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – in so far as science can ever establish anything theoretical. (shrink)