The French physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin is widely credited with providing the conclusive argument for atomism. The most well-known part of Perrin’s argument is his description of thirteen different procedures for determining Avogadro’s number (N)–the number of atoms, ions, and molecules contained in a gram-atom, gram-ion, and gram-mole of a substance, respectively. Because of its success in ending the atomism debates Perrin’s argument has been the focus of much philosophical interest. The various philosophers, however, have reached different (...) conclusions, not only about the argument’s general rationale but also the role that the multiple determination of N played in it. This paper emphasizes the historical development of Perrin’s experimental work in order to understand the role that the multiple determination of molecular magnitudes played in his argument for molecular reality. It claims that Perrin used the multiple determination strategy to put forward an exceptionally strong no-coincidence argument to argue for both the correctness of the values for the molecular magnitudes determined and the validity of the auxiliary assumptions upon which the different determinations were based. The historicist approach also allows the identification of the elements responsible for the epistemic strength of Perrin’s no-coincidence argument. (shrink)
The story of how Perrin’s experimental work established the reality of atoms and molecules has been a staple in (realist) philosophy of science writings (Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour, Peter Achinstein, Penelope Maddy, …). I’ll argue that how this story is told distorts both what the work was and its significance, and draw morals for the understanding of how theories can be or fail to be empirically grounded.
Although episodic memory is a widely studied form of memory both in philosophy and psychology, it still raises many burning questions regarding its definition and even its acceptance. Over the last two decades, cross-disciplinary discussions between these two fields have increased as they tackle shared concerns, such as the phenomenology of recollection, and therefore allow for fruitful interaction. This editorial introduction aims to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of the main existing conceptions and issues on the topic. After delineating (...) Tulving’s chief theoretical import and multifaceted legacy, it goes on to chart the different attempts to capture the episodicity feature of memory according to three categories: a first approach aims to show the cognitive abilities required for a subject to episodically remember; the second defines episodicity as a stage-specific feature; the last explains episodicity in terms of the epistemological properties of episodic memory. This state of the art thereby sets the stage for the contributions of the present volume, which will be introduced in conclusion. (shrink)
This article aims to explore the attitudes and behaviors of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities related to their information privacy when using information technology. Six persons with IDD were recruited to participate to a series of 3 semistructured focus groups. Data were analyzed following a hybrid thematic analysis approach. Only 2 participants reported using IT every day. However, they all perceived IT use benefits, such as an increased autonomy. Participants demonstrated awareness of privacy concerns, but not in situations involving (...) the use of technology; their awareness is not transferred to the abstract context of IT use. Privacy breaches were revealed to be a major risk for persons with IDD, who did not seem to understand how their personal information was used. Most protection mechanisms and tools reported were those suggested and implemented by caregivers and close relatives who had a great influence on the participants’ attitudes and behaviors toward IT and privacy. Our findings suggest that when using IT, persons with IDD often experience the consequences of a trade-off between autonomy and privacy. Further research and action is needed to support persons with IDD to understand and balance the benefits of IT use and the inherent threats to information privacy. (shrink)
Showing a very early interest in Descartes, after having first considered him as a Christian thinker in the perspective of a deconstruction of religious life, Heidegger soon regards him as the major obstacle to the phenomenological analyses he wants to develop, as part of the first ontological search he gave himself: that of a hermeneutics of facticity. Therefore, the latter immediately takes in his work the shape of a hermeneutics of the I think, therefore I am, its author being blamed (...) for having entirely ignored the sense of being in the I am, focused as he is on the thinking ego, the ins and outs of which he develops. But the criticism also applying to Husserl, it is by laying the blame on his master, that Heidegger intends to radicalize the project of his own master, hence the necessity to throw light on the origin and the foundations of what we can call the Cartesian question in Heidegger. (shrink)
In this paper I argue that Poincaré’s acceptance of the atom does not indicate a shift from instrumentalism to scientific realism. I examine the implications of Poincaré’s acceptance of the existence of the atom for our current understanding of his philosophy of science. Specifically, how can we understand Poincaré’s acceptance of the atom in structural realist terms? I examine his 1912 paper carefully and suggest that it does not entail scientific realism in the sense of acceptance of the fundamental existence (...) of atoms but rather, argues against fundamental entities. I argue that Poincaré’s paper motivates a non-fundamentalist view about the world, and that this is compatible with his structuralism. (shrink)
In a recent article, van Fraassen has taken issue with the use to which Perrin’s experiments on Brownian motion have been put by philosophers, especially those defending scientific realism. He defends an alternative position by analysing the details of Perrin’s case in its historical context. In this reply, I argue that van Fraassen has not done the job well enough and I extend and in some respects attempt to correct his claims by close attention to the historical details.
Jean Perrin’s proof in the early-twentieth century of the reality of atoms and molecules is often taken as an exemplary form of robustness reasoning, where an empirical result receives validation if it is generated using multiple experimental approaches. In this article, I describe in detail Perrin’s style of reasoning, and locate both qualitative and quantitative forms of argumentation. Particularly, I argue that his quantitative style of reasoning has mistakenly been viewed as a form of robustness reasoning, whereas I (...) believe it is something different, what I call ‘calibration’. From this perspective, I re-evaluate recent interpretations of Perrin provided by Stathis Psillos, Peter Achinstein, Alan Chalmers, and Bas van Fraassen, all of whom read Perrin as a robustness reasoner, though not necessarily in the same sort of way. I then argue that by viewing Perrin as a ‘calibration’ reasoner we gain a better understanding of why he believes himself to have established the reality of atoms and molecules. To conclude, I provide an alternative and more productive understanding of the basis of the dispute between realists and anti-realists. _1_ Introduction _2_ Perrin’s Reasoning: The Qualitative Argument _3_ Perrin’s Reasoning: The Quantitative Argument _4_ Perrin’s Realism _5_ Psillos, Achinstein, Chalmers, and van Fraassen on Understanding Perrin _6_ Conclusion. (shrink)
While the influence of emotion on individuals'' ethical decisions has been identified by numerous researchers, little is known about how emotions influence individuals'' ethical decision process. Thus, it is not clear whether different emotions promote and/or discourage ethical decision-making in the workplace. To address this gap, this paper develops a model that illustrates how emotion affects the components of individuals'' ethical decision-making process. The model is developed by integrating research findings that consider the two dimensions of emotion, arousal and feeling (...) state, into an applied cognitive-developmental perspective on the process of ethical decision-making. The model demonstrates that certain emotional states influence the individual''s propensity to identify ethical dilemmas, facilitate the formation of the individual''s prescriptive judgments at sophisticated levels of moral development, lead to ethical decision choices that are consistent with the individual''s prescriptive judgements, and promote the individual''s compliance with his or her ethical decision choices. In particular, the model suggests that individuals experiencing arousal and positive affect resolve ethical dilemmas in a manner consistent with more sophisticated cognitive moral structures. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)
Wider possibilities for moral thought -- Objectivity revisited: a lesson from the work of J.L. Austin -- Ethics, inheriting from Wittgenstein -- Moral thought beyond moral judgment: the case of literature -- Reclaiming moral judgment: the case of feminist thought -- Moralism as a central moral problem.
Relations between J. A. C. Chaptal, pioneer of heavy chemical industry in France, and A. L. Lavoisier, reformer of chemical theory, are examined in the light of unpublished correspondence they exchanged in the period 1784–1790. The letters, together with Chaptal's early publications, allow a reconstruction of his conversion to Lavoisier's antiphlogistic chemistry. They also reveal a series of petitions that Chaptal made to Lavoisier, in the latter's official capacity as a director of the Régie des poudres et salpêtres, for relief (...) from the controlled price of saltpetre for his acid works in Languedoc. Finally, the relationship is explored as a window on the interplay between chemical theory and industrial practice during the period of the Industrial Revolution. (shrink)
This text offers major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. It is a collection of essays that presents a significantly different portrait of Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein's modes of philosophical criticism and shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, Peter Winch and Hilary Putnam, we see the emergence of a new way of understanding Wittgenstein's thought. This is a controversial collection, with essays (...) by highly regarded Wittgenstein scholars that may change the way we look at Wittgenstein's body of work. (shrink)
Simone Weil was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, Labour activist and teacher, described by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. In 1941 Weil was introduced to Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest whose friendship became a key influence on her life. When Weil asked Perrin for work as a farm hand he sent her to Gustave Thibon, a farmer and Christian philosopher. Weil stayed with the Thibon family, (...) working in the fields and writing the notebooks which became _Gravity and Grace _and other posthumous works. Perrin and Thibon met Weil at a time when her spiritual life and creative genius were at their height. During the short but deep period of their acquaintance with her, they came to know her as she actually was. First published in English in 1953, and now introduced by J.P. Little, this unique portrait depicts Weil through the eyes of her friends, not as a strange and unaccountable genius but as an ardent and human person in search of truth and knowledge. (shrink)
La pensée de Ludwig Wittgenstein est animée, tout au long des années 1930 et 1940, par une méditation de la question du temps. C’est un de ses aspects les plus mal connus. Ce livre vise à restituer cette méditation dans sa force et sa singularité, afin d’établir la contribution qu’elle apporte à la tradition qui s’est consacrée à cette question majeure de la philosophie.Il montre d’abord comment la tentation d’accorder un privilège au présent constitue un élément essentiel du projet phénoménologique (...) wittgensteinien de 1929, avant d’explorer le travail critique auquel Wittgenstein soumet ce projet au cours des deux décennies suivantes, et qui le conduit à situer dans un certain rapport à notre langage l’origine de notre façon de penser la temporalité. Une analyse originale du langage ordinaire permet ainsi de réévaluer les théories classiques du temps que proposent la phénoménologie, la philosophie de la psychologie et la philosophie du langage. (shrink)
Typically, the imagination in thought experiments has been taken to consist in mental images; we visualize the state of affairs described. A recent alternative from Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg main...
Although philosophers have explored memory since antiquity, recent years have seen the birth of philosophy of memory as a distinct field. This book—the first of its kind—charts emerging directions of research in the field. The book's nineteen newly-commissioned chapters develop novel theories of remembering and forgetting, analyze the phenomenology and content of memory, debate issues in the ethics and epistemology of remembering, and explore the relationship between memory and affectivity. Written by leading researchers in the philosophy of memory, the chapters (...) collectively present an exciting vision of the future of this dynamic area of research. (shrink)
How we understand Descartes’s physics rests on how we interpret his ontological commitment to individual bodies, and in particular on how we account for their individuation. However, Descartes’s contemporaries as well as contemporary philosophers have seen Descartes’s account of the individuation of bodies as deeply flawed. In the first part of this paper, I discuss how the various problems and puzzles involved in Descartes’s account of the individuation of bodies arise, and the relevance of these problems for his physics. With (...) an eye toward resolving these puzzles, I argue for an interpretation of the Cartesian ontology in which bodies are not individuated by motion but, instead, are mind-dependent. As part of this reading, I demonstrate the sense in which we can clearly and distinctly perceive bodies, and also the senses in which the real, conceptual, and modal distinctions apply to them. I conclude by explaining how this account of the mind-dependent individuation of bodies is consistent with Descartes’s definition of ‘motion’ and ‘a body’ in Principles, Part II, section 25—the very passage that prima facie entails the most troubling of the individuation puzzles. Finally, I show that this account is consistent with Descartes’s general goal in constructing his physics. (shrink)
The clinical and para-clinical examination of residual self-consciousness in non-communicative severely brain damaged patients remains exceptionally challenging. Passive presentation of the patient’s own name and own face are known to be effective attention-grabbing stimuli when clinically assessing consciousness at the patient’s bedside. Event-related potential and functional neuroimaging studies using such self-referential stimuli are currently being used to disentangle the cognitive hierarchy of self-processing. We here review neuropsychological, neuropathological, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies using the own name and own face paradigm obtained (...) in conscious waking, sleep, pharmacological coma, pathological coma and related disorders of consciousness. Based on these results we discuss what we currently do and do not know about the functional significance of the neural network involved in “automatic” and “conscious” self-referential processing. (shrink)
How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we (...) care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest. (shrink)
Bred to provide human companionship, dogs eclipse all other species when it comes to reading the body language of people. Dog owners hunger for a complete rapport with their pets; in the dog the fantasy of empathetic resonance finds its ideal. But cross-species communication is never easy. Dog love can be a precious but melancholy thing. An attempt to understand human attachment to the _canis familiaris_ in terms of reciprocity and empathy, _Melancholia’s_ _Dog_ tackles such difficult concepts as intimacy and (...) kinship with dogs, the shame associated with identification with their suffering, and the reasons for the profound mourning over their deaths. In addition to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Alice A. Kuzniar turns to the insights and images offered by the literary and visual arts—the short stories of Ivan Turgenev and Franz Kafka, the novels of J. M. Coetzee and Rebecca Brown, the photography of Sally Mann and William Wegman, and the artwork of David Hockney and Sue Coe. Without falling into sentimentality or anthropomorphization, Kuzniar honors and learns from our canine companions, above all attending to the silences and sadness brought on by the effort to represent the dog as perfectly and faithfully as it is said to love. (shrink)
Cet article opère une comparaison des théories de la proposition — entendue dans sa double dimension sémantique et gnoséologique — du Wittgenstein des Philosophische Bemerkungen et du Russell de The Analysis of Mind . Après avoir rappelé le statut sémantique nouveau que ces théories accordent au temps en intégrant le fait qu’un délai sépare, pour un grand nombre de nos énoncés, leur occurrence et leur vérification , il établit que la notion d’attente est chargée, chez Wittgenstein comme chez Russell , (...) de combler cet écart temporel. Mais — c’est le deuxième point — une notion différente est mobilisée par chacun de ces deux auteurs, et dans un projet théorique à chaque fois différent : alors que Wittgenstein vise à étendre la notion tractatuséenne de relation interne aux relations sémantiques temporelles et à défendre un intentionnalisme logique, Russell cherche au contraire à soutenir une conception externaliste de ces relations de façon à faire droit aux cas où elles sont non-intentionnelles. Pour cela, Wittgenstein adopte un concept appelé ici « intentionnel » de l’attente, alors que Russell s’appuie sur un concept dit « non-intentionnel ». Une conséquence majeure de cette différence — c’est le troisième point — est que la célèbre critique par Wittgenstein de l’analyse russellienne de l’attente se révèle être largement erronée dans la mesure où elle se donne pour cible un concept qui n’est pas celui de Russell. Le quatrième point défendu par l’article est qu’une fois rétabli le concept de Russell, l’externalisme que celui-ci défend est doté d’arguments susceptibles de contrer efficacement la position internaliste et intentionnaliste de Wittgenstein.This paper carries out a comparison between the theories of the proposition — in its semantical and epistemic significance — elaborated respectively by Wittgenstein in Philosophische Bemerkungen and by Russell in The Analysis of Mind . Having recalled that time is endowed with a new semantical status by both theories through acknowledging there is a lapse between many of our utterances and their verification , it brings out that the notion of Erwartung by Wittgenstein and the notion of expectation by Russell are meant to bridge this temporal gap. But — this is the second point — those two notions have two different meanings and they belong to a different theoretical framework by each of those authors : while Wittgenstein’s goal is to extend the Tractarian notion of internal relations to temporal semantic relations in order to support a logical version of intentionalism, Russell aims at favoring an externalist view of those relations and to put forward cases in which they are non-intentional. For these respective purposes, the Erwartung notion elaborated by Wittgenstein is a “intentional” notion, whereas the notion of expectation that Russell adopts is a “non-intentional” notion. One chief consequence of this difference — this is the third point — is that Wittgenstein’s famous criticism of Russell’s analysis of expectation falls short because it targets a notion that is not Russell’s own notion. The fourth point of the paper is that acknowledging Russell’s notion provides externalism with some strong arguments to counter Wittgenstein’s internalist and intentionalist position. (shrink)
This article offers a critique of moral individualism. I introduce the topic of moral individualism by discussing how its characteristic assumptions play an organizing role in contemporary conversations about how animals should be treated. I counter that moral individualism fails to do justice not only to our ethical relationships with animals but also to our ethical relationships with human beings. My main argument draws on elements of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of psychology, and in presenting the argument I address the case (...) of human beings before returning to the case of animals. Given that moral individualists frequently defend what I call the ethical view of animals, i.e., the view that animals are in themselves proper objects of ethical concern, it is worth stressing that it is no part ofmy project to undermine this view. On the contrary, the critique of moral individualism I develop makes available a better understanding of what is right about the idea that animals as such merit certain forms of respect and attention. (shrink)
Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting (...) GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions. (shrink)
This article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large Australian companies to develop, lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies. It presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company’s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports. We find that significant progress is being made by large listed Australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations. There is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure (...) that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards. There is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders. Overall, there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business. We suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach, often encompassing a stakeholder-orientated view of business strategy. However, strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value. (shrink)
Essays by leading scholars that take as their point of departure Cora Diamond 's work on the unity of Wittgenstein's thought and her writings on moral philosophy..
Project MUSE - Journal of the History of Philosophy - Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination Project MUSE Journals Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 46, Number 2, April 2008 Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 46, Number 2, April 2008 E-ISSN: 1538-4586 Print ISSN: 0022-5053 DOI: 10.1353/hph.0.0014 Reviewed by Alice SowaalSan Francisco State University Patricia Springborg. Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (...) Pp. xix + 372. Cloth, $80.00. Scholars have recently begun to expand research in early modern philosophy to include “minor” figures, especially those who contributed to the foundations of the scientific revolution. Simultaneously and separately, other scholars have begun examination of the female figures of the period. Prominent here are Eileen O’Neill’s series of articles, Jacqueline Broad’s Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century , and Sarah Hutton’s Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher . Patricia Springborg, a political scientist, now contributes to this literature with Mary Astell: Theorist of.. (shrink)
This paper discusses the relationship between dispositions and laws and the prospects for any analysis of talk of laws in terms of talk of dispositions. Recent attempts at such a reduction have often been motivated by the desire to give an account of ceteris paribus laws and in this they have had some success. However, such accounts differ as to whether they view dispositions as properties fundamentally of individuals or of kinds. I argue that if dispositions are properties of individuals, (...) we cannot give a complete account of ceteris paribus laws. Alternatively, if dispositions are properties of kinds, any reductive analysis of laws would require an extension of the notion of the dispositional beyond its usual meaning so that in effect there can be no reduction of laws to dispositions as traditionally understood. An attempt to reduce the nomological to the dispositional is therefore not the way to provide a unified account of traditional and ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)