Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims adhere to the following three claims: First, God has comprehensive knowledge of all that is, was, and will be. Second, God makes use of this knowledge in order to exercise providential control over the world. Third, human beings have free will. This combination of views raises philosophical puzzles. My aim in this chapter is to explore how historic Jewish reflection on these puzzles relates to treatment of them by contemporary analytic philosophers.

Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a … Continue reading Proper Functionalism →.

(1996). The historical lessons of human rights: In search of a new approach. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 498-503.

Despite a widespread impression that the public is woefully ignorant of science and cares little for the subject, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) surveys show the majority are very interested and understand that they are not well informed about science. The data are consistent with the author’s view that the popularity of pseudoscience does not indicate a rejection of science. If this is so, opportunities for scientists to communicate with the public promise a more rewarding result than is commonly believed (...) among scientists. In fact, the increasing visibility of science in the mass media correlates with a slow, steady improvement in public understanding of science in recent years. (shrink)

It is widely believed by historians of linguistics that the 19th-century was largely devoted to historical and comparative studies, with the main emphasis on the discovery of soundlaws. Syntax is typically portrayed as a mere sideline of these studies, while semantics is seldom even mentioned. If it comes into view at all, it is usually assumed to have been confined to diachronic lexical semantics and the construction of some (mostly ill-conceived) typologies of semantic change. This book aims to destroy some (...) of these prejudices and to show that in Europe semantics was an important, although controversial, area at that time. Synchronic mechanisms of semantic change were discovered and increasing attention was paid to the context of the sentence, to the speech situation and the users of the language. From being a semantics of transformations', a child of the biological-geological paradigm of historical linguistics with its close links to etymology and lexicography, the field matured into a semantics of comprehension and communication, set within a general linguistics and closely related to the emerging fields of psychology and sociology. (shrink)

Easy-road mathematical fictionalists grant for the sake of argument that quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable to some of our best scientific theories and explanations. Even so they maintain we can accept those theories and explanations, without believing their mathematical components, provided we believe the concrete world is intrinsically as it needs to be for those components to be true. Those I refer to as “mathematical surrealists” by contrast appeal to facts about the intrinsic character of the concrete world, not (...) to explain why our best mathematically imbued scientific theories and explanations are acceptable in spite of having false components, but in order to replace those theories and explanations with parasitic, nominalistically acceptable alternatives. I argue that easy-road fictionalism is viable only if mathematical surrealism is and that the latter constitutes a superior nominalist strategy. Two advantages of mathematical surrealism are that it neither begs the question concerning the explanatory role of mathematics in science nor requires rejecting the cogency of inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

(1996). The Conradian inheritance in the African novel. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 101-108.

This is the first day of our confinement here in Paris, which soon will feel a bit like house arrest. So, to help cheer you up, in these times of doom and gloom, I have decided to bring the museum to you in the form of a virtual exhibition thrice weekly. I have picked 25 photos from a work in progress I started years ago. The photos are portraits of visitors or guards in museums. It's candid photography, capturing life on (...) the run, a moment in time. I hope you will find many other ways to - Résidence numérique - Brigitte Cavanagh. (shrink)

The rise of conspiracy culture and the growing influence of conspiracy theories have attracted the attention of scholars from a range of fields. In recent years, Daniel Jolley, Asbjørn Dyrendal, and others have noted the prevalence of conspiracy theories amongst adolescent schoolchildren in Scandinavia and the UK. This article draws on Paulo Freire’s concept of the ‘banking model’ of education to make the case against a ‘debunking’ approach to anticonspiracist education. It argues that conspiracism should be understood as a feature (...) of our culture and as such it should be interrogated rather than dismissed by educators who are engaged in the process of educating for democracy. (shrink)

(1996). Stereotype discourse in Israel. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 680-688.

(1997). Super‐paradigms, art, and science: Romanticism and the birth of social science. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 749-754.

(1996). The contribution of communist states to the proscription of racist speech. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 801-811.

(1996). Repairing the moral deficits of capitalism: The role of the nonprofit sector. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 595-600.

(1996). Latvia in search of a social policy model. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 652-658.

(1996). Values, cultural identity, and European integration: Towards a theoretical model. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 619-626.

(1996). The concept of Carolingian Europe in the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 727-733.

Die kantische Ethik steht im Spannungsfeld von Rationalismus und Unmittelbarkeit, welche von der Vernunft nicht mehr zu fassen ist. Es ist das Faszinierende an der Theorie Kants, dass Moralität als vernünftiges Phänomen erkannt wird, welches intersubjektive Geltung beanspruchen muss. Gleichwohl kommt praktische Vernunft im Begriff des Gewissens in einen rational nicht mehr einholbaren Bereich.