Perhaps no other aspect of Hans-Georg Gadamer's Wahrheit und Methode has generated more controversy and caustic criticism than his attempt to defend the role of ‘prejudice’ in human understanding. Gadamer's goal in challenging what he calls ‘the Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudice’ is not to defend irresponsible, idiosyncratic, parochial or otherwise self-willed understanding in the human sciences, but to argue that all human cognition is ‘finite’ and ‘limited’ in the sense that it always involves, to borrow Polanyi's phrase, a ‘tacit dimension’ (...) of implicit judgments, concerns, or commitments which shape definitively our grasp of the subject matter in ways we cannot anticipate or control. This implies a ‘finite’ or ‘limited’ view of human understanding in at least two ways. First, Gadamer seems to use the word ‘finite’ in conscious opposition to Hegel's notion of an ‘infinite’ intellect. For Hegel the ‘infinite’ was the ‘unconditioned’ and ‘self-determining’. An ‘infinite’ intellect would be its own master, an autonomous, spontaneous source of all its essential activities and contents. (shrink)

The claim that all human thought involves "interpretation," that all human thought is in some way relative to a contingent context of cognitive, theoretical, practical, and aesthetic considerations, has become widely accepted, but waht we understand by "truth" and how we should best pursue it are questions raised with renewed force once a hermeneutical starting point has been embraced. Brice R. Wachterhauser's collection Hermeneutics and Truth is an attempt to contribute to this concersation. No thinkers have wrestled with the (...) issue of truth and interpretation in more illuminating ways for the Continental tradition of philosophy than Heidegger and Gadamer. Hermeneutics and Truth is a dual focus on Heidegger and Gadamer, but it concentrates primarily on Gadamer's efforts to think through the issue of truth for hermeneutics and only secondaily on Heidegger's thought on this issue. (shrink)

This paper argues that the logical coherence of classical theism can be defended through the traditional free-will defense and argument from divine omniscience and human finitude, but only at the cost of moral scepticism. The above two-pronged defense entails moral scepticism because it demands that we construe clear and undeniable cases of morally unjustifiable evil as merely apparently unjustifiable evils which can be morally justified from some moral point of view. The paper argues that justification is impossible because such basic (...) evils can never be justified from any "moral" perspective. The very conditions necessary for having a moral perspective demand that one recognize certain evils as unjustifiable from any moral point of view. This is the case because moral theories are designed to give us insight into such evils. Moreover, I argue that even if one rejects the above argument, moral scepticism still follows because any intelligible account of moral knowledge requires that its proponents be able at least to point to certain cases of unjustifiable evil if their theory is to have any purchase in the real world and avoid the charge of moral irrelevance and moral scepticism. But this is precisely what the classical theist cannot do. If, however, the classical theist rejects this moral scepticism, then real cases of morally unjustifiable evil must be admitted to exist and a single one of these is sufficient to undermine the logical coherence of classical theism. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy is a collection of interpretive and critical essays on philosophical hermeneutics, focusing on the seminal work of Heidegger and Gadamer.

Perhaps no other aspect of Hans-Georg Gadamer'sWahrheit und Methodehas generated more controversy and caustic criticism than his attempt to defend the role of ‘prejudice’ (Vorurteil) in human understanding. Gadamer's goal in challenging what he calls ‘the Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudice’ is not to defend irresponsible, idiosyncratic, parochial or otherwise self-willed understanding in the human sciences, but to argue that all human cognition is ‘finite’ and ‘limited’ in the sense that it always involves, to borrow Polanyi's phrase, a ‘tacit dimension’ of (...) implicit judgments, concerns, or commitments which shape definitively our grasp of the subject matter in ways we cannot anticipate or control. This implies a ‘finite’ or ‘limited’ view of human understanding in at least two ways. First, Gadamer seems to use the word ‘finite’ in conscious opposition to Hegel's notion of an ‘infinite’ intellect. For Hegel the ‘infinite’ was the ‘unconditioned’ and ‘self-determining’. An ‘infinite’ intellect would be its own master, an autonomous, spontaneous source of all its essential activities and contents. (shrink)

Hans Georg-Gadamer is best known in the English-speaking world for his major work on philosophical hermeneutics, _Truth and Method;_ he has also written extensively on the subject of Plato. Most commentators on Gadamer's work therefore view Gadamer either as a historian of philosophy or as a philosopher in his own right, critically engaged in the philosophical issues of our time. In _Beyond Being,_ Brice R. Wachterhauser contends that this perceived bifurcation in Gadamer's work oversimplifies and distorts important parts of (...) Gadamer's thought. Wachterhauser argues that only by viewing Gadamer's contribution to philosophy as an integrated whole and by reading Gadamer's hermeneutical studies in light of his Plato studies are we able to avoid certain key misunderstandings of Gadamer, as well as to comprehend more clearly the radical implications of Gadamer's thought. (shrink)

Hans Georg-Gadamer is best known in the English-speaking world for his major work on philosophical hermeneutics, _Truth and Method;_ he has also written extensively on the subject of Plato. Most commentators on Gadamer's work therefore view Gadamer either as a historian of philosophy or as a philosopher in his own right, critically engaged in the philosophical issues of our time. In _Beyond Being,_ Brice R. Wachterhauser contends that this perceived bifurcation in Gadamer's work oversimplifies and distorts important parts of (...) Gadamer's thought. Wachterhauser argues that only by viewing Gadamer's contribution to philosophy as an integrated whole and by reading Gadamer's hermeneutical studies in light of his Plato studies are we able to avoid certain key misunderstandings of Gadamer, as well as to comprehend more clearly the radical implications of Gadamer's thought. (shrink)

This volume of essays honors the extensive contributions of James M. Edie, the founding editor of the Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy series, to the development of phenomenological thought. Grounded in Edie's emphasis on Husserl's confrontation with skepticism, the essays provide an in-depth analysis of Husserlian and neo-Husserlian responses to skepticism and relativism. Led by an informative introduction by the volume editor, Brice R. Wachterhauser, and featuring essays by thirteen contributors, including Edie himself, this volume confirms both Edie's (...) lasting influence and the continued relevance of Husserlian thought in contemporary philosophical debate. (shrink)

The claim that all human thought involves "interpretation," that all human thought is in some way relative to a contingent context of cognitive, theoretical, practical, and aesthetic considerations, has become widely accepted, but waht we ...

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In the context of Multiple criteria decision analysis, we present the necessary and sufficient conditions allowing to represent an ordinal preferential information provided by the decision maker by a Choquet integral w.r.t a 2-additive capacity. We provide also a characterization of this type of preferential information by a belief function which can be viewed as a capacity. These characterizations are based on three axioms, namely strict cycle-free preferences and some monotonicity conditions called MOPI and 2-MOPI.

The author criticises chapter 5 of r m hare's "the language of morals" in which hare tries to show why naturalism is "untenable." the author concludes that hare's analysis as well as the naturalists' "keep us from saying what we do say and want to say." (staff).

After decades of single issue movements and identity politics on the U.S. left, the series of large demonstrations beginning in 1999 in Seattle have led many to wonder if activist politics can now come together around a common theme of global justice. This book pursues the prospects for progressive political movements in the 21st century with case studies of ten representative movements, including the anti-globalization forces, environmental interest groups, and new takes on the peace movement.

Word in noise identification is facilitated by acoustic differences between target and competing sounds and temporal separation between the onset of the masker and that of the target. Younger and older adults are able to take advantage of onset delay when the masker is dissimilar to the target word, but only younger adults are able to do so when the masker is similar. We examined the neural underpinning of this age difference using cortical evoked responses to words masked by either (...) Babble or Noise when the masker preceded the target word by 100 or 600 ms in younger and older adults, after adjusting the signal-to-noise ratios to equate behavioural performance across age groups and conditions. For the 100 ms onset delay, the word in noise elicited an acoustic change complex response that was comparable in younger and older adults. For the 600 ms onset delay, the ACC was modulated by both masker type and age. In older adults, the ACC to a word in babble was not affected by the increase in onset delay whereas younger adults showed a benefit from longer delays. Hence, the age difference in sensitivity to temporal delay is indexed by early activity in the auditory cortex. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that an increase in onset delay improves stream segregation in younger adults in both noise and babble, but only in noise for older adults and that this change in stream segregation is evident in early cortical processes. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Sous le titre quelque peu énigmatique de Mythologizing Performance, Richard P. Martin (R.M.) a réuni dix-sept essais publiés à différentes occasions. D’une manière ou d’une autre ces essais, plus originaux les uns que les autres, font tous suite à l’ouvrage fondamental paru en 1989, dans la même belle collection « Myth & Poetics » dirigée par Gregory Nagy à Cornell University Press, soit The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the ‘Iliad’. Assurément, le recenseur ne dispose pas des...

La publication de l'Aurige dans les Fouilles de Delphes a rectifié un certain nombre d'erreurs du volume de R. Hampe, mais il faut encore préciser plusieurs détails matériels.

Cet ouvrage rend hommage au Professeur Claude JOURNÈS, ancien Président de l'Université LUMIERE Lyon 2 et membre fondateur du mouvement Critique du droit. Les Mélanges offerts au Professeur Claude JOURNÈS ont retenu cette approche, utilisant le droit comme un outil de mise en perspective critique de l'ordre social et de l'ordre politique. Après un hommage au Doyen JOURNÉES (P. BLACHÈR) et l'évocation des ambitions et perspectives du mouvement critique Du droit (S. BASSET ou J. MICHEL), l'ouvrage se construit (...) en deux temps. La première partie, intitulée « Le droit critique de l'ordre social », regroupe des réflexions sur le pouvoir médical (F. DEMICHEL), sur les crimes coloniaux (A. MAHIOU), sur la dimension anthropologique du vocabulaire juridique (M.-C. HATTI) et sur le contrôle policier (M. SAOUDI), le tout ouvrant sur la possibilité d'un humanisme séculier (H. PUEL). La seconde partie, « Le droit critique de l'ordre politique », entend montrer comment le droit porte en lui une conception du pouvoir et de l'autorité. Les études explorent des pistes très diverses mêlant les finances publiques (J.-L. ALBERT), les renseignements (C. ARROUDJ), l'histoire du droit (J.-L. AUTIN, J.-C GENIN), l'histoire de la doctrine (H. GOURDON), les institutions politiques (P. BACOT, A.-S. MESCHERIAKOFF, R. CHARVIN), les institutions territoriales (J.-J. GLEUAL, H. OBERDORFF, R. PAVRE), la littérature (S. CAPORAL, G. HARE) ou les nouvelles technologies (G. PROTIÉRE). II ressort de l'ensemble que, loin d'être un simple outil technique, le droit est un puissant instrument de modélisation sociale et de justification du pouvoir. Inversant la logique dominante, la perspective critique du droit dévoile les limites d'une telle conception et rappelle que le droit, comme tous les construits sociaux, est le produit de luttes politiques et de rapports de force. En ce sens, à l'instar des valeurs défendues par le dédicataire de cet ouvrage, l'ordre critique du droit est un appel à contester les évidences, condition d'une conception plus ouverte et pluraliste de l'ordre juridique. (shrink)

We analyze combinatorial properties of open covers of sets of real numbers by using filters on the natural numbers. In fact, the goal of this paper is to characterize known properties related to ω-covers of the space in terms of combinatorial properties of filters associated with these ω-covers. As an example, we show that all finite powers of a set R of real numbers have the covering property of Menger if, and only if, each filter on ω associated with its (...) countable ω-cover is a P + filter. (shrink)