This book looks at the ways in which conditionals, an integral part of philosophy and logic, can be of practical use in computer programming. It analyzes the different types of conditionals, including their applications and potential problems. Other topics include defeasible logics, the Ramsey test, and a unified view of consequence relation and belief revision. Its implications will be of interest to researchers in logic, philosophy, and computer science, particularly artificial intelligence.

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated (...) engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been. (shrink)

Containing selected papers on the fundamentals and applications of Complexity Science, this multi-disciplinary book presents new approaches for resolving complex issues that cannot be resolved using conventional mathematical or software models. Complex Systems problems can occur in a variety of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. Complexity Science problems, the science of open systems consisting of large numbers of diverse components engaged in rich interaction, can occur in a variety (...) of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. The global behaviour of these systems emerges from the interaction of constituent components and is unpredictable but not random. The key attribute of Complex Systems is the ability to self-organise and adapt to unpredictable changes in their environment. (shrink)

Organisms that share the capability of storing information about experiences in the past have an actively generated background resource on which they can compare and evaluate more recent experiences in order to quickly or even better react than in previous situations. This is an essential competence for all reaction and adaptation purposes of living organisms. Such memory/learning skills can be found from akaryotes up to unicellular eukaryotes, fungi, animals and plants, although until recently, it had been mentioned only as a (...) capability of higher animals. With the rise of epigenetics, the context-dependent marking of experiences at both the phenotype and the genotype level is an essential perspective to understand memory and learning in all organisms. Both memory and learning depend on a variety of successful communication processes within the whole organism. (shrink)

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

There are two fundamentally different approaches to innovation: incremental and radical. In Economics as Anatomy, G.M. Peter Swann argues that economics as a discipline needs both perspectives in order to create the maximum beneficial effect for the economy. Chapters explore how and why mainstream economics is very good at incremental innovation but seems uncomfortable with radical innovation. Swann argues that economics should follow the example of many other disciplines, transitioning from one field to a range of semi-autonomous sub-disciplines. In this (...) book, he compares the missing link in empirical economics to being the economic equivalent of anatomy, the basis of medical discourse. Working as a sequel to Swann's Putting Econometrics in its Place, this book will be a vital resource to those who are discontent with the state of mainstream economics, especially those actively seeking to promote change in the discipline. Students wishing to see progress in the teaching of economics will also benefit from this timely book. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

Modern science faces a series of problems that undermine confidence in its reliability. To solve these problems, we must reflect on what makes science work and what leads it astray. This book is about Science, its strengths and weaknesses. The papers that scientists write form a vast resource of evidence and theory that is doubling about every ten years, along with the number of scientists. The size of this resource makes it hard for it to be used effectively by scientists, (...) and along with this are growing concerns about its integrity and reliability. This book looks at the scientific method, as currently applied and as understood philosophically by scientists, the social structure of science, and the structure of scientific communication through journals. It includes case studies of controversies, and looks at how fields develop over time. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

In the Freedom essay, Schelling charges that (1) idealism fails to grasp human freedom’s distinctiveness and that (2) this failure undermines idealism's attempt to refute pantheism, as exemplified by Spinoza. This raises two questions, which I will answer in turn: what, for Schelling, is distinctive of human freedom; and how does the idealists’ failure to grasp it render them unable to refute pantheism? To answer these questions, I will reconstruct Schelling’s argument that freedom has the distinctness of being the unconditioned (...) condition of the world’s intelligibility. My reconstruction will illustrate how Schelling’s notion of freedom as primal will grounds the alleged primacy of practical reason as Kant and Fichte conceive it. I will then consider three objections to Schelling’s argument. Throughout, I will develop the Schellingian idea that freedom is enacted in an unprethinkable decision that cannot be anticipated by any law or principle. (shrink)

Foucault’s remarks concerning psychoanalysis are ambivalent and even prima facie contra-dictory, at times lauding Freud and Lacan as anti-humanists, at others being severely criti-cal of their imbrication within psychiatric power. This has allowed a profusion of interpretations of his position, between so-called ‘Freudo-Foucauldians’ at one extreme and Foucauldians who condemn psychoanalysis as such at the other. In this article, I begin by surveying Foucault’s biographical and theoretical relationship to psychoanalysis and the sec-ondary scholarship on this relationship to date. I pay (...) particular attention to the discussion of the relationship in feminist scholarship and queer theory, and that by psychoanalytic thinkers, as well as attending to the particular focus in the secondary literature on Fou-cault’s late work and his relationship to the figure of Jacques Lacan. I conclude that Fou-cault’s attitude to psychoanalysis varies with context, and that some of his criticisms of psychoanalysis in part reflect an ignorance of the variety of psychoanalytic thought, partic-ularly in its Lacanian form. I thus argue that Foucault sometimes tended to overestimate the extent of the incompatibility of his approach with psychoanalytic ones and that there is ultimately no serious incompatibility there. Rather, psychoanalysis represents a substantively different mode of inquiry to Foucault’s work, which is neither straightforwardly ex-clusive nor inclusive of psychoanalytic insights. (shrink)

Health care begins as an act of conscience, which urges a response to the sick and holds caregivers accountable to moral standards that public authorities ultimately do not define. Conscience nonetheless expresses itself as a type of dialogue within oneself that is influenced by dialogue with others, especially with society in the form of civil law and professional standards. A well-formed conscience for health care relates the foundations of morality to health care practices and contributes sound moral judgment about them (...) to the common good. Some current health care policies and medical education presume a distorted view of conscience as personal sentiment. These policies circumvent serious discussion and possible resolution of society's most vexing bioethics controversies. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Schelling’s critique of Hegel consists in charging reason with an inability to account for its own possibility. This is not an attack on reason’s project of constructing a logical system, but rather on the pretense of doing so with complete justification and so without presuppositions, as if it were obvious why there is a logical system or why there is anything meaningful at all. Scholars accordingly cite the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ as emblematic (...) of Schelling’s critique and the source of his claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other than itself. But what sort of claim is this? For what sort of argument could it be the conclusion? On these questions, the literature is lacking. I propose that the question ‘why something’ motivates Schelling to give a transcendental argument to the effect that past and future are a priori conditions of the possibility of reason. As I reconstruct it from the Weltalter, this argument construes the past as the pre-rational decision to construct a logical system, while the future represents the purpose that guides the construction of the same. Schelling’s claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other is thus the discovery of inescapable presuppositions that condition the possibility of reason as such. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article explores the relationship between rhetoric and violence by running this pairing through a corresponding couplet: rhetoric and race. Arguing for a common substrate between these two pairs of terms—coloniality—this article proposes that rhetorics of "nonviolence" are better understood as rhetorics of anti-violence.

Boldly focusing on sexuality as a crucial definer of social order, Being and Symptom argues that there is an "M theory" -- a master theory of theories -- not only in Quantum Physics, but also in Continental Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Sociology, disclosing how the ontological structure of the "fantastic four" ingredients of metaphysics (potentiality, impotentiality, actuality, completion) has recurred through time. Öğüt also seeks to turn Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy into a social theory within the fields of sexuality and sovereignty (...) and to locate parallels among Aristotle, Ibn Khaldun, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan, Agamben, Nash, Derrida, Girard, Kristeva, and Žižek, with a special emphasis on how Žižek has adapted Lacanian psychoanalysis into social theory. Öğüt conveys a highly original analysis of the unconscious of our social (sexual) relations, subjectivities, and politics. (shrink)

Worsening energy crises and the growing effects of climate change have spurred, among other things, concerted efforts to tackle global problems through what the United Nations calls Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are in turn argued to be best achieved via the adoption of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as the vehicle for guiding our efforts. However, though these things are often presented as the solution to global issues, they are increasingly being used as a means to centralize power (...) and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. This article aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG mask this reality, taking as a solution one of the foundational causes of global wealth and power disparity. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for a dialetheist (...) answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

This paper argues that McDowell wrongly assumes that “terror”, Cavell’s reaction to the radical contingency of our shared modes of knowing or our “attunement”, expresses a skepticism that is antinomically bound to an equally unacceptable dogmatism because Cavell rather regards terror as a mood that reveals the “truth of skepticism”, namely, that there is no conclusive evidence for necessary attunement on pain of a category error, and that a precedent for McDowell’s misunderstanding is Hegel’s argument for necessary attunement in a (...) system of knowing, whose refutation Schelling holds it is the “merit of skepticism” to provide. (shrink)

Despite F. W. J. Schelling’s relative exclusion from the ongoing German idealist renaissance in Anglophone scholarship, recent critical and historical engagement with idealist texts affords an unprecedented opportunity to discover the richness and value of his thinking. This volume provides a wide-ranging presentation of Schelling’s original contribution to and internal critique of the basic insights of German idealism, his role in shaping the course of post-Kantian thought, and his sensitivity and innovative responses to questions of lasting metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, (...) and theological importance. The contributing authors offer compelling reasons to regard Schelling as one of Kant’s most incisive interpreters, a pioneering philosopher of nature, a resolute philosopher of human finitude and freedom, a nuanced thinker of the bounds of logic and self-consciousness, and perhaps Hegel’s most effective critic. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Recovering the Soul explores an area of historical philosophy that few if any others have attempted by critically comparing the metaphysical doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza on the identity of mind and body. The central premise is that the hylomorphism of Aquinas's understanding of soul and body has a surprising affinity with Spinoza's own understanding of how human beings are enabled to exist as a single entity that is both mind and body. In the process of making the (...) case that hylomorphism can apply to Spinoza's philosophy as much as Aquinas's, the book carefully exegetes the work of each philosopher and indicates how each is internally consistent within his own system of thought. The hylomorphic reading of Spinoza helps to address some interpretive challenges that his commentators have noted and struggled to harmonize with other aspects of this monist ontology. Beyond the historical and interpretive interests the book addresses, it also makes the case that hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory of human constitution best harmonizes with contemporary studies in the human genome and provides a more comprehensive starting point for the philosophy of mind than reductionism or substance dualism. (shrink)

This book explores the relationship between schizophrenia and common sense. It approaches this theme from a multidisciplinary perspective. Coverage features contributions from phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, and social cognition. The contributors address the following questions: How relevant is the loss of common sense in schizophrenia? How can the study of schizophrenia contribute to the study of common sense? How to understand and explain this loss of common sense? They also consider: What is the relationship of practical reasoning (...) and logical formal reasoning with schizophrenia? What is the relationship between the person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and social values? Chapters examine such issues as rationality, emotions, self, and delusion. In addition, one looks at brain structure and neurotransmission. Others explore phenomenological and Wittgensteinian theories. The book features papers from the Schizophrenia and Common Sense International Workshop, held at New University of Lisbon, November 2015. It offers new insights into this topic and will appeal to researchers, students, as well as interested general readers. (shrink)

Graeme Laurie stepped down from the Chair in Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. This edited collection pays tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the field. Graeme has often spoken about the importance of 'legacy' in academic work and has forged a remarkable intellectual legacy of his own, notably through his work on genetic privacy, human tissue and information governance, and on the regulatory salience of the concept of liminality. The essays in this volume animate the concept (...) of legacy as lens of analysis for the study and practice of medical jurisprudence. In this light, legacy reveals characteristics of both benefit and burden, as both an encumbrance to and facilitator of the development of law, policy and regulation. Overall, the contributions reconcile the ideas of legacy and responsiveness and show that both dimensions are critical to achieve and sustain the health of medical jurisprudence itself as a dynamic, interdisciplinary and policy-engaged field of thinking. (shrink)

This book addresses a wide range of topics relating to the properties and behavior of condensed matter under extreme conditions such as intense magnetic and electric fields, high pressures, heat and cold, and mechanical stresses. It is divided into four sections devoted to condensed matter theory, molecular chemistry, theoretical physics, and the philosophy and history of science. The main themes include electronic correlations in material systems under extreme pressure and temperature conditions, surface physics, the transport properties of low-dimensional electronic systems, (...) applications of the density functional theory in molecular systems, and graphene. The book is the outcome of a workshop held at the University of Catania, Italy, in honor of Professor Renato Pucci on the occasion of his 70th birthday. It includes selected invited contributions from collaborators and co-authors of Professor Pucci during his long and successful career, as well as from other distinguished guest authors. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century philosophy scholars come together in this volume to address the Insiders--Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Hobbes--and Outsiders--Pierre Gassendi, Kenelm Digby, Theophilus Gale, Ralph Cudworth and Nicholas Malebranche--of the philosocial canon, and the ways in which reputations are created and confirmed. In their own day, these ten figures were all considered to be thinkers of substantial repute, and it took some time for the Insiders to come to be regarded as major and original philosophers. Today these Insiders all feature in (...) the syllabi of most history of philosophy courses taught in western universities, and the papers in this collection, contrasting the stories of their receptions with those of the Outsiders, give an insight into the history of philosophy which is generally overlooked. (shrink)

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, designed as a collection of critical studies by experts to both widen and deepen study in Gnostic movements and strands of speculation as a discrete "World" of human socio-spiritual life from the distant past until today. An international team of contributors examines these manifestations in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, (...) and also with such new religious movements as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This illustrated handbook will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history. (shrink)

Excerpt from Zur Psychologie des Asthetischen Genusses Die erste Erfahrung, auf der uberhaupt die Existenz berechtigung einer Wissenschaft wie der Asthetik beruht, ist die, da durch Einwirkung gewisser Objekte auf unsere Sinne ein Wohlgefallen in uns erzeugt wird, das wir unmittelbar und mit ziemlicher Sicherheit von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens unterscheiden. Wenn wir versuchen, diesen zunachst nur gefiihlten Unterschied zu begrifi'licher Klarheit emporzuheben, so bemerken wir, da das asthetische Wohl gefallen durch zwei Eigenschaften charakterisiert und von allen anderen Arten (...) des Glucksgefiihls geschieden ist: erstens knupft es sich nicht an Elementarvorstellungen also ein fache Empfindungen sondern an Vorstellungskomplexe, und zweitens setzt es nicht die reale oder gedachte Erfullung einer zielsetzenden Tatigkeit voraus, sondern hat sein Ziel allein in sich selbst. Durch die erste Bestimmung unterscheidet es sich von sinnlichen Lustgefuhlen, durch die zweite von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens, die wir aus leicht ersieht lichen Grunden als praktisch bezeichnen wollen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

While the idea that philosophy requires self-transformation is historically pervasive, it exerts considerable influence on the post-Kantians who first aim to systematize Kant’s idealism by grounding it on a first principle. In the 1790s, Fichte and Schelling offer competing accounts of the self-transformation that they regard as essential to positing a first principle. Their accounts raise two central questions. First, what makes this kind of self-transformation possible? Second, are there different possible expressions of philosophical self-transformation? In what follows, I will (...) articulate the Fichtean and Schellingian answers to these central questions. For Fichte, the one who summons me to posit a first principle makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has an exclusively idealist expression in that I can only genuinely posit the I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation depends on mutual recognition and vindicates precisely one philosophical system (Section 1). For Schelling, a brute act of will makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has either an idealist or a realist expression in that I can genuinely posit either the I or the not-I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation does not depend on mutual recognition and vindicates one of two possible philosophical systems (Section 2). Thus, whereas Fichtean self-transformation is recognitive and non-pluralistic, Schellingian self-transformation is pluralistic and non-recognitive. I conclude with a discussion of how Jacobi poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions (Section 3). (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he grants—and (...) in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

Begins by explaining then proving a generalized language dependence result similar to Goodman's "grue" problem. I then use this result to cast doubt on the existence of an objective evidential favoring relation (such as "the evidence confirms one hypothesis over another," "the evidence provides more reason to believe one hypothesis over the other," "the evidence justifies one hypothesis over the other," etc.). Once we understand what language dependence tells us about evidential favoring, our options are an implausibly strong conception of (...) the a priori, a hard externalism on which agents are unable to determine what their evidence favors, or a subjectivist view that makes evidential favoring relative to features of the agent. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

Marketing Ethics addresses head-on the ethical questions, misunderstandings and challenges that marketing raises while defining marketing as a moral activity. A substantial introduction to the ethics of marketing, exploring the integral relations of marketing and morality Identifies and discusses a series of ethical tools and the marketing framework they constitute that are required for moral marketing Considers broader meanings and background assumptions of marketing infrequently included in other marketing literature Adds direction and meaning to problems in marketing ethics through reflection (...) on concepts such as individual choice, freedom and responsibility, desire satisfaction, noncoercive exchanges, and instrumental efficiency. (shrink)

‘Facticity’ is a concept that classical phenomenologists like Heidegger use to denote the radically contingent or underivably brute conditions of intelligibility. Yet Fichte coins the term, to which he gives the opposing use of denoting unacceptably brute conditions of intelligibility. For him, radical contingency is a problem to be solved by deriving such conditions from reason. Heidegger rejects Fichte's recoil from facticity with his hermeneutics of facticity, supplanting Fichte's metaphor of our always being in reason's hand with the metaphor of (...) our always having been thrown. How does Heidegger inherit and diametrically repurpose Fichte's neologism? Whence the reversed meaning of ‘facticity’ in post-Kantian thought? The answer is Lask's doctoral thesis, which exerts an acknowledged impact on Heidegger's habilitation thesis. Lask interprets ‘facticity’ as Fichte's term for the individuality problem, that is, the resistance of the material particularity of individuals to explanation by the categories genetically deduced from reason. On his interpretation, ‘facticity’ denotes radical contingency in the guise of haecceity, that is, the brute uniqueness of individuals. Lask credits Fichte with registering the problem of individuality, which highlights the world's irreducibly precategorial character. But how is ‘facticity’ transmitted from Lask to Heidegger, given their opposing interpretations of how Fichte understands its meaning? I argue that (1) Lask misreads Fichte as a proponent of facticity, that is, one whose accommodation of radical contingency deflates the Wissenschaftslehre's systematic ambitions, and (2) Lask's misreading, without deceiving Heidegger regarding the sincerity of Fichte's ambitions, encourages Heidegger's own hermeneutics of facticity. (shrink)

Discussion of Alexander Bogdanov as a Marxist revisionist has largely centred on his philosophy of being and cognition and on Plekhanov’s and Lenin’s accusation that Bogdanov was an idealist renegade from Marxism. However, the real issue of revisionism at the time was not materialism but determinism: the question of whether socialism would appear by the working of the objective laws of nature or the subjective will of human beings. Bogdanov did indeed revise Marxism, but he did so in order to (...) defend it as a natural science. He conceived of society as a form of life subject to biological laws of nature: the need to assimilate energy from the environment and the need to adapt to the environment in the struggle to survive. He reinterpreted the key elements of scientific socialism – the idea that existence determines consciousness and the labour theory of value – in terms of this worldview. (shrink)

While interest in Kant's philosophy has increased in recent years, very little of it has focused on his theory of science. This book gives a general account of that theory, of its motives and implications, and of the way it brought forth a new conception of the nature of philosophical thought. To reconstruct Kant's theory of science, the author identifies unifying themes of his philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of physics, both undergirded by his distinctive logical doctrines, and shows how (...) they come together to form a relatively consistent system of ideas. A new analysis of the structure of central arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena draws on recent developments in logic and the philosophy of science. Professor Brittan's unified account of the philosophies of mathematics and physics explores the nature of Kant's commitment to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics as well as providing an integrated reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Contemporary ideas help both to illuminate Kant's position and to show how that position, in turn, illuminates contemporary problems in the philosophy of science. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Plato's Republic has proven to be of astounding influence and importance. Justly celebrated as Plato's central text, it brings together all of his prior works, unifying them into a comprehensive vision that is at once theological, philosophical, political and moral. The essays in this volume provide a picture of the most interesting aspects of the Republic, and address questions that continue to puzzle and provoke, such as: Does Plato succeed in his argument that the life of justice is the most (...) attractive one? Is his tripartite analysis of the soul coherent and plausible? Why does Plato seem to have to force his philosopher-guardians to rule when they know this is something that they ought to do? What is the point of the strange and complicated closing Myth of Er? This volume will be essential to those looking for thoughtful and detailed excursions into the problems posed by Plato's text and ideas. (shrink)

Supervaluationism is often described as the most popular semantic treatment of indeterminacy. There’s little consensus, however, about how to fill out the bare-bones idea to include a characterization of logical consequence. The paper explores one methodology for choosing between the logics: pick a logic thatnorms beliefas classical consequence is standardly thought to do. The main focus of the paper considers a variant of standard supervaluational, on which we can characterizedegrees of determinacy. It applies the methodology above to focus ondegree logic. (...) This is developed first in a basic, single-premise case; and then extended to the multipremise case, and to allowdegreesof consequence. The metatheoretic properties of degree logic are set out. On the positive side, the logic is supraclassical—all classical valid sequents are degree logic valid. Strikingly, metarules such as cut and conjunction introduction fail. (shrink)

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

Some of the most interesting recent work in formal epistemology has focused on developing accuracy-based approaches to justifying Bayesian norms. These approaches are interesting not only because they offer new ways to justify these norms, but because they potentially offer a way to justify all of these norms by appeal to a single, attractive epistemic goal: having accurate beliefs. Recently, Easwaran & Fitelson (2012) have raised worries regarding whether such “all-accuracy” or “purely alethic” approaches can accommodate and justify evidential Bayesian (...) norms. In response, proponents of purely alethic approaches, such as Pettigrew (2013b) and Joyce (2016), have argued that scoring rule arguments provide us with compatible and purely alethic justifications for the traditional Bayesian norms, including evidential norms. In this paper I raise several challenges to this claim. First, I argue that many of the justifications these scoring rule arguments provide are not compatible. Second, I raise worries for the claim that these scoring rule arguments provide purely alethic justifications. Third, I turn to assess the more general question of whether purely alethic justifications for evidential norms are even possible, and argue that, without making some contentious assumptions, they are not. Fourth, I raise some further worries for the possibility of providing purely alethic justifications for content-sensitive evidential norms, like the Principal Principle. (shrink)

Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to advance democratic agendas, at other times to block them; sometimes for increasing the growth of knowledge, at others to resist it. Sandra Harding is not ready to throw out objectivity quite (...) yet. For all of its problems, she contends that objectivity is too powerful a concept simply to abandon. In Objectivity and Diversity, Harding calls for a science that is both more epistemically adequate and socially just, a science that would ask: How are the lives of the most economically and politically vulnerable groups affected by a particular piece of research? Do they have a say in whether and how the research is done? Should empirically reliable systems of indigenous knowledge count as "real science"? Ultimately, Harding argues for a shift from the ideal of a neutral, disinterested science to one that prizes fairness and responsibility. (shrink)

Meillassoux defines “correlationism” as the view that we can only access the mutual dependence of thought and being—specifically, subjectivity and objectivity—which he attributes to Heidegger. This attribution is inapt. It is only by accessing being—via existential analysis—that we can properly distinguish beings like subjects and objects. I propose that Meillassoux’s misattribution ignores the ontological difference that drives Heidegger’s project. First, I demonstrate the inadequacy of Meillassoux’s account of correlationism as a criticism of Heidegger and dispense with an objection. Second, I (...) argue that Meillassoux’s neglect of the ontological difference stems from a question-begging appeal to transcendental realism, which is at odds with Heidegger’s twin claims for a variety of transcendental idealism in Being and Time. Third, I offer a reflection on three general marks of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.

A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...) to accommodate these issues. Then, putting these other issues aside, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order to accommodate self-locating beliefs. Finally, I propose a constraint on updating rules, the "Learning Principle", which rules out certain kinds of troubling belief changes, and I use this principle to assess some of the available options. (shrink)