The field of modern European Jewish history, as I hope to show, can be of great interest to those who deal with conceptual history in other contexts, just as much as the conceptual historical project may enrich the study of Jewish history. This article illuminates the transformation of the Jewish languages in Eastern Europe-Hebrew and Yiddish-from their complex place in traditional Jewish society to the modern and secular Jewish experience. It presents a few concrete examples for this process during the (...) nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article then deals with the adaptation of Central and Western European languages within the internal Jewish discourse in these parts of Europe and presents examples from Germany, France, and Hungary. (shrink)

This is a unique collection of new and recently-published articles which debate the merits of virtue-theoretic approaches to the core epistemological issues of knowledge and justified belief. The readings all contribute to our understanding of the relative importance, for a theory of justified belief, of the reliability of our cognitive faculties and of the individuals responsibility in gathering and weighing evidence. Highlights of the readings include direct exchanges between leading exponents of this approach and their critics.

IOS Prexs, 2002 Introduction This book is the final project report of the BIOMED II project Ethical Function in Hospital Ethics Committees Commission,-2001 ...

Using Brehm's (1999) intensity of emotion paradigm, we investigated whether basic positive or negative affect operates like a motivational state. We focused on one of the most basic affects, the sensory affect experienced when eating food. Participants tasted a delicious chocolate truffle (Study 1) or some bitter chocolate (Study 2) and were exposed to either a weak, moderately strong, or a very strong reason for feeling an opposing-valence affect or to no reason. In line with the predictions, the affect that (...) participants reported in response to chocolate functioned like a motivational state as its intensity was a cubic function of the importance of the reason for feeling an opposing affect. We discussed the implications of these findings for the conceptualisation of affect and consider several applications for food advertising and consumer rating research. (shrink)

What is the philosophical role of an historical account of how someone, or some people, came to believe or value as they do? I consider some proposals, due to Bernard Williams and David Wiggins, according to which such an account might either vindicate or subvert our believing or valuing as we do. I suggest some reasons for scepticism about those proposals, at least when construed as providing a fundamental means of assessing cases of believing or valuing. The main problem raised (...) for the proposals, when so construed, is that they conflate reasons that now support believing or valuing with reasons for coming in the first place to believe or value. (shrink)

What is the epistemological role of speech perception in comprehension? More precisely, what is its role in episodes or states of comprehension able to mediate the communication of knowledge? One answer, developed in recent work by Tyler Burge, has it that its role may be limited to triggering mobilizations of the understanding. I argue that, while there is much to be said for such a view, it should not be accepted. I present an alternative account, on which episodes of comprehension (...) are better able to underwrite the interpersonal transmission of knowledge. (shrink)

The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth, concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac processional ritual into representations of the return (...) of Hephaistos in order to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos was escorted into the city of Athens. Like Dionysiac epiphanic processions, the procession of Hephaistos, Dionysos and the wine-god's followers is distinguished visually by drunkenness, ostentatious display of the phallus and obscene or insulting behaviour. To judge from the aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions, artists conveyed visually the idea that the myth al so concerned the triumph of a god over those who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians. It is not necessary to assume that the vase-painters relied on a detailed poetic account of the myth to create their representations of it, because they employed elements of religious spectacle, an inherently visual phenomenon, to convey the essence of the story. (shrink)

This was my first paper on virtue epistemology, and already highlights the connections with epistemic value and axiology which I would later develop. Although most accounts were either internalist or externalist in an exclusive sense, I suggest an inquiry-focused version through connections with the American pragmatism.

Chacun des livres de Paul Ricœur est structuré comme un récit ; il naît d’un problème résiduel, et résistant, qui a échappé aux précédents, et qui constitue comme leur zone d’ombre ; de telle sorte qu’ils se présentent tous comme limités parce que la question à laquelle ils sont confrontés est délimitée. Mais, en se déplaçant sur le terrain de l’involontaire,...

Many governments and corporations have embraced information disclosure as an alternative to conventional environmental and public health regulation. Public policy research on transparency has examined the effects of particular disclosure policies, but there is limited research on how the construction of disclosure policies relates to social movements, or how transparency and ignorance are related. As a first step toward filling this theoretical gap, this study seeks to conceptualize disclosure conflicts, the social processes through which secrecy is challenged, defended, and mobilized (...) in public technoscientific controversies. In the case of shale oil and gas development in the United States, activists and policy makers have demanded information about the contents of fluids used in the extraction process and the routes of oil shipments by rail. Drilling and railroad companies have resisted both demands. Studies of such disputes reveal the dynamic and conflictual nature of information disclosure. In both cases, disclosure conflicts unfold dynamically over time, reflecting power disparities between industry groups and their challengers and requiring coalitions of activists to pursue multiple tactics. When a disclosure policy is established, it does not resolve social conflict but shifts the focus of struggle to the design of information systems, the quality of disclosed data, and the knowledge gaps that are now illuminated. (shrink)

I discuss the conjecture that understanding what is said in an utterance is to be modelled as knowing what is said in that utterance. My main aim is to present a number of alter- native models, as a prophylactic against premature acceptance of the conjecture as the only game in town. I also offer preliminary assessments of each of the models, including the propositional knowledge model, in part by considering their respective capacities to sub-serve the transmission of knowledge through testimony. (...) In each case, the preliminary assessment is unfavourable. I end by very briefly sketching an additional model as an object for future consideration. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been involved in the pursuit of a goal shared by researchers in psychiatry and the cognitive sciences: understanding the relationship between the functioning of the human mind and human well-being or suffering. For this reason there is a very large area of overlap between philosophical and psychiatric research. The overlap is particularly significant in the domain of practical ethics, which is concerned with understanding the moral dimension of policies and actions in the real world. This chapter reviews (...) two distinct domains in which psychiatry and practical ethics overlap. First, issues in practical ethics arise out of new advances in psychopharmacology, including clinical and non-clinical use of new antidepressants drugs, the clinical use of placebo medications, and psychiatric drugs which enhance human cognition; these issues are frequently grouped under the banner of "neuroethics." Second, the understanding of fundamental questions in moral philosophy is being driven forward by evidence from psychology and psychiatry. Evidence from autism and the personality disorders is shedding light on the nature of moral motivation, while evidence from addiction and compulsion is generating progress in understanding moral responsibility. Finally, some areas are highlighted in which the science of psychiatry may benefit from the application of existing work in moral philosophy and practical ethics. (shrink)

An important question in Nietzsche studies is whether Nietzsche has an ethics to offer his readers; whether, that is, he has a concept of the good, or the just, or the virtuous that can serve as some sort of an ethical guide. An additional, methodological question is whether, in search of an answer, one should focus on a specific period in his thinking, study the evolution of his thought, or attempt to extract an over-arching view that draws on texts from (...) different stages of his thinking. The three works reviewed concern themselves with Nietzsche’s ethics by each adopting one of these three approaches, supplying us, accordingly, with different results. (shrink)

Résumé La responsabilité est le maître mot de l’éthique contemporaine. L’éthique théologique participe également de ce développement conceptuel récent. Cet article porte sur les transformations du discours théologique sur l’éthique au xxe siècle, lesquelles sont tout autant de l’ordre des contenus — la responsabilité comme thème de réflexion — que de celui de la forme — la responsabilité comme posture méthodologique.The notion of responsibility is paramount in contemporary ethical thought. This applies to theological ethics as well. This article traces the (...) development of the theological discourse on responsibility throughout the 20th century. Responsibility is considered here both as a crucial concept of theological ethics and as a methodological stance. (shrink)

Language pragmatics is applied to analyse problem statements and instructions used in a few influential experimental tasks in the psychology of reasoning. This analysis aims to determine the interpretation of the task which the participant is likely to construct. It is applied to studies of deduction (where the interpretation of quantifiers and connectives is crucial) and to studies of inclusion judgment and probabilistic judgment. It is shown that the interpretation of the problem statements or even the representation of the task (...) as a whole often turn out to differ from the experimenter's assumptions. This has serious consequences for the validity of these experimental results and therefore for the claims about human irrationality based on them. (shrink)

The various themes explored in this superb collection of essays are organised around one thinker, John McDowell, and one central idea.

This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though (...) the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand “agency” as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and “structure” as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion. (shrink)

In the early years of this century the debate as to the nature of judgment was a central issue dividing British philosophers. What a philosopher said about judgment was not independent of what he said about perception, the distinction between the a priori and empirical, the distinction between external and internal relations, the nature of inference, truth, universals, language, the reality of the self and so on.

1. Since I don't know who you are, dear reader, and since I know that some people don't have hands, I don't know whether you have hands. Probably you do, but knowing that something is probable is rarely, if ever, a way of knowing that thing. By contrast, I know that I have hands. Let me check. Yes, here is one of my hands; and here is another. Since I know that here is one of my hands and that here (...) is another, and since I know that it follows from those two claims that I have hands, I can deduce that I have hands. So, I know that I have hands. (shrink)

Interpersonal contexts can be complex because they can involve two or more people who are interdependent, each of whom is pursuing both individual and shared goals. Interactions consist of individual and joint behaviors that evolve dynamically over time. Interactions are likely to affect people’s attitudes because the interpersonal context gives conversation partners a great deal of opportunity to intentionally or unintentionally influence each other. However, despite the importance of attitudes and attitude change in interpersonal interactions, this topic remains understudied. To (...) shed light on the importance of this topic. We briefly review the features of interpersonal contexts and build a case that understanding people’s sense of psychological safety is key to understanding interpersonal influences on people’s attitudes. Specifically, feeling psychologically safe can make individuals more open-minded, increase reflective introspection, and decrease defensive processing. Psychological safety impacts how individuals think, make sense of their social world, and process attitude-relevant information. These processes can result in attitude change, even without any attempt at persuasion. We review the literature on interpersonal threats, receiving psychological safety, providing psychological safety, and interpersonal dynamics. We then detail the shortcomings of current approaches, highlight unanswered questions, and suggest avenues for future research that can contribute in developing this field. (shrink)

La science ne se construit pas dans la solitude. La recherche s'inscrit dans les pratiques sociales d'un milieu et d'une époque. Mais, la croissance rapide de nos sociétés a créé une scission entre nos concitoyens et les "spécialistes", perçus comme perdus dans leurs savoirs et pratiquant des rites complexes et incompréhensibles. Le "peuple" et les "élites" ont cessé de se comprendre et une méfiance réciproque est née entre ces deux catégories qui fonctionnent pourtant selon les mêmes règles.

I start from Phillips' discussion of Rhees's dissatisfaction with the idea of a language‐game. Then, from a rereading of Moore, I go on to exemplify interconnected uses of the expressions “language‐game,”“recurrent procedure,”“world‐picture,”“formal procedure,”“agreement in judgment,”“genre picture” and “form of life.” The discussion is related to sense perception, our knowledge of time and space, and the picture‐theory. These topics connect with Wittgenstein's earlier treatment of the will – which changed markedly later. The subtext (in footnotes) confronts (i) the sceptical methods of (...) Descartes and Hume with the grammatical methods of Leibniz, Kant and Wittgenstein, and (ii) the realism of Leibniz and the Tractatus with the transcendental idealism of Kant. My conclusion is that, although the method of Wittgenstein's later work remains in a sense grammatical, (i) in its new form it can free us from the conviction that the intellect can and must resolve one way or the other the conflicts that arise in the course of the latter confrontation, and that (ii), although release from such a conviction is to be seen as the aim of philosophical discourse in general, it allows philosophy to retain its overriding significance. A positive element in that lies in the respect the method demands for that in a human life which is transcendental to the activity of scientific theorising: respect, therefore, for the unique perspective of the individual historical agent. (shrink)

Books reviewed in this essay: Robert Arrington and Hans‐Johann Glock (eds), Wittgenstein & Quine John Koethe, The Continuity of Wittgenstein’s Thought P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth‐Century Analytic Philosophy Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations.