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)

This paper focuses on the preliminary evaluation of expressions of moral sentiment under conditions of cultural pluralism. The advance of science and technology puts ever new power over nature in human hands, and if this new power is to more fully serve human ends, then it must become the means or material of human virtue. This prospect poses the question of the relationship between power and virtue, and equally, the question of how scientific advances may be understood to enter into (...) a pluralism of moral doctrines and deliberations. Taking a page from the philosophy of science, the present approach examines the relationship between scientific advances and moral evaluations of developing practices as mediated by contemporary accounts of the virtues of hypotheses. If we conceive of expressions of moral sentiment as hypotheses for the amendment or expansion of existing moral doctrines in the light of new possibilities for action, then this suggests that expressions of moral sentiment may be evaluated, in a preliminary way, by reference to standard lists of the virtues of hypotheses: refutability, conservatism, modesty or simplicity, precision, elegance, and generality. Expressions of moral sentiment are subject to preliminary evaluation, on cognitive grounds, by reference to their prospective integration and/or modification of on-going moral traditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Pragmatist Philosophy of History by Marnie BinderPiers H. G. StephensA Pragmatist Philosophy of History Marnie Binder. Lexington Books, 2023.Looking at current scholarship and opinion in American philosophy, one can easily conclude that there has been much more work done on studying the history of pragmatist philosophy than there has been on what pragmatist philosophy can give to the study of history. Ever since the resurrection of interest (...) in pragmatism in the late twentieth century, we have seen a range of publications offering new interpretations for the ideas of the classical pragmatists, as well as important new applications for philosophical pragmatism and the moving to center stage of historically sidelined individuals and groups. What we have seen relatively little of, however, aside from a 2016 symposium in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, is sustained engagement with the question of what a classically pragmatist approach to historical inquiry might contribute, entail, or imply. It is this important niche in the ecosystem of American philosophy that Marnie Binder's A Pragmatist Philosophy of History seeks to partially fill in.Binder, who is perhaps best known for her past writings on José Ortega y Gasset, is at pains from the start to indicate both the humility and the utility of her project. As befits the tradition, there are no grandiose philosophical pretensions here, with the "goal in presenting a pragmatist philosophy of [End Page 112] history" merely being "to add another apparatus to the toolkits of the philosopher and the historian," an extra perspective that is "meant to complement other methodologies" (xi; emphasis in original), as she explains in her introduction. At the same time, pragmatism can offer something distinctive, firstly through asking the pragmatic question of what difference is meant by the accepting of particular presumed facts as being true, and secondly, being able to better understand why certain historical details have relevance, value, and meaning for us as a result of answering the first question. A pragmatist philosophy of history is helpful then, Binder maintains, as it "is in a unique position to bridge the speculative analytic divide" (xiii), and her approach to doing this is to draw upon the resources found in the works of a succession of the familiar classical pragmatists, building toward a synthesis and a cashing out of insights in her concluding reflections.Structurally the work consists of an explanatory introduction followed by six chapters, each dedicated to a particular pragmatist and their insights, leading finally to an extended concluding section drawing the component parts together and answering possible objections to the project. Pragmatism, as Binder recognizes, is seldom thought of as a historically orientated philosophy, but she argues that for each of these thinkers—William James, John Dewey, F. C. S. Schiller, Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and Jane Addams—there is at least the germ of a philosophy of history that can be unearthed and developed, eventually helping to inform understanding of what is needed to bring a pragmatist ethics into practical reality, the last of which is manifested primarily by Addams. Thus, the treatment of William James in chapter 1 homes in on James's psychological insights into the way that experienced reality forms a temporal continuum; our consciousness necessarily selects from the experiences of the past, ascribing interpretations and assuming levels of facticity and relevance, since no individual can know all the facts or select among them with perfect impartiality. The continuum will be one that speaks to the inquirer's concerns with accuracy, practicality, meaningfulness, and coherence, as all knowledge comes about through temporal processes, and since past events are continuously added to and can be continuously reinterpreted, it can have no real or ultimate beginning or end. Accordingly, for a Jamesian pragmatist account, the "continuum of history is the way in which we construct a meaning for history of the connected past experiences with the present and in view of the future—this is what we call 'history'" (7; emphasis in original), and Binder draws upon José Medina's recent work to further illuminate how such history can and will be continuously critically reconstructed. In addition, she observes, such reconstruction [End Page... (shrink)

A large body of research in cognitive science differentiates human reasoning into two types: fast, intuitive, and emotional “System 1” thinking, and slower, more reflective “System 2” reasoning. According to this research, human reasoning is by default fast and intuitive, but that means that it is prone to error and biases that cloud our judgments and decision making. To improve the quality of reasoning, critical thinking education should develop strategies to slow it down and to become more reflective. The goal (...) of such education should be to enable and motivate students to identify weaknesses, gaps, biases, and limiting perspectives in their own reasoning and to correct them. This contribution discusses how this goal could be achieved with regard to reasoning that involves the construction of arguments; or more precisely: how computer-supported argument visualization tools could be designed that support reflection on the quality of arguments and their improvement. Three types of CSAV approaches are distinguished that focus on reflection and self-correcting reasoning. The first one is to trigger reflection by confronting the user with specific questions that direct attention to critical points. The second approach uses templates that, on the one hand, provide a particular structure to reason about an issue by means of arguments and, on the other, include prompts to enter specific items. And a third approach is realized in specifically designed user guidance that attempts to trigger reflection and self-correction. These types of approaches are currently realized only in very few CSAV tools. In order to inform the future development of what I call reflection tools, this article discusses the potential and limitations of these types and tools with regard to five explanations of the observation that students hardly ever engage in substantial revisions of what they wrote: a lack of strategies how to do it; cognitive overload; certain epistemic beliefs; myside bias; and over-confidence in the quality of one’s own reasoning. The question is: To what degree can each of the CSAV approaches and tools address these five potential obstacles to reflection and self-correction? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Message from the EditorPiers H.G. Stephens, EditorIt is now six years since this journal’s founding editor Victoria Davion sadly succumbed to premature fatal illness and I took over her editorial duties under the most unfortunate of circumstances. I stated publicly then that Vicky’s vision for the character and purpose of the journal would remain unchanged under my watch, and in keeping with that pledge, I am now pleased (...) to announce a major expansion of our editorial board to further promote that vision.Over the past two decades, the size of our board had declined significantly as a result of retirements and mortality, and so a restoration of the previous scale of editorial support was significantly overdue. In doing this, I have sought to protect and expand our international and interdisciplinary coverage in a way that honors the focus that Vicky gave the journal from the beginning, giving space to voices from the wider communities of concern impacted by ecological destruction and incorporating a broad and inclusive but critically engaged approach to the philosophical issues involved. Our new board includes members from a wider range of nations and disciplines, which should help us expand the journal’s reach while both manifesting and remaining faithful to the original mission that our founding editor set for it. In the process, we are welcoming a combination of new rising stars and well-established respected figures in environmental thought, and aiming to expand our sphere of influence well beyond our main subscriber base in North America. Our hope is that our new scholarly supporters will enable the journal to grow in tackling the newer and ever more complex issues and problems raised by climate change, biodiversity loss, and other ongoing ecological crises, while at the same time still remaining true to the spirit with which Vicky founded it.Readers, please join me in welcoming our new board members, who are listed in the front matter of this issue. We thank them immensely for their service and hope that their efforts will enable and support increased success for Ethics and the Environment. [End Page 1]Copyright © 2023 The Trustees of Indiana University... (shrink)

Modelling and simulations have gained a leading position in contemporary attempts to describe, explain, and quantitatively predict the human brain's operations. Computer models are highly sophisticated tools developed to achieve an integrated knowledge of the brain with the aim of overcoming the actual fragmentation resulting from different neuroscientific approaches. In this paper we investigate plausibility of simulation technologies for emulation of consciousness and the potential clinical impact of large-scale brain simulation on the assessment and care of disorders of consciousness, e.g. (...) Coma, Vegetative State/Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome, Minimally Conscious State.Notwithstanding their technical limitations, we suggest that simulation technologies may offer new solutions to old practical problems, particularly in clinical contexts. We take DOCs as an illustrative case, arguing that the simulation of neural correlates of consciousness is potentially useful for improving treatments of patients with DOCs. (shrink)

Most of us came into ecology with memories of special personal places. A cliff top that Claude Monet might have painted. Allen as a youth spent his holidays on the Dorset Coast near Swanage; he can still smell the sea breeze of his childhood. Curtin grow up on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, the dew of the grass and the bright green on a June morning remains vivid. The catching of reptiles and insects for him awakened a curiosity about the (...) natural world that has remained to this day. But once into the field there came the scholarship. With ever tighter grant monies, the pressure to publish takes so much of the fun out of it. A climate of unbridled careerism prevails and shows itself in the incremental state of the literature: little things to list on this year's activities report. There are now even predatory journals that cynically do not seriously review submissions, and only collect page charges. As journal editors have a desperate time getting reviews done by mature scholars, instead of a hand off to their overworked graduate students. So what is to be done - how can we bring the joy and importance of discovery back into it all? After all ecology is done by human beings. Mostly it is a personal mission, for what great ecologists write is frequently personal and life changing. So an undercurrent of this book is to remind and reveal the original purpose of science. Not professional advancement, but the genuine search for novel ideas and the imperative to share hard won insights and personal passions. (shrink)

Blackburn’s book is concerned with a "certain way of reasoning" corresponding to that "belief which we have because we expect uniformities in our experience to be representative." In short, the subject is the problem of induction and the purpose is the redoubtable task of justifying inductive reasoning. The fundamental question to which the author addresses himself is "whether, and why, we are ever right to use I-evidence as a reason for an I-conclusion?". While Blackburn presents a sustained and intricate argument, (...) perhaps four of the major aspects of his study deserve particular mention. First, as a result of an inquiry into the concept of a reason, it becomes apparent that some sort of normative analysis of the concept is indicated. For one criterion of a reasoning procedure must be reliability; such a procedure should generally result in the truth. Moreover, there is a distinct relationship between having confidence in a proposition and that proposition being true. Ultimately, "the authority of reasoning is nothing more, nor less, than the authority of truth.". (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

BackgroundRelatives have no formal position in the practice of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EAS) according to Dutch legislation. However, research shows that physicians often involve relatives in EAS decision-making. It remains unclear why physicians do (not) want to involve relatives. Therefore, we examined how many physicians in the Netherlands involve relatives in EAS decision-making and explored reasons for (not) involving relatives and what involvement entails.MethodsIn a mixed-methods study, 746 physicians (33% response rate) completed a questionnaire, and 20 were interviewed. The (...) questionnaire included two statements on relatives’ involvement in EAS decision-making. Descriptive statistics were used, and multivariable logistic regression analyses to explore characteristics associated with involving relatives. In subsequent interviews, we explored physicians’ views on involving relatives in EAS decision-making. Interviews were thematically analysed.ResultsThe majority of physicians want to know relatives’ opinions about an EAS request (80%); a smaller group also takes these opinions into account in EAS decision-making (35%). Physicians who had ever received an explicit EAS request were more likely to want to know opinions and clinical specialists and elderly care physicians were more likely to take these opinions into account. In interviews, physicians mentioned several reasons for involving relatives: e.g. to give relatives space and help them in their acceptance, to tailor support, to be able to perform EAS in harmony, and to mediate in case of conflicting views. Furthermore, physicians explained that relatives’ opinions can influence the decision-making process but cannot be a decisive factor. If relatives oppose the EAS request, physicians find the process more difficult and try to mediate between patients and relatives by investigating relatives’ objections and providing appropriate information. Reasons for not taking relatives’ opinions into account include not wanting to undermine patient autonomy and protecting relatives from a potential burdensome decision.ConclusionsAlthough physicians know that relatives have no formal role, involving relatives in EAS decision-making is common practice in the Netherlands. Physicians consider this important as relatives need to continue with their lives and may need bereavement support. Additionally, physicians want to perform EAS in harmony with everyone involved. However, relatives’ opinions are not decisive. (shrink)

The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner.

Loosely put, colour constancy for example occurs when you experience a partly shadowed wall to be uniformly coloured, or experience your favourite shirt to be the same colour both with and without sunglasses on. Controversy ensues when one seeks to interpret ‘experience’ in these contexts, for evidence of a constant colour may be indicative a constant colour in the objective world, a judgement that a constant colour would be present were things thus and so, et cetera. My primary aim is (...) to articulate a viable conception of Present Constancy, of what occurs when a constant colour is present in experience, despite the additional presence of some experienced colour variation (e.g., correlating to a change in illumination). My proposed conception involves experienced colour layering – experiencing one opaque colour through another transparent one – and in particular requires one of those experienced layers to remain constant while the other changes. The aim is not to propose this layering conception of colour constancy as the correct interpretation of all constancy cases, but rather to develop the conception enough to demonstrate how it could and plausibly should be applied to various cases, and the virtues it has over rivals. Its virtues include a seamless application to constancy cases involving variations in filters (e.g., sunglasses) and illuminants; its ability to accommodate experiences of partial colours and error-free interpretations of difficult cases; and its broad theoretical-neutrality, allowing it to be incorporated into numerous perceptual epistemologies and ontologies. If layered constancy is prevalent, as I suspect it is, then our experiential access to colours is critically nuanced: we have been plunged into a world of colour without being told that we will rarely, if ever, look to a location and experience just one of them. (shrink)

To begin with, there is a conceptual necessity implied in the very concept of cause itself, and in all concepts that have a causal element; and this definitional "must," far from being conventional or arbitrary, reflects the natural necessity of those physical systems which in fact constitute the nature of our universe. The conceptual necessity of the concept of cause can be pointed up in the following way. Assume that we have good reason for saying at to that f, g, (...) h, and i are jointly sufficient to E and hence C of E. What would we say at t1 if f, g, h, and i occurred but not E? We would clearly not say then, or ever, that while ordinarily these conditions are jointly sufficient for E, this time they were not; rather we would say that somehow we were mistaken in thinking that f, g, h, and i at t1 were identical with f, g, h, and i at t0. We might have been mistaken in either of two ways. We might have mis-identified one of the conditions at t1, erroneously thinking, say, that p was an f; or one or more of the conditions might have had its nature altered, losing some capacity or power it once had. In either case, we would withdraw the claim at t1 that C was the cause of E. Since we would withdraw the use of C at t1 and would never admit that f, g, h, and i at any t, if genuine instances of f, g, h, and i, would not produce E, we are clearly using C in such a way that actually producing E is part of its meaning. On the assumption that the conditions are genuinely the same, it follows, so to speak, from the principle of identity that they must produce the same effect. (shrink)

This new edition of William James’s 1909 classic, A Pluralistic Universe reproduces the original text, only modernizing the spelling. The books has been annotated throughout to clarify James’s points of reference and discussion. There is a new, fuller index, a brief chronology of James’s life, and a new bibliography—chiefly based on James’s own references. The editor, H.G. Callaway, has included a new Introduction which elucidates the legacy of Jamesian pluralism to survey some related questions of contemporary American society. -/- A (...) Pluralistic Universe was the last major book James published during his life time. It is a substantial philosophical work, devoted to a thorough-going criticism of Hegelian monism and Absolutism—and the exploration of philosophical and social-theological alternatives. Our world of some one hundred years on is much the better for James’s contributions; and understanding James’s pluralism deeply contributes even now to America’s self-understanding. At present, we are more certain that American is, and is best, a pluralistic society, than we are of what particular forms our pluralism should take. Keeping an eye out for social interpretations of Jamesian pluralism, this new philosophical reading casts light on our twenty-first century alternatives by reference to prior American experience and developments. -/- . (shrink)

The first of Hegel’s major published works to appear in the new Critical Edition, was volume one of his Wissenschaft der Logik. That volume appeared in 1978. Now comes the Phänomenologie. The first volume of the Logik in its original form was largely unfamiliar, since Hegel revised the first book of it just before he died, and we have been using the revised text ever since. He was also just embarking on a revision of the Phänomenologie, when death took him. (...) But he got only half way through the Preface, so the text as we have always known it, has been that of 1807. Hence the present edition, which takes the text of the first edition as authoritative, contains few textual surprises. The revision of 1831 are carefully recorded in a distinct apparatus. The regular apparatus gives all of the substantive variants produced by the tinkering of previous editors - only stylistic “improvements” and such details as modernization of orthography have been ignored. In the original text itself only a few printing anomalies have been slightly passed over. Even these are recorded where Hegel bothered to correct himself in the copy that he gave to a Greek student in his Berlin classes. The pagination of the 1807 edition is also clearly indicated here. (shrink)

Mehlman and Li offer a framework for approaching the bioethical issues raised by the military use of genomics that is compellingly grounded in both the contemporary civilian and military ethics of medical research, arguing that military commanders must be bound by the two principles of paternal- ism and proportionality. I agree fully. But I argue here that this is a much higher bar than we may fully realize. Just as the principle of proportionality relies upon a thorough assessment of harms (...) caused and military advantage gained, the use of genomic research, on Mehlman and Li’s view, will require an accurate understanding of the connection between genotypes and phenotypes – accurate enough to ameliorate the risk undertaken by our armed forces in being subject to such research. Recent conceptual work in evolutionary theory and the philosophy of biology, however, renders it doubtful that such knowledge is forthcoming. The complexity of the relationship between genotypic factors and realized traits (the so-called ‘G→P map’) makes the estimation of potential military advantage, as well as potential harm to our troops, incredibly challenging. Such fundamental conceptual challenges call into question our ability to ever satisfactorily satisfy the demands of a sufficiently rigorous ethical standard. (shrink)

This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is filled out (...) with the translator's critical Introduction, "The esoteric Quine?" a bibliography based on Quine's sources, and an Index for the volume. (shrink)

We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the \emph{phenomenological map}, that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the schema has (...) some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding ``abduction'' in the literature and its relation with ``analogy''. (shrink)

Exploring the links between Speculative Realism, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism, this article examines OOO’s entanglement with the ‘uncanny’. Reading OOO against three notable treatments of the concept - Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay “The ‘Uncanny’”, Ernst Jentsch’s 1906 paper “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”, and Martin Heidegger’s discussion of uncanniness in his Introduction to Metaphysics (1953) - it argues that OOO reconfigures the ‘uncanny’ as a profoundly ontological concept premised on aesthetic enstrangement. Using E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story “The Sandman” as (...) a case study, it assesses what the consequences of this reconfiguration are for literary criticism and, in particular, the study of the Gothic. By splicing OOO into the history and practice of Gothic scholarship, this article traces the outline of an “object-oriented uncanny”, pushing the ‘uncanny’ out of Freud’s shadow and into the “great outdoors”. (shrink)

A liberalism which scorns all individualism is fundamentally misguided. This is the chief thesis of this paper. To argue for it, I look closely at some key concepts. The concepts of morislity and individualism are crucial. I emphasize Dewey on the "individuality of the mind" and a Deweyan discussion of language, communication, and community. The thesis links individualism and liberalism, and since appeals to liberalism have broader appeal in the present context of discussions, I start with consideration of liberalism. The (...) aim is to dispute overly restrictive conceptions and explore a broader perspective. To bring the argument to a close, attention turns first to Dewey on value inquiry, to Dewey's "democratic individualism" (cf. Dewey 1939, 179), and to the concept of moral community. Disputing the acquisitiveness of utilitarian influences in classical liberalism, a Deweyan argument from the nature of moral community supports re-emphasis on individualism in contemporary liberal thought. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The transhumanist literature encompasses diverse nonnovel positions on questions of disability and obligation reflecting long-running political philosophical debates on freedom and value choice, complicated by the difficulty of projecting values to enhanced beings. These older questions take on a more concrete form given transhumanist uses of biotechnologies. This paper will contrast the views of Hughes and Sandberg on the obligations persons with "disabilities" have to enhance and suggest a new model. The paper will finish by introducing a distinction between the (...) responsibility society has in respect of the presence of impairments and the responsibility society has not to abandon disadvantaged members, concluding that questions of freedom and responsibility have renewed political importance in the context of enhancement technologies. (shrink)