Study of Śrībhāṣya of Rāmānuja, 1017-1137, commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy.

This paper explores two aspects of Hume's skeptical crisis in the conclusion to _Treatise<D> Book I: his involved personal experience of the crisis, and his detached naturalistic reflection on it. I discuss several distinct states of mind reported in the text, ranging from extreme skepticism that rejects all belief, to natural dogmatism that rejects all reflection, to mitigated skepticism that tries to reconcile reflection and belief. I argue against interpretations according to which Hume's skepticism supports his naturalism, and I suggest (...) that Hume's extreme skepticism ultimately depends on a predisposition to think of the crucial elements of human cognition as "trivial", as epistemically disabling rather than enabling. (shrink)

In the wake of business scandals at Enron, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, Tyco—the list grows daily—there is an increasing sense among employees, executives, investors, and the public that the “anything goes” culture of the New Economy is over. Today, businesses must act responsibly, transparently, and with integrity. Using in-depth case studies and examples from over 50 companies that range from Starbucks to Citigroup, General Motors to General Electric, DuPont to Dell, Ira A. Jackson, former director of the Center for Business (...) and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, shows the quantifiable and enduring business advantage to “doing the right thing.” Companies that give back to their employees and society—focusing on values and purpose as well as profitability—often gain commpetitive advantage and improve their brand image, consumer loyalty, and employee satisfaction. Identifying seven principles of making values integral to business processes and practices, PROFITS WITH PRINCIPLES opens the door to a new kind of capitalism, providing a wealth of practical recommendations companies of all sizes can model their own efforts after. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic UniversityIra HarkavyThinking begins in... a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that poses alternatives.—John Dewey (How We Think 122)The social philosopher, dwelling in the region of his concepts, “solves” problems by showing the relationship of ideas, instead of helping men solve problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used and tested in projects of (...) reform.—John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy 192)Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.—John Dewey (The Public and Its Problems 213)democracy, as we all know, is seriously threatened throughout the world (Fisher). In the United States, the chasm-like inequities laid bare by COVID-19, the ongoing killing of black Americans, the violent insurrection at the Capitol, and the continuing attempt to subvert the electoral process are powerful indicators of a system under severe strain (Guardian Staff; Rubin). These developments are also a sign of deep and chronic problems, including the following:1. Increasing economic, political, social, educational, and health inequalities2. Increasing racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia3. Increasing attacks on science, knowledge, and democracy itself4. Declining trust in nearly all major institutionsMany things, obviously, contribute to the present situation. Among them is the failure of universities to successfully do what they are supposed to do: educate students to be ethical, empathetic, engaged, democratic citizens, and [End Page 49] advance knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition (Benson et al., Knowledge). To use a Marxian framework, but to reject its economic determinism, universities, in my judgment, are not a part of society’s superstructure. They are, to the contrary, a core component of its base (Marx, “Preface”). What they do matters enormously, significantly determining the kind of society we have now and will have in the future.Universities, as former Harvard president Derek Bok and others have emphasized, have become the central societal institutions in the world (Bok, Universities and the Future 3). Research universities, in my judgment, are the most central. They develop new ideas and technologies, incubate businesses, serve as cultural and artistic centers, and are engines of local, national, and global economies. As anchor institutions, they often engage in partnerships with government, the private sector, and community-based organizations to revitalize local neighborhoods and schools (“Anchor Institutions Task Force”). It is the university’s role as an educational institution, however, that is most important.The schooling system increasingly functions as the core subsystem—the strategic subsystem—of modern information societies. Schooling, more than any other subsystem, as John Dewey claimed, influences the functioning of the societal system as a whole. Viewed systemically, it has on balance the greatest “multiplier” effects, direct and indirect, short-term and long-term. Restating these points somewhat differently, I strongly agree with the Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi that the answer to the question “What kind of education do we need?” is to be found in the answer to the question “What kind of society do we want?” (Tironi). Education and society are dynamically interactive and interdependent. If human beings hope to maintain and develop a particular type of society, they must develop and maintain the particular type of education system conducive to it. As Dewey in effect argued: No effective democratic schooling system, no democratic society.1For William Rainey Harper, who, as the first president of the University of Chicago, brought Dewey to Chicago, universities are the primary shapers of the American schooling system. In an 1899 speech at the University of California, he perceptively observed that “[t]he school system, the character of which, in spite of itself, the university determines and in a large measure controls.... [T]hrough the school system every family in this entire broad land of ours is brought into touch with the university; for from it proceed the teachers or the teachers’ teachers” (Harper 25). Agreeing with Harper, I contend that higher education institutions powerfully shape the learning, values, and aspirations of students from kindergarten through graduate school. [End Page 50]Given the university’s societal role and influence, creating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society requires a... (shrink)

1. Readers of Hume, even those who call attention to the depth and variety of his skeptical excursions, now happily admit that Hume is, in crucial respects, a “naturalist.” A naturalist is, broadly, someone who emphasizes the natural sources of our beliefs, attitudes, and practices; and Hume surely is at least this kind of naturalist. But understanding Hume’s naturalism to include only this general explanatory commitment obscures as much as it reveals, I will argue, about the text of Treatise I (...) iv, where Hume examines various skeptical “systems of philosophy.” To understand that part of the Treatise, we must, I will argue, understand Hume’s shifting allegiances to different kinds of naturalism. (shrink)

_The Bus Kids_ offers a compelling and uniquely detailed examination of the experiences of kindergarten students in California participating in a voluntary school desegregation program. Ira Lit focuses on the day-to-day school life of a group of minority children bussed from their poor-performing home school district to an affluent neighboring district with high-performing schools. Through these kindergarteners’ experiences, the book sensitively illuminates the processes of school transition, socialization, and adaptation, and addresses an array of important issues relating to American education. (...) Lit acutely observes these “bus kids” and the quality of their social, emotional, cultural, and academic experiences. He presents a moving picture of the complexity of challenges, often unrecognized by teachers and parents, each young student confronted every day. (shrink)

1. Readers of Hume, even those who call attention to the depth and variety of his skeptical excursions, now happily admit that Hume is, in crucial respects, a “naturalist.” A naturalist is, broadly, someone who emphasizes the natural sources of our beliefs, attitudes, and practices; and Hume surely is at least this kind of naturalist. But understanding Hume’s naturalism to include only this general explanatory commitment obscures as much as it reveals, I will argue, about the text of Treatise I (...) iv, where Hume examines various skeptical “systems of philosophy.” To understand that part of the Treatise, we must, I will argue, understand Hume’s shifting allegiances to different kinds of naturalism. (shrink)

A conversational implicature is an inference that consists in attributing to a speaker an implicit meaning that goes beyond the explicit linguistic meaning of an utterance. This paper experimentallyinvestigates scalar implicature, a paradigmatic case of implicature in which a speaker's use of a term like Some indicates that the speaker had reasons not to use a more informative one from the samescale, e.g. All; thus, Some implicates Not all. Pragmatic theorists like Grice would predict that a pragmatic interpretation is determined (...) only after its explicit, logical meaning is incorporated (e.g. whereSome means at least one). The present work aims to developmentally unpack this prediction by showing how younger, albeit competent, reasoners initially treat a relatively weak term logically beforebecoming aware of its pragmatic potential. Three experiments are presented. Experiment 1 presents a modal reasoning scenario offering an exhaustive set of conclusions; critical among these isparticipants' evaluation of a statement expressing Might be x when the context indicates that the stronger Must be x is true. The conversationally-infelicitous Might be x can be understood logically(e.g. as compatible with Must) or pragmatically (as exclusive to must). Results from five-, seven-, and nine-year-olds as well as adults revealed that a) seven-year-olds are the youngest to demonstratemodal competence overall and that; b) seven- and nine-year-olds treat the infelicitous Might logically significantly more often than adults do. Experiment 2 showed how training with the modal taskcan suspend the implicatures for adults. Experiment 3 provides converging evidence of the developmental pragmatic effect with the French existential quantifier Certains (Some). Whilelinguistically-sophisticated children (eight- and ten-year-olds olds) typically treat Certains as compatible with Tous (All), adults are equivocal. These results, which are consistent with unanticipatedfindings in classic developmental papers, reveal a consistent ordering in which representations of weak scalar terms tend to be treated logically by young competent participants and morepragmatically by older ones. This work is also relevant to the treatment of scalar implicatures in the reasoning literature. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to investigate the mythical symbolic form in Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Form regarding its connection with visual perception. The article argues that mythical symbolic form is rooted in Gestalt principles of perception for organizing the perceptual field, and shows that these principles shape the main features of space and time in Cassirer’s mythical symbolic form. This argument challenges Heidegger’s critique of Cassirer’s definition of a mythical symbolic form that it is directionless and not (...) grounded in man’s being. The combination of Gestalt principles and mythical symbolic forms supports the argument about the active role of visual perception, and clarifies Cassirer’s application and re-definition of Kantian and Neo-Kantian concepts. The investigation opens a perspective for comprehending the mythic-religious phenomenon as well as for comprehending visual perception. (shrink)

Hume raises the issue of how common life and philosophy are related. He presents the possibility that they are irreconcilably opposed, that philosophy rigorously and honestly pursued must lead to skepticism. I discuss some prominent interpretive issues about Hume in light of this opposition between common life and philosophy. I also argue that this opposition is a deep and general philosophical problem, and sketch an approach to this problem. ;These are my interpretive claims: I argue that Hume has constructive aims (...) in his epistemology, and that he is surprised when his naturalism subverts these constructive aims and leads to skepticism. I argue that Hume does not entertain a moral skepticism similar to his skepticism about the external world and causal relations, but that he should have entertained such a skepticism. I argue that, in the Dialogues, Philo does not concede that religious belief is natural and therefore secure despite its unreasonableness. Rather, Philo contends that religious belief is not natural, and contends that this lack of naturalness gives us principled grounds for preferring causal and moral beliefs to natural ones. However, I argue, the problem of general philosophical skepticism keeps this religious skepticism from being satisfactory. ;I use the interpretation of Hume to clarify and deepen Hume's Problem, and to begin working toward a solution of that problem. I argue that there is a perspective we can take up that makes skepticism about the status of our physical and moral beliefs and practices seem inevitable. To resolve Hume's Problem, we must show that this perspective is the wrong perspective on human life, or at least that there is some alternative perspective that does not lead to skepticism but is no less rational than the perspective that does lead to skepticism. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West's moral bearing.

David Widerker, long an opponent of Harry Frankfurt’s attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, has recently come up with his own Frankfurt-style scenario which he claims might well be a counterexample to PAP. Carlos Moya has argued that this new scenario is not a counterexample to PAP, because in it the agent is not really blameworthy, since he lacks weak reasons-responsiveness, a property that John Fischer has argued is a necessary condition of practical rationality, and hence of moral responsibility. (...) I argue that in Widerker’s scenario the agent is indeed blameworthy, even though he lacks WRR; and that therefore this scenario is a counterexample not only to PAP, but also to Fischer’s claim that WRR is necessary for blameworthiness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume and Hume’s Connexions ed. by M. A. Stewart, John P. WrightIra SingerM. A. Stewart and John P. Wright, eds. Hume and Hume’s Connexions. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1995. Pp. xvi + 266. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $18.95.This collection is organized around the theme of Hume’s connections with his philosophical predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.In a historical prelude, Roger Emerson meticulously describes the factions that supported and opposed (...) Hume’s efforts to gain a professorship. Emerson attributes Hume’s failure not only to the charges of impiety leveled against him, but also to the intricate workings of a political patronage system.Four essays about moral theory follow. James Moore attacks the conventional view that Hume’s moral theory is deeply similar to Hutcheson’s. In fact, Moore argues, surface similarities here mask systematic disagreements about justice, self-interest, teleology, theology, reason’s role within a sentimentalist framework, and about whether morality is, fundamentally, justified approbation for benevolence (Hutcheson) or sympathy’s merely natural tendency to generate feelings of approbation (Hume). These differences make sense, Moore notes, in light of Hutcheson’s debts to Stoicism, and Hume’s debts to Epicureanism. Stephen Darwall argues that, by parting company with Hutcheson on one crucial point, Hume opens up a logical space for Bentham’s Utilitarianism. Hutcheson explains the goodness of natural [End Page 141] goods, such as happiness, in terms of our distinctively moral approval of benevolence: happiness is good because a benevolent person wills general happiness. Hume instead explains our moral approval of qualities of character in terms of natural goods and the psychological mechanism of sympathy: a benevolent person receives moral approval because she produces happiness for herself and others, including sympathetic spectators. Darwall claims that Hume thus foreshadows Bentham’s efforts to set our moral judgments on an uncontroversial nonmoral foundation. Pauline C. Westerman discusses the relation between Hume and the natural lawyers. Hume shares some of their characteristic concerns, such as accounting for the origin of private property, and employs some of their terminology. Still, Westerman argues, while Grotius and Pufendorff wanted to justify morality, Hume wants only to explain it. Finally, John P. Wright invokes Butler’s account of habit to illuminate Hume’s notion of a calm passion. Butler argues that, as a habit develops, repetition weakens feelings while strengthening the tendency to act: distress will seldom shock someone habituated into generosity, who will reliably act to relieve that distress. Citing this psychological dynamic, Wright argues, helps to explain what a calm passion is, and how it can prevail over a violent passion.Two essays concern philosophy of mind and epistemology. P. B. Wood uses Thomas Kuhn’s concept of texts that are “exemplars” for working scientists to illuminate the “science of mind” as Hume and Reid practiced it. David Owen puts “inductive skepticism” into historical context, arguing that in that context, Hume appears as neither the victim nor the opponent of deductivism about rationality. Instead, Hume’s focus is Locke’s account of probable reasoning, according to which such reasoning involves a chain of associated ideas (not a formal structure of propositions). Hume’s argument is that our causal thinking proceeds differently than Locke requires, because in it we do not follow an unbroken series of associated perceptions, but rather leap over the gap between our impressions up to now and the general causal idea.The book’s centerpiece is a fragmentary Hume manuscript, discovered in 1993, about the problem of evil. The manuscript appears in both facsimile and transcription. In introducing the manuscript, M. A. Stewart argues plausibly that it is one of the “nobler parts” that Hume cut from the Treatise to avoid offending Bishop Butler.Four essays discuss philosophy of religion. Reflecting on miracles, Stewart traces a tradition of critically examining religious testimony back to the Port-Royal Logic and to Locke; moreover, Stewart emphasizes that Hume’s method in “Of Miracles” is similar to his method in debunking the Ossian poems. Michel Malherbe, taking as his point of departure those remarks by “Pamphilus” that preface the Dialogues, and reviewing in detail Shaftesbury’s pronouncements about the art of philosophical dialogue, discusses... (shrink)

Kant’s theory of cognition aimed to explain the possibility of scientific knowledge. Aesthetics and life science were not considered by Kant in the context of cognition. By contrast, Cassirer set himself a philosophical task to extend Kant’s theory of cognition to all forms of culture, including pre-scientific knowledge and aesthetics. The present study demonstrates how Cassirer explained the possibility of different objective forms, named symbolic, by employing and transforming Kant’s theory of cognition. For this goal, Cassirer took the following steps: (...) modified the definitions of a priori synthesis (the act of understanding) and pure intuition (the forms of space and time) - main building blocks of Kant’s cognition; indicated the necessary correlation of intuition and synthesis; characterized a priori synthesis and the intuition as notions which include contradicted meanings. Cassirer called this contradiction “twofold oppositions” as characteristic of a priori synthesis. The first argument of the article is that the possibility of various synthetic acts is rooted in the nature of a priori synthesis which carries together two different meanings: the act of uniting elements and the initial unity. One synthetic act forms the world of nature and is connected to scientific space and time, and the other is the product of immediate perceptional space and time, from which the world of myth and aesthetics appears. Thus, Cassirer expanded the scope of “pure” synthesis. The second argument is that Cassirer specified a priori synthesis and pure intuition as a functional concept. The functional concept belongs to the model of concept as-relation that Cassirer has elaborated. It includes moments that are separated and united simultaneously. This definition of concept breaks the rules of consistency. The concept of as-relation justifies the contradictory characteristics of a priori synthesis and pure intuition, which include both the combination of moments in a synthesizing act and the initial unity of intuition. (shrink)

In her (1996) Kadri Vihvelin argues that autoinfanticide is nomologically impossible and so that there is no sense in which time travelers are able to commit it. In response, Theodore Sider (2002) defends the original Lewisian verdict (Lewis 1976) whereby, on a common understanding of ability, time travelers are able to kill their earlier selves and their failure to do so is merely coincidental. This paper constitutes a critical note on arguments put forward by both Sider and Vihvelin. I argue (...) that although Sider’s criticism starts out promisingly he doesn’t succeed in establishing that Vihvelin’s analysis fails, because (a) he neglects to rule out a class of counterfactuals to which Vihvelin’s sample-case may belong; and (b) (together with Lewis) he is wrong to suggest that future facts are irrelevant in the evaluation of time travelers’ abilities. I show instead that Vihvelin’s argument is viciously circular, indicating that even if there are nomological constraints on autoinfanticide these cannot be established a priori. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen's Direct Argument (DA) for incompatibilism purports to establish incompatibilism with respect to moral responsibility and determinism without appealing to assumptions that compatibilists usually consider controversial. Recently, Michael McKenna has presented a novel critique of DA. McKenna's critique raises important issues about philosophical dialectics. In this article, we address those issues and contend that his argument does not succeed.

David Widerker, long an opponent of Harry Frankfurt's attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), has recently come up with his own Frankfurt-style scenario which he claims might well be a counterexample to PAP. Carlos Moya has argued that this new scenario is not a counterexample to PAP, because in it the agent is not really blameworthy, since he lacks weak reasonsresponsiveness (WRR), a property that John Fischer has argued is a necessary condition of practical rationality, and hence of (...) moral responsibility. I argue that in Widerker's scenario the agent is indeed blameworthy, even though he lacks WRR; and that therefore this scenario is a counterexample not only to PAP, but also to Fischer's claim that WRR is necessary for blameworthiness. (shrink)

Several theists have adopted a position known as ‘sceptical theism ’, according to which God is justified in allowing suffering, but the justification is often beyond human comprehension. A problem for sceptical theism is that if there are unknown justifications for suffering, then we cannot know whether it is right for a human being to relieve suffering. After examining several proposed solutions to this problem, I conclude that one who is committed to a revealed religion has a simpler and more (...) effective solution. In particular, according to traditional Judaism, God has permitted us, indeed commanded us, to relieve suffering, so we know that it is right for us to do so. I further show how God's command, according to Judaism, that we save lives provides an answer to an analogous argument put forward by David Hume. Thus, revealed theistic religions can sometimes solve problems more effectively than theism alone. (shrink)

With the same sense of historical responsibility and veracity he has exemplified in his studies on Voltaire, Ira O. Wade turns now to Voltaire's milieu and begins an account of the French Enlightenment which will explain its genesis, its nature and coherence, and its diffusion in the modern world. To understand the movement of ideas that produced the spirit of the Enlightenment, Mr. Wade identifies and examines the people, events, and rich development of philosophy in the Renaissance and seventeenth century. (...) He considers, in turn, the challenges of the Renaissance and the responses of its leading writers (Rabelais, Bacon, and Montaigne); Baroque thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, the Freethinkers); and Classicism (Moliere, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Newton). Mr. Wade begins his discussion by examining the critical literature on the Enlightenment and concludes with a theoretical chapter, "The Making of a Spirit." As the history of an intellectual culture, his study makes vivid the power of thought in the making of a civilization. Originally published in 1971. 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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 30, Number 1, April 2004, pp. 33-50 Constancy, Coherence, and Causality IRA M. SCHNALL According to David Hume, we believe in the existence of an external world because of the phenomena of constancy and coherence (T 1.4.2.18-43; SBN 194-210).1 Hume delineated these two aspects of our sensory experience, and claimed that they influence the imagination in such a way as to generate belief in the existence (...) of unperceived objects, independent of the mind. There is disagreement among philosophers as to the proper way to characterize constancy and coherence and the ways in which they respectively lead us to believe in external objects. The most straightforward account of coherence seems to make it the same as Hume's concept of causality. Yet Hume denies that they are the same ; and commentators disagree as to how to understand Hume's distinction between the two. As to constancy, many philosophers, following H.H. Price,2 have argued that it is really just a special case of coherence, and that its role in generating belief in external objects is the same as that of coherence. There is consequent puzzlement as to why Hume attributed a different, and more important, role to constancy. In an important recent book, Louis E. Loeb has proposed a very interesting two-part solution to this last puzzle: First, Hume is convinced that the commonsense view of the external world is patently false; so he cannot allow that it results from something as reasonable as causal inference. But the way coherence leads to belief in external objects is a form of causal inference. So, Hume wants constancy to lead to belief in external objects in a different, less reasonable way; and he wants constancy to be more important than coherence in leading to belief in the external world. Second, Hume did not realize that constancy is simply a special case of coherence (or causality), because of certain assumptions about causality that he Ira M. Schnall is at the Department of Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel 52900. e-mail: [email protected] 34 Ira M. Schnall had inherited from his predecessors (i.e., he did not see the causality involved in the relation between an object's existing at one moment and its existing at a later moment). Therefore he appealed to non-rational mechanisms of the imagination to explain how constancy leads us to posit external objects.3 I will try to show that solutions such as Loeb's, which grant the affinity between coherence and causality and the reducibility of constancy to coherence, are unnecessary. I will propose a way to make sense of Hume's claim that coherence is not the same as causality; and I will argue that what Hume calls 'constancy' is not, and should not be, the same as, or reducible to, coherence. After introducing some basic terms, including 'constancy' and 'coherence' themselves (in section I), I will discuss the proper characterization of coherence and how it differs from causality (section II). Then I will discuss Hume's account of constancy and how it leads to belief in external obj ects; and I will contrast it with the alternative account, referred to above, that is widely held to be preferable (section III). I will argue that Hume's own account has certain advantages over the alternative (section IV) and that the main arguments against Hume's account are inconclusive (sections V and VI). The argument of section IV will yield an explanation of Hume's assigning more importance to constancy than to coherence. Finally, I will suggest (in the concluding section) that though Hume considered constancy and coherence to be merely the psychological "causes" that "induce us to believe in the existence of body," we can use them as a basis of an epistemological justification of our belief in the external world. I will make extensive use of H. H. Price's Hume's Theory of the External World; for much of the current understanding, as well as misunderstanding, of Hume's concepts of constancy and coherence is the result of the detailed analyses and arguments in that work.4 I First of... (shrink)

The connective or can be treated as an inclusive disjunction or else as an exclusive disjunction. Although researchers are aware of this distinction, few have examined the conditions under which each interpretation should be anticipated. Based on linguistic-pragmatic analyses, we assume that interpretations are initially inclusive before either (a) remaining so, or (b) becoming exclusive by way of an implicature ( but not both ). We point to a class of situations that ought to predispose disjunctions to inclusive interpretations and (...) to situations that encourage exclusive interpretations. A disjunction's ultimate interpretation is based on its potential informativeness, where the interpretation of the disjunctive utterance having the smallest number of true conditions is considered most informative. Our investigation leads to five experiments employing arbitrary materials. Among the problems expected to encourage inclusive interpretations are those that present disjunctions in the antecedents of conditionals and in question forms. The best candidates to produce implicatures are those disjunctions that underdetermine an expected conjunctive conclusion, although other disjunctive utterances that are more informative as exclusive are discussed and tested. (shrink)

Seeing further and deeper, grasping the "big picture," being able to integrate one's thinking with one's emotions, and good timing, knowing when to act and when not to, have always been highly valued by our species. In this essay, the different forms taken by wisdom across the ages are related to the history of class struggle and the accompanying development of dialectical thinking. With its broad scientific grasp of reality, dialectical materialism makes it possible for more people to attain higher (...) levels of wisdom than ever before. (shrink)