This paper develops axiomatic foundations for a probabilistic-interventionist theory of causal strength. Transferring methods from Bayesian confirmation theory, I proceed in three steps: I develop a framework for defining and comparing measures of causal strength; I argue that no single measure can satisfy all natural constraints; I prove two representation theorems for popular measures of causal strength: Pearl's causal effect measure and Eells' difference measure. In other words, I demonstrate these two measures can be derived from a set of plausible (...) adequacy conditions. The paper concludes by sketching future research avenues. (shrink)

Body, Community, Language, World, here made available in English for the first time is Patocka's presentation of phenomenology as a living tradition - as a philosophical heritage that requires to be rethought and redirected in light of possibilities that it has itself uncovered. Jan Patocka lived for most of his adult life in Communist Czechoslovakia where he was at times banned from publishing or teaching. Mentor of Vaclav Havel, Patocka defied the regime as one of the spokespersons for Charta 77, (...) and died in 1977, following two months of police interrogation. (shrink)

Michelle Moody-Adams suggests that “the main obstacle to moral progress in social practices is the tendency to widespread affected ignorance of what can and should already be known.” This explanation is promising, though to understand it we need to know what willful (affected, motivated, strategic) ignorance actually is. This paper presents a novel analysis of this concept, which builds upon Moody-Adams (1994) and is contrasted with a recent account by Lynch (2016).

This paper generalizes the (epistemic) preface paradox beyond the principle of belief aggregation and constructs a similar paradox for deontic reasoning. The analysis of the deontic case yields a solution strategy---restricting belief/obligation aggregation rather than giving it up altogether---that can be transferred to the epistemic case. Our proposal amounts to a reasonable compromise between two goals: (i) sticking to bridge principles between evidence and belief, such as the Lockean Thesis, and (ii) obtaining a sufficiently strong logic of doxastic and deontic (...) reasoning. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to introduce a new concept of “pain-related bodily doubt,” which complements current concepts currently in use, such as pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing, and pain self-efficacy. This new concept, adapted from recent philosophical work on illness experience, has the potential to positively contribute to pain research and clinical practice by providing a vocabulary for clinicians and patients to discuss implicit or tacit dimensions of pain-related experiences.

This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the debate on the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. In sect. 1, we discuss the main concepts ‘ignorance’ and ‘responsibility’. In sect. 2, we ask why agents should inform themselves. In sect. 3, we describe what we take to be the core agreement among main participants in the debate. In sect. 4, we explain how this agreement invites a regress argument with a revisionist implication. In sect. 5, we provide an (...) overview of the main responses to the regress argument. In sect. 6, we address the question why blameless ignorance excuses. In sect. 7, we describe further issues that are addressed in the book. In sect. 8, we conclude with some discussion of future directions the debate might take. (shrink)

Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy. Now for the first time in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy Jan Faye and Henry Folse have brought together sixteen of today's leading authors who have helped mould this new round of discussions on Bohr's philosophy. In fifteen entirely new, previously unpublished essays we discover a surprising variety of the different facets of Bohr as the natural philosopher whose `framework of (...) complementarity' shaped the final phase of the quantum revolution and influenced two generations of the century's leading physicists. There is much on which the authors included here agree; but there are also polar disagreements, which assure us that the philosophical questions revolving around Bohr's `new viewpoint' will continue to be a subject of scholarly interest and discussion for years to come. This collection will interest all serious students of history and philosophy of science, and foundations of physics. (shrink)

Several experimental studies on moral judgment and moral decision-making show that in virtual reality people tend to make more “characteristically utilitarian” decisions than when responding to standard questionnaires. An explanation of this phenomenon that has been considered by many authors states that the feature of VR studies that is responsible for this effect is the visual salience of the harmful consequences of “deontological” decisions. The present paper makes three points, the first of which is theoretical: we argue that this explanation, (...) which draws from Cushman’s dual-process account of moral judgment, is in fact not coherent with this account’s predictions with respect to behavior in VR. The second point is that this explanation does not sufficiently explain the existing empirical findings concerning the footbridge dilemma because these studies differ in important aspects of experimental design from studies on the switch dilemma. The third point is empirical: we present two original VR studies that were designed to check the robustness of the increased “utilitarian” tendency and directly test the explanation that is based on the visual salience of harmful consequences. The results of the experiments provide evidence that the effect is quite robust but the proposed explanation is inadequate. (shrink)

This Editorial reports an exchange in form of a comment and reply on the article “History and Nature of the Jeffreys–Lindley Paradox” (Arch Hist Exact Sci 77:25, 2023) by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers and Alexander Ly.

Translators' Preface to three texts on Henri Bergson by Jan Patočka: "Review of 'Bergson' by Vladimir Jankélévitch"; "Preface to Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion"; "Bergson" (encyclopedia entry).

Wayfinding is generally understood as the process of purposefully navigating to distant and non-visible destinations. Within this broad framework, uninformed searching entails finding one’s way to a target destination, in an unfamiliar environment, with no knowledge of its location. Although a variety of search strategies have been previously reported, this research was largely conducted in the laboratory or virtual environments using simplistic and often non-realistic situations, raising questions about its ecological validity. In this study, we explored how extant findings on (...) searching translate to a real-world environment, using a phenomenologically informed experiment. Our findings demonstrate a previously undescribed complex and dynamic interplay of different search strategies. Importantly, our results reveal that: (i) the presence of other people is importantly entangled with the process of searching; and (ii) people frequently probe and switch between search strategies based on local environmental characteristics. Together, our results reveal that search behaviour is critically dependent on environmental features and that searching in complex real-world settings should not be conceptualised as depending on a simple singular strategy. This raises questions about the dominance of laboratory-based experiments and their narrow cognitivist framework, highlighting the value of studying wayfinding in the real world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmaticaAnne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio)Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up by these (...) relics: was such-and-such a shell, a mollusk, or an arthropod? Did this fossil fish live high up in the water, among the plankton, or grub in the mud on the sea floor?These studies have for many paleontologists been a blessedly human-free zone, detached from the busy realities of our everyday lives. The science of paleontology, though, is simply one obscure part of a burgeoning and rapidly evolving technosphere that underpins our lives, and that is now evolving millions of new kinds of fossils—technofossils—far more rapidly than ever happened in biological evolution. Many of these objects will, quite certainly, become part of Earth’s future fossil record.If such an endeavor as paleontology were ever to arise again, in a distant post-human future, how would its practitioners deal with these bizarre relics?We provide a preview, on the following pages, of just one such enigma, and how it may be resolved (or not) by our puzzled disciplinary descendants. [End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 35] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 36] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 37] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 41] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 44]Anne-Sophie Milon Anne-Sophie Milon is an artist-researcher who applies her illustration skills (HEAR, Strasbourg, France, 2010) and 2D traditional animation (UWE, Bristol, UK, 2012) to political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po, 2015) and science and technology studies (HSTS, EHESS, 2022). For the past ten years, she has translated geological narratives–and ordinary ones for Earth sciences–into extraordinary plots for the uninitiated, including the humanities. She is currently working with Jan Zalasiewicz on a play, The Petrified Museum (2024), based on the British Geological Survey (Keyworth, UK), and on a PhD project in science and technology studies looking at limestones’ agencies in extractive industry practices (2025). She regularly collaborates with researchers from the Anthropocene Working Group: The Cosmic Oasis (Oxford University Press, 2022), “The Victims of Carbon Dioxide are Starting to Appear” in Feral Atlas (2021), and The Epochs of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2016).Jan Zalasiewicz Jan Zalasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He was formerly a field geologist and paleontologist with the British Geological Survey, involved in the geological mapping of eastern England and central Wales. His interests include Early Paleozoic fossils, notably the graptolites (a kind of extinct zooplankton), mud and mudrocks, the Quaternary Ice Ages, the nature of geological time, and the geology made by humans. In recent years, he has helped develop the concept of an Anthropocene epoch. He enjoys writing popular science articles and books, and being involved in art/science projects.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

For animal research, the precautionary principle was written into public policy through the so-called three R’s of replacement, reduction, and refinement. These guidelines, as developed by Russell and Burch six decades ago, aimed to establish safeguards against the abuse of animals in the pursuit of science. While these safeguards, which started from the basic premise that science itself would benefit from a reduction of animal suffering, seem compelling at first, the three R’s have in practice generated a degree of confusion (...) while opening up loopholes that have enabled researchers to effectively dismiss some of the more inconvenient aspects of ethical concerns. Such problems have been discussed in detail by multiple authors. Here, we suggest a different approach by arguing that a clear parallel can be drawn between the shortcomings evident in the current three R’s model and the flawed practice of early modern judicial torture, in which a set of elaborate safeguards that were designed to prevent abuses served instead to create the same combination of confusion and easily exploited loopholes. In the case of judicial torture, attempts to refine the system from within produced limited results, and effective change only took place when individual legal systems succeeded in enforcing clear absolutes. We explore the implications of this for the regulation of animal research by pointing to the need for achievable absolutes, based on a clear, evidence-based, and publicly deliberated rationale, in order to facilitate and improve research ethics. (shrink)

The phenomenon of wonder has fascinated scholars for centuries, yet today the subject is understudied and not rooted in any specific academic discipline. Attempts at building a preliminary account of wonder reveals that the experience of wonder is characterised by seven properties: wonder is sudden, extraordinary and personal; intensifies the cognitive focus; intensifies the use of imagination; instigates awareness of ignorance; causes temporary displacement; makes the world newly present; and brings emotional upheaval. Furthermore, wonder can be distinguished from other similar (...) altered states, including awe, horror, the sublime, curiosity, amazement, admiration and astonishment. Human flourishing is a concept in ethics that has enjoyed a revival since Elizabeth Anscombe’s 1958 article ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. Through the work of Neo-Aristotelian philosophers Douglas Rasmussen, Alasdair McIntyre and Martha Nussbaum who have contributed to the field a working model of human flourishing attentive to human nature was established. As a result of in-depth examination of the contribution of both emotion and imagination in the experience of wonder through a Neo-Aristotelian lens it becomes evident that wonder may contribute to human flourishing via a number of effects, including widening of perception, extension of moral scope or sensitivity and prompting deep wonder, a wondrous afterglow, openness, humility, an imaginative attitude, reverence and gratitude. Importantly, for wonder to act as a strong contributor to human flourishing one needs to wonder at the right thing, in the right amount, in the right time, in the right way and for the right purpose. Cultivating a balanced sense of wonder is thus by no means an easy task but having a critical attitude towards one’s wonderment would aid one to wonder in a virtuous way. (shrink)

This papers discuss the place, if any, of Convention T (the condition of material adequacy of the proper definition of truth formulated by Tarski) in the truth-makers account offered by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. It is argued that although Tarski’s requirement seems entirely acceptable in the frameworks of truth-makers theories for the first-sight, several doubts arise under a closer inspection. In particular, T-biconditionals have no clear meaning as sentences about truth-makers. Thus, truth-makers theory cannot be considered as (...) the semantic theory of truth enriched by metaphysical (ontological) data. The problem of truth-makers for sentences about future events is discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Hans Jonas’ anti-visionary conservation-oriented environmental philosophy—prominently articulated in his seminal book The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age —had a tremendous impact on public and philosophical debates throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Jonas argues that the “environmental crisis” reveals an underlying fundamental “crisis” in the human-nature relation. The crisis challenges the metaphysical foundations of our Western culture—including the dominant way humans view and deal with nature. Environmental ethics, therefore, requires critical reflection on and (...) revision of the underlying philosophy of nature: ethics and philosophy of nature, Jonas argues, are twin sisters. This approach provokes severe criticism: the diagnosis objection, the origin analysis objection, the justification objection, and the problem-solution objection. Most objections are not as sound as they claim to be—although Jonas’ argumentative justification is in fact a bit weak. However, a systematic critique of the objections of the critics from an analytic perspective shows that he developed a political and practical “philosophy of nature” in which anthropology, ethics, and politics are conceptualized as a converging domain as one of the core constituents of environmentals ethics for this century. (shrink)

Madhyamaka and Yogacara are the two principal schools of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. While Madhyamaka asserts the ultimate emptiness and conventional reality of all phenomena, Yogacara is usually considered to be idealistic. This collection of essays addresses the degree to which these philosophical approaches are consistent or complementary. Indian and Tibetan doxographies often take these two schools to be philosophical rivals. They are grounded in distinct bodies of sutra literature and adopt what appear to be very different positions regarding the analysis (...) of emptiness and the status of mind. Madhyamaka-Yogacara polemics abound in Indian Buddhist literature, and Tibetan doxographies regard them as distinct systems. Nonetheless, scholars have tried to synthesize the two positions for centuries. This volume offers new essays by prominent experts on both these traditions, who address the question of the degree to which these philosophical approaches should be seen as rivals or as allies. In answering the question of whether Madhyamaka and Yogacara can be considered compatible, contributors engage with a broad range of canonical literature, and relate the texts to contemporary philosophical problems. (shrink)

This book is not a list or an overview of various theories of ethics. Nor is it a didactic manual for specific teaching units on moral education aimed at some group based on age or a particular theme (although some educational frameworks will be proposed). As the title suggests, the book intends to seek the starting points or foundations without which no moral education would be possible. The goal is to formulate and tackle the key questions that precede all moral (...) education. What makes ""good vs. evil"" language possible and meaningful? Can virtue be taught and learned? What makes our actions good? What is the condition of human nature? Are we naturally good, or evil? What constitutes an educator's right to morally influence anyone else (not just a child)? What is the goal of moral education? What does a morally educated person look like? And how can we ensure the coveted moral result? Or--in the words of Jan Amos Comenius, the ""teacher of nations""--how to educate a person to not only know what is good, but also to want what is good, and to do what is good ""even when no one is looking?"" ""I wish I would have had Jan Habl's concise, passionate, and eminently readable book available as a text for my ethics courses during my thirty-six years of teaching at colleges and universities in Canada. Habl not only raises the alarm about a moral crisis in Western societies today, but also provides a careful treatment of some oft-neglected presuppositions of moral education. The concluding chapter introduces us to Jan Amos Comenius, a seventeenth century Czech philosopher, theologian, and pedagogue, from whom we have much to learn about a better approach to moral education."" --Elmer Thiessen, Emmanuel Bible College ""With a sound and broad grasp of ethical (moral) theorists, Jan Habl incisively critiques the fallacies of popular theories, rendering them ineffectual if not dangerous. Then, drawing on Czech educator/philosopher Comenious, he persuasively advances a theistic proposal for nurturing moral persons and communities. Immensely timely, never more needed, a rich, compelling read for our contemporary societies if we wish for a civil and peaceful existence for ourselves and future generations. Highly recommended."" --Duane H. Elmer, Trinity International University ""You have in your hands a text by someone I take to be one of the very serious young moral philosophers of our time. The profundity of his analysis of the need for moral education reminds me of the style of analysis of one of the great moral philosophers of the final decades of the twentieth century, Alasdair MacIntyre."" --Thomas K. Johnson, World Evangelical Alliance Jan Habl is a professor of pedagogy at universities in Hradec Kralove and Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic). He has taught systematic theology and ethics at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Prague. He has authored a number of books and studies in the areas of philosophy of education, ethics, and pedagogy, including On Being Human(e) (2016); Teaching and Learning Through Story, Comenius' Labyrinth and the Educational Potential of Narrative Allegory (2014). (shrink)

There is a difference between that which is and that which is to be. Anthropologically: there is a way I am, and the way I am to be, or not to be. How are we to explain this? This book presents the argument that human nature is both complex and complicated in at least two specific ways--ontologically and ethically. In our being we are indisputably good, dignified, worthy, important, or even noble. But in our morality we are ambivalent--capable of both (...) good and evil, the humane and the inhumane. In his paramount work Jan Amos Comenius expresses the goal of his lifelong endeavor: "to help keep man from falling into a non-man" (Pampaedia). If human beings are to become what they ought to be, they need to be educated towards humanity, says Comenius. But the fundamental question is, what is a human being? And what ought one to be? "Salt ought to be salty. A river ought to be clear. A knife ought to be sharp. But what ought a person to be?" What is the essence of our humanity? And how can that be cultivated or educated? This book presents Comenius's answers to these questions. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept derivative blameworthiness for ignorant conduct – the idea that the blameworthiness for one’s ignorance can ‘transfer’ to blameworthiness for one’s subsequent ignorant conduct. In this chapter we ask the question what it actually means that blameworthiness would transfer, and explore four distinct views and their merits. On views (I) and (II), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance and/or one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer only involves an increase in scope. On views (...) (III) and (IV), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance as well as one’s subsequent conduct, and transfer might not only entail an increase in scope, but also in degree. (shrink)

The relationship between anthropology as the study of human beings and ethics as the study of what humans ought to do is close and multifaceted. The authors address the following questions: Are moral norms grounded in human nature or are they independent of it? Does ethics take into account human weaknesses or is morality absolute? If people change, do the requirements of morality change as well?

In the first part of the article, the author describes the polymorphic phenomenon of return to the past, which occurs in various areas of culture, social and political, as well as private and family life. Then he points to several key interlocking causes of this phenomenon, such as: working through traumas, democratization of history and memory, compensation of high costs of modernization, uncertainty of the future, searching for an antidote to the progressing identity deficit, commodification of history/memory combined with the (...) emotionalization of the attitude towards the past, decline of the idea of progress, disappearance of utopias and an increase of post-secular tendencies. (shrink)

This is the first English translation directly based on the original Polish ‘Zasada sprzeczności a logika symboliczna’, the appendix on symbolic logic of Jan Łukasiewicz's 1910 book O zasadzie sprzeczności u Arytotelesa (On the Principle of Contradiction in Aristotle).

Kaum ein anderer Denker hat die jüdische Moderne in einem so hohen Maße beeinflusst wie der Philosoph Baruch Spinoza. Als eine intellektuelle Grenzfigur, die nach ihrer Verbannung aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Amsterdams im Jahre 1656 in die christlich-abendländische Geisteswelt eintrat, inspirierte er jene Aufklärer der Haskala, die ein gutes Jahrhundert später nach einem eigenen jüdischen Weg in die europäische Moderne suchten. Diese Denker trafen dabei auf eine nichtjüdische Gelehrtenwelt, in der sich mit dem Namen des niederländischen Philosophen ebenso idealisierende Erwartungen (...) wie irrationale Ängste gegenüber dem in Spinoza identifizierten intellektuellen Idealtypus des Jüdischen verbanden. Somit ist die Geschichte der jüdischen Rezeption Spinozas seit dem Zeitalter der europäischen Aufklärung stets ein Indikator dafür, welchen Stand das wechselhafte Verhältnis zwischen jüdischer und nichtjüdischer Welt gerade erreicht hatte. Im Nachvollzug der Verlaufsformen der jüdischen Spinoza-Rezeption vom 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert zeigt die vorliegende Studie, wie sich jüdisches Selbstbild und Fremdzuschreibung immer wieder wechselseitig bedingt haben. (shrink)

Completing the translation of Derrida's monumental work _Right to Philosophy_, _Eyes of the University_ brings together many of the philosopher's most important texts on the university and, more broadly, on the languages and institutions of philosophy. In addition to considerations of the implications for literature and philosophy of French becoming a state language, of Descartes' writing of the _Discourse on Method_ in French, and of Kant's and Schelling's philosophies of the university, the volume reflects on the current state of research (...) and teaching in philosophy and on the question of what Derrida calls a "university responsibility." Examining the political and institutional conditions of philosophy, the essays collected here question the growing tendency to orient research and teaching towards a programmable and profitable end. The volume is therefore invaluable for the light it throws upon an underappreciated aspect of Derrida's own engagement, both philosophical and political, in struggles against the stifling of philosophical research and teaching. As a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy and as one of the conveners of the Estates General of Philosophy, Derrida was at the forefront of the struggle to preserve and extend the teaching of philosophy as a distinct discipline, in secondary education and beyond, in the face of conservative government education reforms in France. As one of the founders of the Collège International de Philosophie, he worked to provide a space for research in and around philosophy that was not accepted or legitimated in other institutions. Documenting and reflecting upon these engagements, _Eyes of the University_ brings together some of the most important and incisive of Derrida's works. (shrink)

This is the first authoritative, book-length study of what Heidegger called "thinking poetics." _That Is to Say_ conducts its analysis of Heideggerian poetics by expounding the sense of language from the perspective of fundamental ontology. This project is carried out in readings of the pertinent chapters of _Being and Time_, the lectures on Hölderlin, "The Origin of the Work of Art," and _On the Way to Language_. The book is guided by a question that no other writer on Heidegger has (...) yet asked: Why should _poiesis_ provide a privileged access to the specificity of the poetic? With this question guiding his quite unorthodox analyses of Heidegger's texts on poetics and the work of art, the author sheds new light on every aspect of Heidegger's philosophy. The analyses devoted to Heidegger's idea of a proximity between thinking and poetry, his conception of Hölderlin as _the_ poet, of poetic experience, and of the privilege he accords the name reveal a series of presuppositions and necessary assumptions in Heidegger's conception of poetry that not only remain unthought by Heidegger himself, but that, strictly speaking, cannot be thought in terms of what Heidegger understood by thinking. _That Is to Say_ points to the limits of poetics with regard to the work of art, and in particular the literary work. In doing so, it gestures toward new ways of doing justice to the literary and to art in general. (shrink)

This volume reflects Jacques Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. He was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy, an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975, and a convener of the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. While addressing (...) specific contemporary political issues on occasion, thus providing insight into the pragmatic deployment of deconstructive analysis, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the "teaching body," both the faculty _corps_ and the strange interplay in the French tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called "natural languages" like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. The essays are linked by the extraordinary care and precision with which Derrida undertakes a political intervention into, and a philosophical analysis of, the institutionalization of philosophy in the university. (shrink)