This article treats the political thought of Simón Bolívar, a leading figure in South America's struggle for independence. It describes Bolívar's ideas by reference to both their broadly Atlantic origins and their specifically American concerns, arguing that they comprise a theory of `republican imperialism', paradoxically proposing an essentially imperial project as a means of winning and consolidating independence from European rule. This basic tension is traced through Bolívar's discussions of revolution, constitutions, and territorial unification, and then used to frame a (...) comparison with the founders of the United States. It suggests, in closing, that contextual similarities amongst the American revolutions make them particularly apt subjects for comparative study of the history of political thought. (shrink)
Acquaintance with the Absolute is the first collected volume of essays devoted to the thought of Yves r. Simon, a thinker widely regarded as one of the great teachers and philosophers of our time. Each piece in this collection of essays thoughtfully complements the others to offer a qualifiedly panoramic look at the work and thought of philosopher Yves R. Simon. The six essays presented not only treat some major areas of Simon’s thought, pointing out their lucidity (...) and originality, but also his underpinning metaphysics, so central to his thought. Rather than attempt to present all aspects of this patient, careful, and penetrating thinker, these essays select enough to situate Simon’s philosophical excavations – especially his moral, political and action theory – among contemporary Thomistic philosophy. In defending philosophy as a valid way of knowing, Simon gives us an approach we can use to avoid contemporary dilemmas in the philosophy of science. Simon holds that philosophical truths both justify scientific method as a way of knowing the real and provide a basis for distinguishing what is ontologically significant in a scientific theory from what is not. This view allows us to avoid the apparently irrational conclusions of quantum mechanics without reducing scientific theories to being mere projections of our conceptual systems. Though aspects of some of the essays are suited for students of Simon’s thought, the essays as a whole introduce the less familiar reader to this great thinking and, further, invite him or her to pursue Simon’s own texts. The volume is enhanced by the inclusion of a definitive Yves R. Simon bibliography 1923-1996. The annotated bibliography is cross-reference in detail, revealing the astonishing variety of topics Simon treated. (shrink)
Title says it all. Arguments from both sides, believers and non-believers (but more of the former). Authors: MICHAËL BAUWENS, SIMON CUSHING, HELEN DALY, CRUZ DAVIS, JEAN-BAPTISTE GUILLON, BLAKE HERETH, A.G. HOLDIER, BERTHA ALVAREZ MANNINEN, ERIC OLSON, JOSHUA RASMUSSEN, ERIC YANG.
This article reviews Herbert Simon's theory of bounded rationality, with a view of deemphasizing his "satisficing" model, and by contrast, of emphasizing his distinction between "procedural" and "substantive" rationality. The article also discusses a possible move from neo-classical economists to respond to Simon's criticisms, i.e., a reduction of bounded rationality to a special case of second-optimization, using Stigler's search theory. This move is eventually dismissed.
Simon Blackburn has not shied away from the use of vivid imagery in developing, over a long and prolific career, a large-scale philosophical vision. Here one might think, for instance, of ‘Practical Tortoise Raising’ or ‘Ramsey's Ladder’ or ‘Frege's Abyss’. Blackburn develops a ‘quasi-realist’ account of many of our philosophical and everyday commitments, both theoretical (e.g., modality and causation) and practical (e.g., moral judgement and normative reasons). Quasi-realism aims to provide a naturalistic treatment of its targeted phenomena while earning (...) the right to deploy all of the ‘trappings’ of realism—i.e., while eschewing any idea that our normal thought and talk about such phenomena are pervasively in error. The quasi-realist project is that of explaining how (as Huw Price puts it here) ‘the folk come to “talk the realist talk” without committing ourselves—us theorists, as it were—to “walking the metaphysical walk”’ (p. 136). Quasi-realism, too, can speak of truth, facts, properties, belief, knowledge, and so on. The imagery in this collection also abounds, though, in capturing a different view of quasi-realism: No fewer than three of the contributors picture Blackburn as wanting to have his cake and eat it too (Louise Antony asking, in addition, ‘Who doesn't? It's cake’ [p. 19]). (shrink)
Choice reaction tasks are performed faster when stimulus location corresponds to response location. This spatial stimulus–response compatibility effect affects performance at the level of action planning and execution. However, when response selection is completed before movement initiation, the Simon effect arises only at the planning level. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether when a precocious response selection is requested, the Simon effect can be detected on the kinematics characterizing the online control phase of a non-ballistic (...) movement. Participants were presented with red or green colored squares, which could appear on the right, left, above, or below a central cross. Depending on the square's color, participants had to release one of two buttons, then reach toward and press a corresponding lateral pad. We found evidence of the Simon effect on both action planning and on-line control. Moreover, the investigation of response conflict at the level of previous trials, a factor that might determine interference at the level of the current response, revealed a conflict adaptation process across trials. Results are discussed in terms of current theories concerned with the Simon effect and the distinction between action planning and control. (shrink)
When Bernard Williams died in 2003, the Times newspaper hailed him ‘as the greatest moral philosopher of his generation’. This outstanding collection of specially commissioned new essays on Williams's work is essential reading for anyone interested in Williams, ethics and moral philosophy and philosophy in general. _Reading Bernard Williams_ examines the astonishing scope of his philosophy from metaphysics and philosophy of mind to ethics, political philosophy and the history of philosophy. An international line up of outstanding contributors discuss, amongst others, (...) the following central aspects of Williams's work: Williams's challenge to contemporary moral philosophy and his criticisms of 'absolute' theories of morality reason and rationality the good life the emotions Williams and the phenomenological tradition philosophical and political agency moral and political luck ethical relativism Contributors : Simon Blackburn; John Cottingham; Frances Ferguson; Joshua Gert; Peter Goldie; Charles Guignon; Sharon Krause; Christopher Kutz; Daniel Markovits; Elijah Millgram; Martha Naussbaum; Carol Rovane. (shrink)
This paper explores Simon Stevin’s l’Arithmétique of 1585, where we find a novel understanding of the concept of number. I will discuss the dynamics between his practice and philosophy of mathematics, and put it in the context of his general epistemological attitude. Subsequently, I will take a close look at his justificational concerns, and at how these are reflected in his inductive, a postiori and structuralist approach to investigating the numerical field. I will argue that Stevin’s renewed conceptualisation of (...) the notion of number is a sort of “existential closure” of the numerical domain, founded upon the practice of his predecessors and contemporaries. Accordingly, I want to make clear that l’Aritmetique have to be read not as an ontological analysis or exploration of the numerical field, but as an explication of a mathematical ethos. In this sense, this article also intends to make a specific contribution to the broader issue of the “ethics of geometry.”. (shrink)
IntroductionIn a recent article in this journal, Joshua W. Seachris (2012) argues that the distinction I make between perspectives and standards in sub specie aeternitatis arguments for the meaninglessness of life does not hold for a salient component of the sub specie aeternitatis perspective: the ontological-normative component. In this article I suggest that Seachris’s argument is problematic in a number of ways and ought to be rejected.BackgroundVarious authors, such as Albert Camus (1969, p. 78), Nicholas Rescher (1990, p. 153) (...) and Simon Blackburn (2001, p. 79), have argued that when lives are considered as a part of very large temporal or spatial contexts, they are realized to be meaningless. Considered in the context of a million years, whatever one chooses or achieves in a life or even the fact that one has existed seems unimportant: the world would be the same in a million years whether or not we had existed and whatever we might or might not have done. Our effect on the world. (shrink)
Whereas there are many aspects of Roger Simon’s thought that can be privileged, one of the most compelling points of entry for beginning to consider his legacy in the field of education, and beyond, lies with his concern for the difficult work of receiving and transmitting, of giving countenance to, the traces of those now absent. Indeed, in the last 20 years of his scholarly work, Simon pressed us to consider the pedagogical stakes in forging an ethical living (...) relation with the remnants of past and presently unsettled—ongoing—historical wrongs. Keenly aware of how memorial practices risk falling into facile assurances and deferrals, Simon emphasized the important work of “remembrance-learning,” in which the task is to learn how to ethically receive and translate the remnants of a difficult past in our present, so that we might be able to more thoroughly think our time. In this paper I provide an overview of a certain tendency in Simon’s later thinking, pointing to how his work on pedagogy, aesthetics, curation and collective study was motivated by a not so ordinary way of thinking that takes seriously the fact that the dead cannot bury the dead; that they need those in the present, those whose turn it is to do the work, to offer human significance and a human completion to what remains a remnant. (shrink)
This paper critically engages with Simon Glendinning’s The Idea of Continental Philosophy. Glendinning purports to show that there can be no coherent philosophical understanding of continental philosophy as comprising any sort of distinct or unified tradition. In this paper, however, I raise some questions about the largely unilateral direction in which his account of the motives for the divide is pursued: analytic philosophy is envisaged as pathologically projecting the internal and unavoidable threat of philosophical failure upon an external ‘continental’ (...) other. I also contend that Glendinning’s claims regarding the lack of thematic and methodological continuity at work in continental philosophy are overstated. Without denying that there is less of a normative consensus undergirding this polyvocal tradition than is evinced in the analytic tradition, in the second half of the paper I will argue for a ‘quasi-unity’ that revolves around the co-imbrication of methodological considerations and what I characterise as continental philosophy’s ‘temporal turn’. (shrink)
In this paper I propose to question the Joshua Greene’s neuroethical thesis about the essentially emotional character of so-called “deontological moral judgments”. Frist, I focus on the dual process theory of moral judgment and I criticize that they are considered only and mainly intuitive and non reflective. Se condly, I question that the “utilitarian judgment” is linked to mathematical calculation and the deontological judgment is exclusively reduced to non-reflective factor of emotion. The main objection to Greene’s naturalism raised by (...) me is trying to eliminate the philosophical justification about the moral validity defended by Kant’s deontologism; meanwhile Greene reduces “deontological moral judgment” to exclusively psychological and neurophysiological factors associated with emotion. (shrink)
This article contrasts St. Thomas More's theoretical work on the role of faith and history in biblical exegesis with that of Fr. Richard Simon. I argue that, although Simon's work appears to be a critique of his more skeptical contemporaries like Hobbes and Spinoza, in reality he is carrying their work forward. I argue that More's union of faith and reason, theology and history, is more promising than Simon's for Catholic theological biblical exegesis.
In Sociedades americanas en 1828, Simón Rodríguez describes and supports a republican attempt as a new way of government. Aware of the problem his project meant and warned against the accusation of being an utopian, he claims that the social republic would not be an utopia, as Tomas Moro imagined about, but the opportunity for the republics in South America to be the good place for an authentic social life. On the grounds that are described above, this paper examines analytically (...) and critically the relationships between republic and utopia in Simon Rodriguez. (shrink)
During the past fifty years, a dispute over the nature of historical discourse has taken place with the narrativist approach, arguing for the dominance of narration in history, on the one hand, and professional historians defending historiography's will to tell the truth, on the other. Paul Ricoeur entered the discussion with his work Time and Narrative where he offered an inventive response. According to him, both narration and scientific explication are essential to historical discourse. To support his statement, he introduces (...) terms such as ‘a third time,‘ ‘a quasi-narration’ or ‘a historical consciousness.’ Thus, he shifts attention from narration to time. These terms can prove their usefulness when interpreting historical works. In the rest of the article, we aim to carry out such an interpretation on the example of Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama. In a Ricœurian perspective, Schama's book reveals its deep time significance. (shrink)
In Sociedades americanas en 1828, Simón Rodríguez describes and supports a republican attempt as a new way of government. Aware of the problem his project meant and warned against the accusation of being an utopian, he claims that the social republic would not be an utopia, as Tomas Moro imagined about, but the opportunity for the republics in South America to be the good place for an authentic social life. On the grounds that are described above, this paper examines analytically (...) and critically the relationships between republic and utopia in Simon Rodriguez. (shrink)
My aim here is to raise a few questions concerning the problem of representation in scientific discovery computer programs. Representation, as Simon says in his paper, "imposes constraints upon the phenomena that allow the mechanisms to be inferred from the data". The issue is obviously barely outlined by Simon in his paper, while it is addressed in detail in the book by Langley, Simon, Bradshaw and Zytkow (1987), to which I shall refer in this note. Nevertheless, their (...) analysis would appear to leave open certain issues related to the nature of the "constraints" imposed by representation on problem solving strategies. (shrink)
En este trabajo intentamos un acercamiento a la filosofía social desarrollada por Simón Rodríguez en el conjunto de sus escritos reflexivos sobre la realidad político social hispanoamericana de la primera mitad del siglo XIX. Argumentamos que su examen de los problemas de las repúblicas hispanoamericanas constituyen una investigación crítica en el sentido moderno de este término, esto es, una investigación sobre las condiciones de posibilidad mismas de la comunidad como espacio del buen vivir. En este sentido, su trabajopropone la aplicación (...) de criterios, como el dominio del idioma español y el cambio de costumbres, para reformar la cultura. Se concluye que su filosofía social reivindica el papel de la comunidad en las necesarias transformaciones sociales que requiere la vida republicana en América del Sur, por supuesto, sin soslayar la importancia manifiesta que tienen los individuos como agentes concretos de cambio. Simon Rodriguez: his social philosophyIn thispaper we attemptan approach tosocialphilosophydeveloped bySimon Rodriguezon the set ofhis reflectivewritingsonLatin Americansocial and politicalrealityin the first halfof the nineteenth century.We argue thatconsiderationof the problemsof theAmerican republicsare acritical research, inthe modern sense ofthe term,that is,an inquiry intothe conditions of possibilityof this particular community of nationsasa good livingspace. In thissense, thepaper proposesthe applicationof certain criteria such asSpanishlanguage proficiencyand changingof habits,to reform theculture.We conclude thatsocialphilosophyclaims the roleof the community inthe necessarysocial changesrequirea republicin South America, of course, without ignoringthe importancethat individualsmanifestasindividualagentsof change. (shrink)
In this volume, Simona Goi and Frederick M. Dolan gather stimulating arguments for the indispensability of fiction_including poetry, drama, and film_as irreplaceable sites for wrestling with nature, meaning, shortcomings, and the future of modern politics.
It is sometimes thought that the renowned essayist Isaiah Berlin was incapable of writing a big book. But in fact he developed some of his most important essays--including "Two Concepts of Liberty" and "Historical Inevitability"--from a book-length manuscript that he intended to publish but later set aside. Published here for the first time, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the history of (...) ideas in the period that he made his own--the Romantic age. Distilling his formative early work in the history of ideas, the book also contains much that is not found elsewhere in his writings. The last of Berlin's posthumous books, it is of great interest both for his treatment of the subject and for what it reveals about his intellectual development. Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of the Romantic age are still largely our own--down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Vividly expounding the central political ideas of leading European thinkers in the period 1760-1830, including Helvetius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, the book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style. The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work. (shrink)
This article offers a critical complement to Diego von Vacano’s differential characterization of Bolívar’s political thought and his understanding of race through a comparative analysis between Bolívar’s views and those of certain philosophers of the Enlightenment. Indeed, von Vacano argues that Bolívar’s contributions to republican theory have been traditionally ignored by the Anglo-American tradition. Though von Vacano is right in underscoring that Bolívar’s political thought deserves more attention since it contains valuable contributions that stand in “contradistinction to prevalent discourses in (...) European and American intellectual history,” this article argues that, if we reconstruct the genealogy of Bolívar’s political thought by tracing it back to Montesquieu and Rousseau, it turns out to be very different in some respects from the views voiced in European discourses, but it also bears the imprint of certain racist assumptions and biases. This article also offers a brief diagnosis of the tensions that are found in Bolívar's political thought. (shrink)
Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn is best known to the general public as the author of several books of popular philosophy such as ink, Being Good andTruth: a Guide for the Perplexed. Academic philosophers also know him as the author of one of the most important books of contemporary moral philosophy, Ruling Passions, and as a former editor of the leading journal Mind.
Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn is best known to the general public as the author of several books of popular philosophy such as ink, Being Good andTruth: a Guide for the Perplexed. Academic philosophers also know him as the author of one of the most important books of contemporary moral philosophy, Ruling Passions, and as a former editor of the leading journal Mind.
In Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind, Joshua May argues successfully that many claims about the causal influence of affect on moral judgment are overblown. But the findings he cites are compatible with many of the key arguments of philosophical sentimentalists. His account of rationalism, in turn, relies on an overly broad notion of inference, and leaves open crucial questions about how we reason to moral conclusions.
In 1964, the American Medical Association invited liberal theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel to address its annual meeting in a program entitled “The Patient as a Person” [1]. Unsurprisingly, in light of Heschel’s reputation for outspokenness, he launched a jeremiad against physicians, claiming: “The admiration for medical science is increasing, the respect for its practitioners is decreasing. The depreciation of the image of the doctor is bound to disseminate disenchantment and to affect the state of medicine itself” [1, p. 35]. (...) Heschel’s reference to “disenchantment” suggests that he may have been familiar with the work, or at least the outlook, of sociologist Max Weber, whose 1917 address “Science as a Vocation” portrays the modern world as disenchanted by the progress of rationalism. Heschel’s life’s vocation had been to uncover the inner meaning of religious faith and to translate that faith into principled action. Heschel saw disenchantment not as an inescapable aspect of modern life but rather as the byproduct of physicians’ conscious choices to seek worldly success and material comfort. Yet, because of their privileged position as witnesses to human vulnerability, physicians possess an obligation to develop their own personhood, to re-enchant medicine, and through medicine to spark a positive transformation in all of modern life. As Heschel says, “The doctor must realize the supreme nobility of his vocation, to cultivate a taste for the pleasures of the soul. … The doctor is a major source of moral energy affecting the spiritual texture and substance of the entire society” [1, pp. 34, 38]. While Heschel’s conception of the physician’s role is romanticized and idealized, changes in the organization and practice of medicine have validated his concerns. (shrink)
