David Hume wrote that Berkeley's arguments `admit of no answer but produce no conviction'. This book aims at the kind of understanding of Berkeley's philosophy that comes from seeing how we ourselves might be brought to embrace it. Berkeley held that matter does not exist, and that the sensations we take to be caused by an indifferent and independent world are instead caused directly by God. Nature becomes a text, with no existence apart from the spirits who transmit and receive (...) it. Kenneth P. Winkler presents these conclusions as natural consequences of Berkeley's reflections on such topics as representation, abstraction, necessary truth, and cause and effect. In the closing chapters Proefssor Winkler offers new interpretations of Berkeley's view on unperceived objects, corpuscularian science, and our knowledge of God and other minds. (shrink)

This book is the first detailed study of Kant's method of 'transcendental reflection' and its use in the Critique of Pure Reason to identify our basic human cognitive capacities, and to justify Kant's transcendental proofs of the necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of self-conscious human experience. Kenneth Westphal, in a closely argued internal critique of Kant's analysis, shows that if we take Kant's project seriously in its own terms, the result is not transcendental idealism but realism regarding (...) physical objects. Westphal attends to neglected topics - Kant's analyses of the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold, the 'lifelessness of matter', fallibilism, the semantics of cognitive reference, four externalist aspects of Kant's views, and the importance of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations for the Critique of Pure Reason - that illuminate Kant's enterprise in new and valuable ways. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

The selectionsfrom the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approachesbeing pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarifythis proliferation of views and ...

One of the standard ways of postulating large cardinal axioms is to consider elementary embeddings,j, from the universe,V, into some transitive submodel,M. See Reinhardt–Solovay [7] for more details. Ifjis not the identity, andκis the first ordinal moved byj, thenκis a measurable cardinal. Conversely, Scott [8] showed that wheneverκis measurable, there is suchjandM. If we had assumed, in addition, that, thenκwould be theκth measurable cardinal; in general, the wider we assumeMto be, the largerκmust be.

It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypothesis, but (...) it tends to favor a single-universe hypothesis instead. (shrink)

_Phenomenological analyses of the orderliness of naturally occurring collaboration._.

This book assesses and defends Kant's Critical epistemology, and the rich yet neglected resources it provides for understanding and resolving fundamental issues regarding human experience, perceptual judgment, empirical knowledge and cognitive sciences. Kenneth Westphal first examines Kant's methods and strategies for examining human sensory-perceptual experience, and then examines Kant's central, proper, and subtle attention to judgment, and so to the humanly possible valid use of concepts and principles to judge particulars we confront. This provides a comprehensive account of Kant's (...) anti-Cartesianism, the integrity of his three principles of causal judgment, and Kant's account of disciminatory perceptual-motor behaviour, including both sensory reafference and perceptual affordances. Westphal then defends the significance of Kant's subtle and illuminating account of causal judgment for three main philosophical domains: history and philosophy of science, theory of action and human freedom, and philosophy of mind. Kant's Critical Epistemology will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Kant and the relations of his thought to contemporary philosophical debates and to the sciences of the mind. (shrink)

Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This article looks at one particular combination of theories: autism as theory of mind challenges and moral responsibility as requiring appropriate experience of the reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, we do not intend to endorse them. Our goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of especially prominent ideas about (...) autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults. We find that these theories point to a limited range of situations in which autists should not be blamed for transgressive actions for which neurotypical individuals should be blamed. We build on what others have written on these issues by bringing in a recent cognitive model of the role theory of mind plays in empathy, by discussing the social implications of the theoretical findings, and by raising questions about the compatibility of reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility with the neurodiversity approach to autism. (shrink)

In this article, I develop the idea of the “institutional insight” as a pathway to two foundational values for applied ethics: human dignity and the common good. I explore—but do not offer a definitive analysis of—these two values that I believe are critical to the progress of business ethics. In several previous articles, I have alluded to this theme, but here I hope to show that human dignity and the common good underlie both management's fiduciary duty to shareholders, and management's (...) obligations to “stakeholders.” Indeed, it may be that the frequently observed tension between the latter two normative paradigms can be resolved only by engaging in the comprehensive moral thinking afforded by the institutional insight. (shrink)

We address how the leaders of a Catholic business school can articulate and assess how well their schools implement the following six principles drawn from Catholic social teaching : produce goods and services that are authentically good; foster solidarity with the poor by serving deprived and marginalized populations; advance the dignity of human work as a calling; exercise subsidiarity; promote responsible stewardship over resources; and acquire and allocate resources justly. We first discuss how the CST principles give substantive content and (...) meaning to the Good Goods, Good Work, and Good Wealth framework in The Vocation of the Business Leader and then discuss their congruencies and tensions with the UNGC and UNPRME principles. Next, we describe the Catholic Identity Matrix, an assessment tool that provides a quantitative and qualitative portrait of how well a Catholic business school integrates, within the scope of its mission and capacities, the three goods and related CST principles in its strategies, policies, activities, and processes. The concluding section discusses implications for ongoing UNGC and UNPRME assessment, reporting, and development efforts, and addresses the generalizability of our approach to business schools who draw their inspiration and moral principles from other faith-based or secular traditions. (shrink)

_A study of the first half of Kant’s Critique of Judgment._.

To live in this world is to live in the midst of evil. The reality of evil seems all too real and yet ever-perplexing in that it scoffs at any attempt to make rational sense of the world. Can we dare to insist, as traditional theodicy does, that such a world is not only created by but is also under the providence of God who is seen as perfect in both goodness and power? Many find such an attempt incredulous if (...) not scandalous. David Griffin, a foremost process philosopher of religion and the leading proponent of process theodicy, too, finds the traditional theistic theodicy philosophically and theologically unsatisfactory.1 The main reason for its failure, Griffin thinks, lies in the traditional .. (shrink)

Human rights have become a wider and more visible feature of our political discourse, yet many have also noted the great discrepancy between the human rights invoked in this discourse and traditional philosophical accounts that conceive of human rights as natural rights. This article explores an alternative approach in which human rights are conceived primarily as international norms aimed at securing the basic conditions of membership or inclusion in a political society. Central to this `political conception' of human rights is (...) the idea of human rights as special (in contrast to general) rights that individuals possess in virtue of specific associative relations they stand in to one another. This view is explored and defended through a critical review of four recent political conceptions — Michael Ignatieff, John Rawls, Thomas Pogge and Joshua Cohen. (shrink)

Two seminal notions of Harold Garfinkel have endured despite some uncertainty and indeterminacy that accompany them: “autochthonous” and “tendentious”. These terms, which respect the dynamic and evolving nature of social interaction, describe how local parties discover, come upon, or develop coherent accounts that can assist them to lay hold of a local orderliness that is governing some mundane interaction. This paper illuminates these two notions, first theoretically and then empirically. Drawing upon the reflections of Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff, Mead, Husserl, Schutz, (...) Gurwitsch, and others, the radical consequences of these two notions are elucidated and then applied to two perspicuous conversations where it is possible to witness autochthony and tendentiousness in action. This provides a clearer understanding of the importance that these features of social interaction can play in our everyday lives. The two illustrations reveal occasions where a local orderliness appears on its own, autochthonously, without requiring a heavy dose of deliberate conceptual control by parties. (shrink)

This collection of original essays aims to reinvigorate the debate surrounding philosophical realism in relation to philosophy of science, pragmatism, epistemology, and theory of perception. Questions concerning realism are as current and as ancient as philosophy itself; this volume explores relations between different positions designated as ‘realism’ by examining specific cases in point, drawn from a broad range of systematic problems and historical views, from ancient Greek philosophy through the present. The first section examines the context of the project; contributions (...) systematically engage the historical background of philosophical realism, re-examining key works of Aristotle, Descartes, Quine, and others. The following two sections epitomize the central tension within current debates: scientific realism and pragmatism. These contributions address contemporary questions of scientific realism and the reality of the objects of science, and consider whether, how or the extent to which realism and pragmatism are compatible. With an editorial introduction by Kenneth R. Westphal, these fourteen original essays provide wide-ranging, salient insights into the status of realism today. (shrink)

Why is it so hard to make up our minds? Adam and Eve set the template: Do we or don't we eat the apple? They chose, half-heartedly, and nothing was ever the same again. With this book, Kenneth Weisbrode offers a crisp, literate, and provocative introduction to the age-old struggle with ambivalence. Ambivalence results from a basic desire to have it both ways. This is only natural--although insisting upon it against all reason often results not in "both" but in (...) the disappointing "neither." Ambivalence has insinuated itself into our culture as a kind of obligatory reflex, or default position, before practically every choice we make. It affects not only individuals; organizations, societies, and cultures can also be ambivalent. How often have we asked the scornful question, "Are we the Hamlet of nations"? How often have we demanded that our leaders appear decisive, judicious, and stalwart? And how eager have we been to censure them when they hesitate or waver? Weisbrode traces the concept of ambivalence, from the Garden of Eden to Freud and beyond. The Obama era, he says, may be America's own era of ambivalence: neither red nor blue but a multicolored kaleidoscope. Ambivalence, he argues, need not be destructive. We must learn to distinguish it from its symptoms--selfishness, ambiguity, and indecision--and accept that frustration, guilt, and paralysis felt by individuals need not lead automatically to a collective pathology. Drawing upon examples from philosophy, history, literature, and the social sciences, _On Ambivalence_ is a pocket-sized portrait of a complex human condition. It should be read by anyone who has ever grappled with making the right choice. (shrink)

Contrary to some popular interpretations, I argue that Hegel and Habermas share many basic assumptions in their respective accounts of freedom. In particular, both respond to weaknesses in Kant's idea of freedom as acting from (certain kinds of) reasons by explicating this idea with reference to specific social practices or 'forms of recognition' that in turn express suppositions and expectations that actors adopt with respect to one another. I illustrate this common strategy in each and suggest that it may offer (...) an alternative to Rawls's 'political' account of public reason. Key Words: freedom • Habermas • Hegel • intersubjectivity • Kant • positive liberty • practical reason • public reason • rational action • Rawls • recognition. (shrink)

One of the largest, oldest, and most interesting challenges in health care is the balancing act in which clinicians have generally uncontroversial duties both to individual patients and to communities. Physicians and nurses must — so we teach them — put patients first, and at the same time recognize that individuals are members of communities. Individuals affect the health of communities, and communities affect the health of individuals. Thus, the moral and professional duties that result are sometimes in conflict.Moreover, the (...) traditional, prosaic clinical encounter is evolving in an environment increasingly shaped by electronic health records, personal health records, pharmacogenomics and vast networks of data collection and storage for public health surveillance, human subjects research, health services evaluation, and comparative effectiveness research. Health information technology is changing everything. It would be perverse otherwise: imagine large amounts of data and information either ignored, missed, or collected and then ignored. (shrink)

Special Issue: The Material Bases of Cognition Guest Editors: Fred Adams · Kenneth Aizawa -/- Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction K.L. Theurer 287 -/- Constitution, and Multiple Constitution, in the Sciences: Using the Neuron to Construct a Starting Framework C. Gillett 309 -/- The Mark of the Cognitive F. Adams · R. Garrison 339 -/- Dynamics and Cognition L.A. Shapiro 353 -/- Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind P. Huneman 377 -/- Did I Do That? (...) Brain–Computer Interfacing and the Sense of Agency P. Haselager 405 . (shrink)

Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum is widely used by schools across the USA and has garnered attention internationally. The curriculum addresses social language and behavior deficits among those on the autism spectrum. Although many embrace this curriculum without reservation, the emphasis on social conformity, including avoiding behaviors that make others uncomfortable, merits scrutiny. Individuals who have difficulty understanding social cues and conventions can derive tremendous benefit from learning to fit in, for example, or learning what is likely to make (...) others uncomfortable and why. However, too much emphasis on pleasing others can reinforce undesirable tendencies. For example, autism is already linked to avoidant personality disorder. An emphasis on avoiding making others uncomfortable may also inhibit the development of principled ethical thinking and action. Reframing social thinking to treat it not (or not only) as an end in itself, but as a way to achieve a variety of social and personal goals would go a long way toward addressing the weaknesses of the Social Thinking Curriculum. (shrink)

With reference to two specific modalities of sensation, the taste of saltiness of chloride salts, and the loudness of steady tones, it is shown that the laws of sensation (logarithmic and power laws) are expressions of the entropy per mole of the stimulus. That is, the laws of sensation are linear functions of molar entropy. In partial verification of this hypothesis, we are able to derive an approximate value for the gas constant, a fundamental physical constant, directly from psychophysical measurements. (...) The significance of our observation lies in the linking of the phenomenon of “sensation” directly to a physical measure. It suggests that if the laws of physics are universal, the laws of sensation and perception are similarly universal. It also connects the sensation of a simple, steady physical signal with the molecular structure of the signal: the greater the number of microstates or complexions of the stimulus signal, the greater the magnitude of the sensation (saltiness or loudness). The hypothesis is currently tested on two sensory modalities. (shrink)

Between 1924 and 1937, the Jesuit Curia in Rome repeatedly placed restrictions on what Jesuit priest‐paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was allowed to write on those aspects of human origins that, in the view of the Curia, had theological as well as scientific aspects. In 2018, David Grumett and Paul Bentley published an account of the first of those restrictions, together with a previously undiscovered document associated with that restriction. This article corrects a relatively important error in their historical narrative, (...) offers an alternative to their comments about the case, and concludes by embedding the events of 1924–1925 in a slightly larger history of Teilhard's relations with the Jesuit Curia and with the Holy Office. That larger narrative shows that, while Grumett and Bentley's account was mistaken about the involvement of the Holy Office in the case they discuss, it was not wrong about the concerns of that Congregation in questions of human origins. (shrink)

If θ is any singular cardinal of cofinality ω 1 , we produce a forcing extension in which MA holds below θ but fails at θ. The failure is due to a partial order which splits a gap of size θ in P(ω).

The article considers some of the methodological commitments - specifically, what Brandom calls ‘Gadamerian platitudes’ - defended in Tales of the Mighty Dead . I argue that, given his commitment to Gadamer’s model of dialogue and Vorgriff der Vollkommenheit (‘anticipation of completeness’), Brandom should also accept Habermas’ position on the ineliminability of the second-person or performative perspective concerning our interpretive claims. Key Words: first person • Hans Georg Gadamer • Jürgen Habermas • hermeneutics • inferential semantics • performative • pragmatics (...) • second person • third person. (shrink)