Phillip R. Sloan - Performing the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 229-253 Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori Phillip R. Sloan Situating Kant's philosophical project in relation to the natural sciences of his day has been of concern to several scholars from both the history of science and the (...) history of philosophy. Historians of philosophy have displayed an expanded awareness of, and interest in, the importance of the scientific context of the period in which Kant carried out his "Copernican" revolution. Most commonly among philosophers, this interest has been analyzed in relation to Kant's concerns with the foundations of mechanics, matter theory, and the epistemology of Newtonian science, with the central text of interest being the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe. On the other hand, historians of philosophy and historians of science, interested in the issues of the third Critique and in the several papers of Kant dealing with biological and anthropological issues, have emphasized the unified nature of Kant's inquiries into the natural sciences, and the importance of his continued interest in the life and human sciences alongside his interests in the foundations of the physical sciences. The effort to understand the unity of Kant's.. (shrink)

People may have open minds on whether a life-extending drug or technology is going to be developed before their sixties and may strongly desire that development. Do they therefore hope that it occurs? Do they hope for it in the substantive sense of “pinning their hopes” on the development? No, they do not. Hoping for a prospect in that sense certainly presupposes having an open mind on whether it will occur and having a desire for its occurrence. But, more crucially, (...) it means investing the prospect with a characteristic, galvanizing, and orientating role: it involves setting aside doubts about the possible nonoccurrence of the prospect and acting accordingly. This article offers a characterization of hope in that substantive sense and argues both that it can be rational and that it is ubiquitous. (shrink)

In this chapter, I evaluate various conceptions of distance. Of the two most prominent, one takes distance relations to be intrinsic, the other extrinsic. I recommend pluralism: different conceptions can peacefully coexist as long as each holds sway over a distinct region of logical space. But when one asks which conception holds sway at the actual world, one conception stands out. It is the conception of distance embodied in differential geometry, what I call the Gaussian conception. On this conception, all (...) fundamental facts about distance are “local” facts.” But there is a problem: the Gaussian conception, notwithstanding its mathematical and physical credentials, appears metaphysically suspicious on Humean grounds. In the final section, I suggest that the Gaussian conception can be given a sound metaphysical footing in terms of non-standard analysis. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show Kant’s importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon’s distinctions of ‘abstract’ and ‘physical’ truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of ‘varieties’ from ‘races’ in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the ‘history’ of nature [Naturgeschichte] over ‘description’ of nature (...) [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant’s confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the ‘history of nature’ and gave theoretical preference to ‘description of nature’. As a result, Kant’s successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a ‘regulative’ idea of reason. (shrink)

Modal sentences of the form "every F might be G" and "some F must be G" have a threefold ambiguity. in addition to the familiar readings "de dicto" and "de re", there is a third reading on which they are examples of the "plural de re": they attribute a modal property to the F's plurally in a way that cannot in general be reduced to an attribution of modal properties to the individual F's. The plural "de re" readings of modal (...) sentences cannot be captured within standard quantified modal logic. I consider various strategies for extending standard quantified modal logic so as to provide analyses of the readings in question. I argue that the ambiguity in question is associated with the scope of the general term 'F'; and that plural quantifiers can be introduced for purposes of representing the scope of a general term. Moreover, plural quantifiers provide the only fully adequate solution that keeps within the framework of quantified modal logic. (shrink)

We claim that scientists working with deep learning (DL) models exhibit a form of pragmatic understanding that is not reducible to or dependent on explanation. This pragmatic understanding comprises a set of learned methodological principles that underlie DL model design-choices and secure their reliability. We illustrate this action-oriented pragmatic understanding with a case study of AlphaFold2, highlighting the interplay between background knowledge of a problem and methodological choices involving techniques for constraining how a model learns from data. Building successful models (...) requires pragmatic understanding to apply modelling strategies that encourage the model to learn data patterns that will facilitate reliable generalisation. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Kant’s antinomy of saving faith. In the first section, I sketch aspects of Kant’s philosophical account of sin and atonement that help explain why he finds saving faith problematic from the moral point of view. I proceed in the next section to give a detailed exposition of Kant’s remarkable antinomy and of his proposal for resolving it theoretically. In the third and final section, I argue that alternative ways of resolving the antimony both (...) respond to the deepest of Kant’s moral concerns and comport better with the traditional Christian conviction that saving faith can have for its object the historical individual Jesus Christ. (shrink)

In December 2007 it was revealed that the British government is considering the exclusion of certain groups of migrants—those considered to be present “illegally”—from primary health care provided by the National Health Service. At present, practitioners have discretion to accept any individual for NHS treatment regardless of their status. A joint Home Office and Department of Health review is examining this access for foreign nationals, and the likely outcome is the restriction of access to irregular migrants, which would, according to (...) the Institute of Public Policy Research, affect around 390,000 people. In 2004 such groups were excluded from NHS secondary care, most controversially from treatment for HIV, and so the present proposal would bar them from all but emergency health treatment. (shrink)

This paper considers pick-the-winners contests as a simple method for harnessing the wisdom of crowds to produce probability forecasts. Pick-the-winners contests are those in which players pick the outcomes of selected future binary events with a prize going to the player with the most correct picks. In contrast to soliciting probability forecasts from experts, this paper shows that competition among players is to be encouraged because it improves the accuracy of the resulting crowd probability forecasts. This improvement comes because the (...) competition not only discourages the overbetting of favorites that occurs if prizes are awarded based on absolute performance, but also helps mitigate the public knowledge bias that occurs if everyone reports truthfully. In addition to the theoretical arguments, the paper analyzes picks from 6 years of pick-the-winners contests involving hundreds of players and 1037 college lacrosse games to find that the crowd proportions outperformed two benchmark sets of probabilities. (shrink)

Darwin's art collection : the prints, drawings, and photographs Darwin collected in the 1860s and 70s -- Illustrations and illusion : strategies Darwin used in illustrating his books -- Art, experience, and observation : Darwin's knowledge of art history and use of illustration in his books -- Darwin and the passions : how passion manuals informed Darwin's research -- Photography and evolution meet : connections between photography and biology in the 1860s -- Method to their madness : how photography in (...) mental hospitals influenced Darwin -- Laughing and crying : Darwin's quest for pictures of expressive babies -- Darwin's eyes and ears : the artists who guided Darwin's search for pictures -- Darwin's art photographer : Oscar Rejlander, Darwin's favorite photographer -- Rejlander's performances : posing for Darwin's pictures -- Alice, eugenics, and the spirit world : the aftermath of Darwin's experiments. (shrink)

The influence of surrealism and Philippe Soupault on William Carlos Williams' poetry.

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure.... There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Despite renewed interest in T.H. Green’s social and political theory, little attention has as yet been given to his metaphysics and epistemology — even more neglected, though, are his views on logical matters. It is unclear why this is. I suspect that the obscurity of his discussion has much to do with it. Green routinely refers to writers in whom there is little interest today; and a good deal of effort is required to penetrate his technical vocabulary. Still, I believe (...) we miss something important when we ignore his specifically logical writings. Green has much to say about classical syllogism and its influence on his contemporaries. And, while the discussion is always grounded in his own idealist theory of knowledge, Green’s analysis often reveals surprising aspects of the problem being considered. In what follows, then, I shall consider one such analysis: his account of the logical/epistemological doctrine of Sir William Hamilton and H.L. Mansel — individuals whose writings, in Green’s eyes, made apparent all that was wrong with the “formal logic” of the day. (shrink)

Remembered today primarily for his commentaries on Plato, R.L. Nettleship was a fellow and tutor of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1869 to 1892. And, while he was one of the past century’s better known interpreters of Plato, Nettleship’s influence extends well beyond the study of Greek philosophy. Although his life was cut short in its prime and saw the publication of no major works expressive of his own views, it is to Nettleship that we owe the existence of T.H. Green’s (...) collected Works and the book-length “Memoir” that introduces these volumes. And, despite its being ignored by later writers, Nettleship’s “Lectures on Logic” remains one of the most accessible accounts of the idealist theory of knowledge that came to dominate late nineteenth century British philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Liberal political philosophy has little of interest to say about the social liberty of the physically disabled. It accepts that the physically disabled and the able‐bodied are equally at liberty, even though the former can do far less than the latter; and it concludes that there are no interesting political statements we can make about their situation. In this essay, I assume that the physically disabled are unfree, not merely unable, to use public facilities which do not take their (...) disability into account, thereby excluding them. I criticise liberal theories of liberty by exposing and questioning the assumptions which entail the liberal theorist's rejecting this claim. I conclude that there is a form of negative liberty which does enable the liberal theorist to make political statements about the freedom of the disabled [1]. (shrink)

Le Traité des édifices de Procope a été composé en 554 ap. J.-C. L'A. montre que cette oeuvre peut être lue comme un jugement sur l'empereur Justinien dont Procope met en avant l'arrogance. Il établit un rapport entre l'empereur et Dieu : c'est dans la conquête de la nature que se combinent la providence divine et la perception impériale. L'oeuvre combine ainsi deux niveaux de langage : un qui est mystérieux tandis que l'autre est arrogant.

The essays in this volume are by fellow historians of ideas and philosophy, colleagues, and former students of Richard Popkin; its editor is his son, a historian at the University of Kentucky. The volume is in the style of a festschrift, but it has a special personal component. The notes on the contributors indicate how each came to know Popkin. The essays do not concentrate on developments of each author’s own work, but access Popkin’s work, in some instances extending it, (...) and often relating it to aspects of his career. The final contribution is a biographical sketch of his career, done by the editor, from letters that are part of Popkin’s papers housed in the Clark Library at UCLA. This biographical sketch is preceded by a memoir by Avrum Stroll, recounting his collaboration with Popkin on their Philosophy Made Simple, which they co-authored in 1955 and which, in its multiple printings, has served as an introductory textbook for generations of students.The fourteen essays are by B. Copenhaver, A. P. Coudent, S. Hutton, P. K. J. Park, and K. Peden ; J. E. Force, M. Mulsow, and D. B. Ruderman ; J. C. Laursen, J. R. Maia Neto, and G. Paganini ; and Y. Kaplan, D. S. Katz, and M. Goldish. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an overview of the logical doctrine of three prominent idealists: T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. I first identify the works in which this doctrine is developed; then I provide a general account of judgment, and inference. In my discussion of judgment I examine, the individual, hypothetical, and disjunctive forms as well as negation. In my examination of inference I compare the “nonlinear” and “linear” views. This comparison includes the idealist critique of syllogism, and (...) the theory of the association of ideas. I conclude with a brief discussion of idealism and formal logic. (shrink)

Arguments aimed at undermining certain accounts of the grounds of political obligations—no matter how successful they may be—fall far short of demonstrating that there are no such obligations. Doubts about the efficacy of these arguments in this latter regard seem even more justified when it is recognized that parallel lines of reasoning can be developed in the area of filial obligations , which arguments provide rather less than conclusive reasons for denying that there are filial obligations .Furthermore, we have good (...) reason to believe that there are political obligations if patriotism is a virtue, and also that patriotism is indeed a virtue. We therefore have a basis on which to affirm the existence of political obligations—a basis whose soundness is independent of the acceptability of particular accounts of the grounds of political obligation. Hence, even if standard accounts of the grounds of political obligations are problematic in certain respects, we should not regard this consideration as capable by itself of establishing that there are no such obligations. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches. It has four parts. First, I consider several possible responses to G. E. M. Anscombe’s famous challenge to modern moral philosophy in order to provide a framework in which the project of Hauerwas and Pinches can be located. Next I criticize their attempt to eliminate the realm of obligation from morality. Then I examine their treatment of (...) Martha Nussbaum’s work onAristotle in order to explore differences between secular and Christian appropriations of Aristotle. Finally, I discuss their views on the virtue of obedience and criticize their arguments against rival Kantian and divine command views. (shrink)

Abstract. The modern concept of the inner self containing a private inner world has ancient philosophical and religious roots. These begin with Plato's intelligible world of ideas. In Plotinus, the intelligible world becomes the inner world of the divine Mind and its ideas, which the soul sees by turning “into the inside.” Augustine made the inner world into something merely human, not a world of divine ideas, so that the soul seeking for God must turn in, then up: entering into (...) itself and then looking above itself at the intelligible light of God. In modernity, “ideas” become the immediate object of every act of mental perception, the essential inner objects of the mind's eye. Locke makes the inner space inescapably private, excluding the divine inner light. Postmodern attempts to reconceive the relation of mind and world, rejecting the modern conception of a private inner self, will need to deal with lingering Platonist intuitions about the immediacy of the mind's vision. (shrink)

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

This paper has a threefold purpose: to question the adequacy of two familiar proposals for explaining the permissibility of harming others in self-defense, to suggest an alternative explanation, and to answer some objections to this latter explanation. By and large, discussions of the proposals whose adequacy I will question focus on what they imply about the permissibility of self-defense in controversial cases. I will argue here that the proposals themselves contain large and significant theoretical gaps. Accordingly, examining their implications for (...) controversial cases is premature, since they don’t adequately explain permissible self-defense in even the clearest cases—that is, those in which people defend themselves against “culpable attackers”. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I consider recent attempts to establish that the geometry of visual experience is a spherical geometry. These attempts, offered by Gideon Yaffe, James van Cleve and Gordon Belot, follow Thomas Reid in arguing for an equivalency of a geometry of ‘visibles’ and spherical geometry. I argue that although the proposed equivalency is successfully established by the strongest form of the argument, this does not warrant any conclusion about the geometry of visual experience. I argue, firstly, that (...) the resistance of this contemporary argument to empirical considerations counts against its plausibility. Moreover, I argue that the contemporary approach provides no compelling reason for supposing that the geometry offered as the geometry of ‘visibles’ is the correct geometrical description of visual experience. (shrink)

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? (...) How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered. The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them. (shrink)