Hawthorne and Magidor's criticisms of the model of presupposition and assertion that I have used and defended are all based on a rejection of some transparency or introspection of assumptions about speaker presupposition. This response to those criticisms aims first to clarify, and then to defend, the required transparency assumptions. It is argued, first, that if the assumptions are properly understood, some prima facie problems for them do not apply, second, that rejecting the assumptions has intuitively implausible consequences, and third, (...) that the 'margin of error' argument against the principle of positive introspection has a false premiss. The paper concludes with a response to a criticism of what Hawthorne and Magidor call 'the uniformity principle' that is used in the model to explain some pragmatic phenomena. (shrink)

‘Mysticism means to isolate the eternal from the originated.’ This is not my definition of the word ‘mysticism’ but that of the founder of the ‘orthodox’ school of Muslim mysticism, Al-Junayd of Baghdad who flourished in the ninth century a.d . In actual fact it is not a definition of mysticism at all but of the Arabic word tawḥīd which means primarily ‘the affirmation of unity’; and that surely is an essential ingredient of any form of mysticism: it is the (...) affirmation through personal experience of unity either absolutely or in some qualified sense. (shrink)

As everyone knows, since the end of the Second World War there has been a sensational revival of interest in the non-Christian religions particularly in the United States and in this country. The revival has taken two forms, the one popular, the other academic. The first of these has turned almost exclusively to Hindu and Buddhist mysticism and can be seen as an energetic reaction against the dogmatic and until very recently rigid structure of institutionalised Christianity and a search for (...) a lived experience of the freedom of the spirit which is held to be the true content of mysticism, obscured in Christianity by the basic dogma of a transcendent God, the ‘wholly Other’ of Rudolf Otto and his numerous followers, but wholly untrammelled by any such concept in the higher reaches of Vedanta and Buddhism, particularly in its Zen manifestation. On the academic side the picture is less clear. There is, of course, the claim that the study of religion, like any other academic study, must be subjected to and controlled by the same principles of ‘scientific’ objectivity to which the other ‘arts’ subjects have been subjected, to their own undoing. But even here there would seem to be a bias in favour of the religions of India and the Far East as against Islam, largely, one supposes, in response to popular demand. (shrink)

The metaphorical nature of biological language is examined and the use of metaphors for providing the linguistic context in which similarities and differences are made is described. Certain pervasive metaphors which are characterised by systemic properties are noted, and in order to provide some focus to the study, systemic metaphors associated with machine, text and organism are discussed. Other systemic metaphors such as society and circuit are also reported. Some details concerning interrelations between automaton and organism are presented in the (...) light of the previous discussion.An approach towards the analysis of biosystem metaphors is outlined which relates part-whole, organisational level and systemic metaphors in a single model. Examples are provided throughout the discussion and mainly come from computing. The potential for metaphorical transfers between these domains is considered. (shrink)

The argument of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason is the deepest and most far-reaching in philosophy. In his new book, Robert Howell interprets main themes of the Deduction using ideas from contemporary philosophy and intensional logic, thereby providing a keener grasp of Kant's many subtleties than has hitherto been available. No other work pursues Kant's argument through every twist and turn with the careful, logically detailed attention maintained here. Surprising new accounts of apperception, (...) the concept of an object, the logical functions of thought, the role of the Metaphysical Deduction, and Kant's relations to his Aristotelian-Cartesian background are developed. Howell makes a precise contribution to the discussion of most of the disputed issues in the history of Deduction interpretation. Controversial in its conclusions, this book demands the attention of all who take seriously the task of understanding Kant's work and evaluating it dispassionately. (shrink)

This invaluable resource is the first one-volume, in-depth, comprehensive history of modern science ever published.

The problem that confronts us when we try to compare the structure of discourse and explanation in different domains of knowledge is that no one is an insider in more than one field, and insider information is essential. An observer who is not immersed in the practice of a particular scholarship and who wants to understand it is at the mercy of the practitioners. Yet those practitioners are themselves mystified by a largely unexamined communal myth of how scholarship is carried (...) on. R. G. Collingwood, although primarily a philosopher, was immersed in the community of historians and understood how history is done, so that he has had an immense influence on our ideas about historiography. Every historian knows The Idea of History.1 He was also a metaphysician, yet his influence on scientists’ understanding of nature, and of science, has been nil, and it is a rare scientist indeed who has ever heard of Collingwood or read The Idea of Nature.2 Collingwood’s views of the structure of science had to be constructed in large part from the elaborate fictions created by scientists and by an earlier generation of philosophers and historians of science who participated in the Baconian myth of the hypothetical-deductive scheme. 1. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History .2. See Collingwood, The Idea of Nature . R. C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor at Harvard University. He is an experimental and theoretical evolutionary geneticist who has also worked extensively on epistemological issues in biology. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and, with Richard Levins, of The Dialectical Biologist . His current research concerns the nature of genetic variation among individuals within species. (shrink)

What clearly emerges from Hegel's writings is that "Geist" refers to some sort of general consciousness, a single "mind" common to all men. The entire sweep of the Phenomenology of Spirit is away from the "disharmonious" conceptions of men as individuals to the "absolute" conception of all men as one. In the Phenomenology, we are first concerned with the inadequacy of conceptions of oneself as an individual in opposition to others and in opposition to God. This opposition is first resolved (...) in ethics, in the conception of oneself as a member of a family, of a community, of Kant's "Kingdom of Ends," as a citizen of the state, and then in religion, in which one conceives of oneself as "part" of God and a religious community. Absolute consciousness is the explicit recognition of one's identity as universal Spirit. The concept of "Geist" is the hallmark of a theory of self identity--a theory in which I am something other than a person. (shrink)

Chalmers (2018) maintains that even if we understood every physical process in the brain we could still wonder why these processes give rise to conscious experience. The meta-problem is the challenge of explaining why we think this 'hard problem' exists. This response to the target paper endorses illusionist accounts of three 'problem intuitions' about consciousness: duality, presentation, and revelation. Subject–object duality is explained in terms of a clash between two compelling but contradictory convictions about consciousness. Phenomenal presence is understood in (...) relation to the configurational features of sensory experiences. And intuitions of revelation are explained as due to an unfounded belief in introspective ontological access. These illusionist analyses are used to bolster the case for physicalist realism rather than to support 'strong' illusionism. In addition to addressing the meta-problem they suggest a promising approach to the hard problem as wel. (shrink)

Objective—To report the ethical development of medical students across four years of education at one medical school.Design and setting—A questionnaire was distributed to all four classes at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine during the Spring of 1996. Participants—Three hundred and three students provided demographic information as well as information concerning their ethical development both as current medical students and future interns. Main measurements—Results were analyzed using cross-tabulations, correlations, and analysis of variance.Results—Results suggested that the observation of and participation (...) in unethical conduct1 may have disparaging effects on medical students' codes of ethics with 35% of the total sample (24% of first years rising to 55% of fourth years) stating that derogatory comments made by residents/attendings, either in the patient's presence or absence, were “sometimes” or “often” appropriate. However, approximately 70% of the sample contended that their personal code of ethics had not changed since beginning medical school and would not change as a resident. Conclusions—Results may represent an internal struggle that detracts from the medical school experience, both as a person and as a doctor. Our goal as educators is to alter the educational environment so that acceptance of such behaviour is not considered part of becoming a physician. (shrink)

1. HUME’S ARGUMENT, FLEW CORRECTLY EXPLAINS, IS NOT THAT MIRACLES CANNOT HAPPEN, BUT THAT THERE MUST BE A CONFLICT IN THE EVIDENCE TO SHOW THAT THEY DO. 2. (I) FLEW FURTHER APPEALS TO THE INHERENT WEAKNESS OF HISTORICAL AS OPPOSED TO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. BUT ONE’S ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE MUST DEPEND ON WHETHER THE CONCEPT IS POSSIBLE. (II) FLEW CLAIMS THAT HUME CAN BE TAKEN TO MEAN THAT WHAT IS ALLOWED TO BE A LOGICAL POSSIBILITY SHOULD YET BE DISMISSED AS (...) IMPOSSIBLE IN FACT. BUT THIS DISTINCTION CANNOT BE APPLIED IN ADVANCE OF AN OCCURRENCE, WITHOUT BEGGING THE QUESTION AS TO WHETHER IT IS INDEED POSSIBLE OR NOT. 3. PACE HUME AND FLEW, ENTERTAINING THE CONCEPT IS NOT INCOHERENT. FOR (I) THE RELEVANT "LAW OF NATURE" CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS POTENTIALLY APPLICABLE, THOUGH NOT IN FACT SO; (II) ONE MAY CONCEIVE OF AN "UNCAUSED" EVENT, ONCE ONE SUPPOSES THAT IN MOST OTHER CASES THE UNIVERSE IS UNIFORM. THUS IT COULD BE RATIONAL TO JUDGE THAT A MIRACLE HAD OCCURRED, SINCE THIS WOULD NOT CAL. (shrink)

The threat of malpractice litigation in the United States is encouraging physicians again to assume responsibility for their patients. The fundamental ethical problem, however, is that this approach denies the patient's moral agency. In this essay, responsibility to patients, rather than for them, is discussed as an alternative to the emerging neo-paternalism. Responsibility to avoids the ethical problems of assuming responsibility for moral agents and could reduce the threat of litigation as well.