Released in 1984, Steven E. Rhoads' classic was considered by many to be among the best introductions to the economic way of thinking and its applications. This anniversary edition has been updated to account for political and economic developments - from the greater interest in redistributing income and the ascendancy of behaviorism to the Trump presidency. Rhoads explores opportunity cost, marginalism, and economic incentives and explains why mainstream economists - even those well to the left - still value free markets. (...) He critiques economics for its unbalanced emphasis on narrow self-interest as controlling motive and route to happiness, highlighting philosophers and positive psychologists' findings that happiness is far more dependent on friends and family than on income or wealth. This thought-provoking tour of the economist's mind is a must read for our times, providing a clear, lively, non-technical insight into how economists think and why they shouldn't be ignored. (shrink)

One of the more recent approaches in attempting a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte has been to concentrate on his theory of interpersonality as a key to his system. But a study of Fichte’s interpersonal theory in its early forms shows, among other things, a rather surprising lack of treatment of an important form of immediate interpersonal experience: love. And yet if interpersonality lies at the core of Fichte’s philosophy, one could expect that a treatment of some (...) sort of love experience would be central to his view of the life-world. (shrink)

The Botany of Desire:. Plant's‐Eye View of the World. By Michael Pollan. 2001. New York: Random House. 271 pages. $24.95 (hardback). ISBN 0‐375‐50129‐0.

The problem of Philo's ambivalence about the physical world -- The context for Philo's ambivalence toward the physical world -- Philo's negative terminology for the physical world : [ousia, hylē, genesis, genētos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [kosmos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 1 -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 2 -- Higher and lower approaches to God -- The ambiguity of the physical world : (...) a multiperspectival approach -- Conclusions. (shrink)

David Hunter’s On Believing is a rich and worthwhile defense of a distinctive view about the objects and nature of belief. In these comments, I discuss three aspects of the book. I agree with Hunter that the objects of belief are properties or (as I prefer to refer to them) states of affairs. But I argue that he has too narrow a view of the range of possible objects of belief. I defend the idea that belief is in (...) part a matter of representing the world, an idea Hunter appears to criticize. And I defend the idea that one or another truthy property provides a norm for evaluating beliefs. (shrink)

본 논문은 대표적인 북학자 중 한명인 홍대용(洪大容, 1731~1783)의 세계관 변화를 고찰하고, 그의 세계관 변화 속에서 그가 일찍이 당시 수준에서 현대적인 글로컬화된 철학적 세계관을 가지고 있었음을 밝히는 것이다. 그의 세계관 변화를 고찰하는 것은 조선의 역사에서 지식인들의 세계관 변화의 추이를 대표해 살펴보는 것이다. 당시 조선 지식인들이 명(明)을 중화로 인식하고 조선을 동이(東夷)로 인식하던 것을, 명의 멸망 후 조선을 소중화(小中華)로 청(淸)을 북쪽 변방으로 인식했던 것이, 18세기에 이르러 변화했다는 것은 잘 알려진 사실이다. 이러한 변화를 대표하는 것이 홍대용의 세계관 변화이다. 홍대용의 세계관은 35세(1765~6년)에 있었던 북경 여행을 (...) 계기로 변화하기 시작하였다. 그리고 그의 말년인 50세(1780년) 전후의 작품으로 추정되는 「의산문답(醫山問答)」에 이르러서는 그의 철학적인 사유와 함께 완성된 세계관이 나타난다. 본 논문에서는 그의 세계관이 전통적 세계관에서 어떻게 어떤 내용으로 질적인 변화를 하는지, 그리고 그것의 철학적 의의가 무엇인지 밝히는 것이다. 홍대용의 학문이 원숙할 때 이른 경지는 모든 곳에 곳에 도가 있고, 그래서 모든 곳이 중심이 된다는 것이다. 홍대용의 세계 인식은 조선 지식인의 전통적 세계관인 화이관을 벗어난 것이다. 그는 지원(地圓), 지전(地轉)의 세계관을 바탕으로, 하나만의 중심을 무화(無化)시키고 전통적 화이관을 해체하였다. 이것을 현대적으로 풀이하면, 다원주의적이고 글로컬적인 세계 인식을 갖게 되었던 것이라 해석할 수 있다. 그에게 이제 도(道)는 모든 곳에 있는 것이며, 지역으로도, 종족으로도, 문화로도, 시간적으로도 각각이 모두 스스로 중심이 되는 것이다. 현재를 살아가는 우리에게 그는 지역성과 세계성이 동시에 가능해지는 현대적 의미의 글로컬라이제이션을 선구적으로 주창하고 사유했던 철학자로 해석된다. 그에게 하늘과 땅 사이에 존재하는 모든 인간은 각자의 자리에서, 인사(人事)와 천시(天時)에 따른 각자의 온전한 도(道)를 적절하게 이룰 수 있는 존재로 해석되었던 것이라 볼 수 있다. (shrink)

F.W.J. Schelling's Ages of the World has just begun to receive the critical attention it deserves as a contribution to the philosophy of history. Its most significant philosophical move is to pose the question of the origin of the past itself, asking what “caused” the past. Schelling treats the past not as a past present – but rather as an eternal past, a different dimension of time altogether, and one that was never a present 'now'. For Schelling, the past functions (...) as the transcendental ground of the present, the true 'a priori'. Schelling's account of the creation of this past takes the form of a theogeny: in order to exist, God needed to separate the past from the present. By grounding the creation of the past in a free decision of God, Schelling tries to conceptualize temporality so as to preserve the sort of radical contingency and authentic freedom that he considers essential features of history. In so doing, he opens up a way of viewing time that avoids the pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectic and anticipates some of the 20th century developments in phenomenology. (shrink)

The present article undertakes a psychological reading of The Child's Conception of the World as a cultural artifact in which genetic psychology's naturalistic and positivistic assumptions reflect an Enlightenment model of science, and Piaget figures as an agent of technological rationality. A phenomenological analysis of the text reveals how Piaget's research engages in an active repression of specific dimensions of childhood experience. Young children's 'adualistic' conceptions of thought, self and language are deemed 'confused', and thereby discounted, by virtue of the (...) fact such children do not 'correctly' dichotomize experience in accord with the cultural norm of mechanistic rationality. Piaget's numerous associations of the child's 'primitive' views and the (childish) thought of the pre-Socratics are briefly explored. (shrink)

In this chapter, I present some philosophical reflections on the theme of the imagination. The main inspiration for these reflections comes from two writers, both of whom are mentioned in Alain de Botton’s (2003) The Art of Travel: Joris-Karl Huysmans and Xavier de Maistre. De Botton uses both of these writers in his book as ‘guides’, people whose work prompts his own ruminations, Huysmans in the first chapter and de Maistre in the last. Speculatively, I infer from this structure that (...) de Botton has identified a similarity in the two writers’ attitudes to the relationship between travel and the imagination such that he regards it as appropriate to begin with one and to end with the other. There is a sense, I speculate, in which the wheel is meant to come full circle in de Botton’s book. Both Huysmans and de Maistre seem to be of the opinion that the nature of the imagination is such that it makes travel possible anywhere, notably and counter intuitively, in the place where travel typically both begins and ends: in the traveller’s own home. As I shall shortly suggest in more detail, Huysmans and de Maistre seem to agree that travelling in the imagination alone is preferable in certain ways to the real thing. Whether or not I am right in my speculative attribution of this observation to de Botton, I want, in this chapter, to extend it. I want to suggest that, although Huysmans and de Maistre do indeed draw similar conclusions about travel, they do so for very different reasons. I argue that Huysmans and de Maistre have radically opposing views of the nature of the relationship between the world of the imagination and the real world and therefore of the relationship between travel and the imagination. Using this contrast as a point of departure, I examine the role of the imagination in de Maistre’s travel literature and draw out its philosophical significance, articulating some philosophical insights de Maistre provides about the nature of the imagination per se and its role in human life. (shrink)

우담(愚潭) 정시한(丁時翰, 1625∼1707)은 우리나라 유학사에 있어서 영남 주리파의 학통을 계승한 도학자로 알려져 있다. 본고에서는 현재 남아있는 우담의 한시 작품과 문집에 나타나는 문학 관련 기록과 산중일기의 내용을 중심으로 우담 정시한의 세계관, 곧 주리적 재도적 문학관점이라는 문학관, 내성적 낙천적 인생사유라는 인생관, 청박적 탈속적 산수취미라는 자연관 등을 살펴보았다.첫째, 우담 정시한은 주리적 재도적 문학관점을 지향하였다. 유가의 학문이란 자신의 뜻을 겸손하게 하는 데 있다고 하여 스스로 문기(文氣)를 자랑하고 남을 능멸하는 태도를 경계하였으며, 주리적인 입장에 근거한 도덕적 관념의 시문이 넉넉한 심성과 청아한 정신을 바탕으로 표출되었다. 또한 온후하고 (...) 평담하며 소쇄하고 청아한 시세계를 선호하였으며, 실제로 자신의 문장에 있어서는 정밀하고 심찰하는 태도를 보였다. 둘째, 우담 정시한은 내성적 낙천적 인생사유를 확립하였다. 철저하게 자기 내면을 성찰하고 주리적이고 명도적인 학문적 입장을 지켰으며, 낙천지명하는 순천적인 도학자의 인생관을 추구하면서 상도(常道)를 궁구하고 의리를 준수하며 천명과 천리를 따르는 순응적인 삶을 보여주었다. 셋째, 우담 정시한은 청박적 탈속적 산수취미를 향유하였다. 속세의 거추장스런 것을 끊어버리고자 시작한 산행에서 자신의 마음에 맞는 곳을 찾아 스스로 즐기는 탈속적인 취미를 체득하였다. 세상 밖의 청아하고 소박한 경치를 감상하면서 가슴 속의 티끌과 어둡고 막힌 것을 씻어내려 하였으며, 청아하고 절묘한 경치를 즐기면서 음영하는 선비의 풍류를 좋아하였으며, 한적하고 그윽한 곳에 은거하면서 청박한 운치를 누리고자 했으며, 누정에 올라 학문을 강마하고 유식(遊息)하는 기쁨을 누리고자 하였다. 이에 우담 정시한은 조선 후기 도학자로서의 건실하고 순정하며 실천적인 삶의 모습을 보여주었으며, 조선시대의 대표적인 유일(遺逸)로서 청아하고 소박한 문학적 세계관을 살펴볼 수 있었다. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Weighing the Value of Meat Stalking the Essence of Hunting Same As It Ever Was The End of Hunting Notes.

We have seen two recent Soviet interpretations of Zeno's paradoxes concerning motion. They have a common pecularity: both oppose the standard interpretation accepted by many followers of dialectical materialism. That standard view, interpreting the motion-paradoxes following Hegel and Engels, advances them to support the “contradiction-ontology” of dialectical materialism and to apply them as an argument to demonstrate that we need to restrict the logical law of non-contradiction and transcend traditional logic. While this argument is refuted by Vojšvilo concretely, its (...) invalidity follows indirectly form Janovskaja's essay too. At the same time, Janovskaja seeks for a deeper understanding of Zeno's paradoxes, not in the contradictory feature of reality but in the epistemological relation; thus, in this respect she breaks with the “contradiction-ontology” of dialectical materialism, which has a clearly metaphysical character. Though Vojšvilo's essay does not contain such an element, still — by analysing the formula given by him for the description of motion without logical contradiction — it permits the conjecture that one can speak correctly of the so-called contradictory nature of motion only in the context of the subject-object relation.We might also observe that both Vojšvilo and Janovskaja's interpretations are relevant not only from the point of view of the history of dialectical materialism, but also with regard to actual research in paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

The Universal History, which had a complicated publishing history from the 1730s to the 1780s, was a commercial undertaking by a group of London booksellers, aimed at satisfying curiosity for reliable information about the rest of the world. It was finally composed of two separate parts, the Ancient and the Modern, which, while eventually published as a single work, were distinct. Its first author was George Sale, the noted translator of the Qur’an, who emphasized the recourse to original Arab manuscripts, (...) although, after his death in 1736, later authors had a different approach. This article looks first at the work’s hostile view of Islam and claim that sympathy to it was a tactic of irreligious thinkers to undermine Christianity. It then analyses the somewhat confused discussion of the Arabs, which varies according to the sources used in the two parts, before highlighting the emphasis on Ottoman despotism. It finally evokes the call in the Modern Part for a European expedition to free North Africa from the Ottomans, destroy piracy in the Mediterranean, and encourage the North Africans to develop agriculture and trade. This call was copied in the best-selling French work, Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes. (shrink)

List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg; 1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg; 2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin; 3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield; 4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicus’s preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman; 5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne; 6. Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in (...) early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver; 7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr.; 8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon; 9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski; 10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook; 11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter; 12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney; 13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey; Index. (shrink)

A Nobel prize winner, a great man and a great scientist, Erwin Schrödinger has made his mark in physics, but his eye scans a far wider horizon: here are two stimulating and discursive essays which summarize his philosophical views on the nature of the world. Schrödinger's world view, derived from the Indian writings of the Vedanta, is that there is only a single consciousness of which we are all different aspects. He admits that this view is mystical and (...) metaphysical and incapable of logical deduction. But he also insists that this is true of the belief in an external world capable of influencing the mind and of being influenced by it. Schrödinger's world view leads naturally to a philosophy of reverence for life. (shrink)

The study of a collection of metabolites as a whole (metabolome), as opposed to isolated small molecules, is a fast‐growing field promising to take us one step further towards understanding cell biology, and relating the genetic capabilities of an organism to its observed phenotype. The new sciences of metabolomics and metabonomics can exploit a variety of existing experimental and computational methods, but they also require new technology that can deal with both the amount and the diversity of the data relating (...) to the rich world of metabolites. More specifically, the collaboration between bioinformaticians and chemoinformaticians promises to advance our view of cognate molecules, by shedding light on their atomic structure and properties. Modelling of the interactions of metabolites with other entities in the cell, and eventually complete modelling of reaction pathways will be essential for analysis of the experimental data, and prediction of an organism's response to environmental challenges. BioEssays 28: 534–545, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional (...) humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is. (shrink)

In The Main Enterprise of the World, Philip Kitcher identifies an over-specialized and over-loaded curriculum as a particular affliction of education in our time. Kitcher criticizes a narrow view of education on which it is conceived as being no more than job training and proposes a more humane set of educational goals to be pursued in school. For Kitcher, the problem of the narrowness of the economic aims of education and the problem of the over-loaded curriculum are connected and, (...) in Chapter 2 of the book, he presents a thoroughgoing critique of educational specialization as a distinguishing feature of education today. He holds that the economic value of education cannot capture education's full value and that true education should build children and young people's capacities for meaningful life and work. In this paper, I discuss Kitcher's critique of educational specialization. I note that Kitcher draws most of his inspiration from considerations about what makes a human life go well and therefore situates his thinking about education in the realm of ethics, rather than in his home discipline of the philosophy of science. Defending educational specialization, I turn to some of Kitcher's earlier work in the philosophy of science to show that the epistemic division of labour calls for a considerable degree of specialization in educational curricula on epistemic, rather than on economic, grounds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Carnap’s Construction of the World. The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism by Alan W. RichardsonRolf GeorgeAlan W. Richardson. Carnap’s Construction of the World. The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. x + 242. Cloth, $49.95.According to the author, the “received view” of Carnap’s Kantian treatise of 1928, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, promulgated mostly by Quine (10), takes (...) it to be a continuation of Russell’s “external world program,” an attempt at “providing a systematic reduction of empirical discourse generally to discourse involving only sense data” (21). One of Richardson’s aims is to show that this is wrong: while Carnap holds that our knowledge begins in sensation, our “elementary experiences” are not conscious and thus do not obey Russell’s “principle of acquaintance.” While we have no conscious access to the first elements of cognition, logical constructions based on them lead to sense qualities, phenomenal items, and eventually to physical and even cultural objects.These constructions are also meant to solve the problem of objectivity. According to Carnap, individual streams of experience are not comparable at all, but “certain structural properties agree for all streams of experience” (Aufbau §66, 32), a point that Kant had also made: “In the relation between sensations lies something that is generally valid, even though each sensation has only private validity” (Reflection 653).Richardson describes Carnap’s constructions in a couple of well written and accessible chapters (31–91), one of them an overview, the other a discussion of the problem of objectivity. Then comes the “Kantian Problematic,” (92–116), centered on the synthetic a priori. He repeats Michael Friedman’s now familiar but mistaken point that, due to the limitations of Aristotelian logic, Kant could not have formulated simple statements about order structures: “between any two points there lies another” could not be formulated in any logic he knew, and he therefore had to call in pure intuition to handle mathematical constructions. But he could, and in fact did, make just such claims in the vernacular, which was the sole vehicle for the pellucid formulations of the classical theory of the continuum, from Bolzano to Weyerstrass.The next chapter brings us the heart of Richardson’s concerns, which is to establish neo-Kantian antecedents of the Aufbau. There are some biographical details of doubtful merit. The neo-Kantian Bauch is identified as Carnap’s “dissertation director,” and, in a perhaps unconscious slight to Carnap’s intelligence, as “the philosopher from whom Carnap learned what he knew about Kant” (116). Ten years before Carnap had indeed taken a seminar in the Critique of Pure Reason from Bauch, but perusal of the latter’s work does not encourage the thought that he had much to do with the thesis “Der Raum” (1922). In the event, a German ordinarius did not usually have a hand in the construction of a thesis, and often did not even read it. His job was to accept it on behalf of the university. We now know, for example, that Bauch’s teacher Rickert had an assistant evaluate Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift never reading it himself. (It passed.)Richardson’s reflection on the neo-Kantian project relies mostly on Cassirer. This points to another problem with the Bauch connection. Bauch was a zealous anti-Semite, and did not think much of Cassirer and the Marburg school in general. He gave up the editorship of Kantstudien in 1916 because of the Jewish presence in the Kant Society, and [End Page 179] founded his own group and journal. Carnap nonetheless chose Kantstudien to publish his dissertation, perhaps to put more distance between himself and Bauch. Space does not permit me to cite Bauch’s vicious remarks about Einstein; he could not have guided Carnap through the discussion of physical space in “Der Raum.”I return to Richardson’s reconstruction. According to the neo-Kantian, objective knowledge is found in mathematical physics, not in uninformed experience. He acknowledges that theoretical physics relies on conventions, and that these conventions go beyond mere experience to provide the mathematical structure necessary for objectivity (131). The responses to the problem this poses... (shrink)

This article focuses on George Herbert Mead's life and his philosophy of the act. Mead divides the act into four stages: impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation. The impulse sets the organism in motion, whereas consummation marks the satisfaction of the desire that initiated the act. Hence, consummation brings the act to a close. This should not be taken as a linear chain of responses to neatly self-contained problematic situations. Organisms often multitask, and problematic situations are typically nested, as when an (...) animal in its search for food is being attacked by a predator. (shrink)

This essay emphasizes how Vico was one of the modern philosophers to set himself the goal to reconstruct the history of the primitive world. Differently from several authors who preceded him and also other contemporary thinkers, the Neapolitan philosopher showed that the world of the origin wasn’t idyllic, but it was affected by fear, anguish and basic needs. What mainly characterizes Vico, however, is the fact that he represented the primitive world not as a unitary and fixed block, but as (...) a world made of different historical phases and of class and social conflicts. As there were no written documents, Vico elaborated a reconstruction of history, basing it on a new and revolutionary theory of myths which, being based on creativity induced by fantasy, are called “universali fantastici”. (shrink)

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine''s top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among (...) managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics. (shrink)

(DRAFT: I'll update when the book is published.) This started as a book about desire. I was hoping to complement what I had said about belief in my (2022). To believe something, I argued, is to be positioned to do, think and feel things in light of a possibility whose obtaining would make one right. I argued that believing is not representational, that belief states are not causes or causal powers, and that the objects of belief are ways the world (...) might be and not representations of things. Believing is not so much a response to the world as a way of being positioned in it, a way of having an environment, as Frege put it. (Frege 1956, 306) I was trying to put the believer as a rational agent positioned in a world at the heart of my account. I hoped an account of desire could round out this picture of a rational agent’s psychology. But as I thought about desire, I came to see that two ideas about the nature of goodness, one negative and one positive, were really at the heart of my thinking. The negative idea is that there is no such thing as what philosophers have variously called intrinsic goodness or simple goodness or absolute value. I guess I am a nihilist about that. The positive idea is that our world is rich in what I will call sortal quality, what others have called goodness-of-a-kind or attributive goodness. I came to think that sortal quality is at the heart not just of desire but also of pleasure and moral worth. A picture of moral psychology had come into view. And so I re-organised the book. I still say a lot about the nature of desire, or ‘wanting’ as I prefer to call it, and I think my view does complement my externalist view of belief. Wanting, I will argue, is a matter of falling short relative to a standard one falls under, failing to be as good as one could be. If believing is about having an environment to respond to, then desire is about fitting into it well. And so my book offers a comprehensive picture of a moral agent in a world where nothing is simply or absolutely good but where many kinds of things, including people, can be very good and even splendid. (shrink)

In this keynote speech to the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities in October, 1999, Hilfiker suggests that the underlying goal of teaching ethics should be to develop in those who care for others an empathy with the outsider. Unless care givers cannot see the world from the victim's point of view, they will have a difficult time developing an ethical framework in which to work. In this paper, Hilfiker tells the story of how he came to find the (...) victim's point of view through his own experiences as a physician and through the work of Dorothee Sölle, René Girard, and John Rawls. (shrink)

Jerome's writings constitute one of the earliest and most extensive sources for the development of asceticism in the Latin West. His correspondence and his many other works span the crucial decades of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a time in which loosely organized and somewhat anomalous groups of ascetics blossomed into coherent, regular monastic communities. Various forms of ascetic literature, each playing a vital role in the milieu in which it arose, came to be read by many of (...) the larger body of believers. Jerome's literary endeavors attest the hunger of many Christians, both ascetic and worldly, for accounts of monks and for articulations of the principles by which they lived. His writings, and particularly the correspondence which spans his long and controversial career, chart the spiritual growth of an individual whose quest for and understanding of the perfect Christian life was influenced by his own experiences and by currents within wider ascetic movements. (shrink)

This paper investigates the attitudes of two Islamic and Christian thinkers, Saint Aquinas and Mulla Sadra Shirazi, about occurrence and eternity hypothesis issue. Aquinas faces two ideas. The first approach is eternity of the world based on Aristotle's theory and his followers another approach is the world temporal occurrence derived from Christian scriptures. Aquinas believes that the reasons presented for proving the world's occurrence are not convincing and therefore criticizes them. Although he accepts the universe occurrence he has a worshiping (...) view to it and finally regards the world's eternity and occurrence as an antinomical problem. In contrast, Mulla Sadra who has accepted the occurrence does not consider a starting point for the issue and in turn tries to prove it by Substantial Motion approach and therefore regardless of worship aspect of the issue and by employing a rational approach he gains a higher status than Aquinas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FEYERABEND'S EPISTEMOLOGY AND BRECHTS THEORY OF THE DRAMA by S. G. Couvalis In his early paper, "On the Improvement of the Sciences and the Arts," Feyerabend argues that, just as rival hypotheses show the shortcomings of entrenched scientific hypotheses, so theatre which presents hypotheses contrary to common beliefs about human beings shows the shortcomings of these beliefs. It develops understanding of human relations more effectively than intellectual debate because (...) it is a more complex medium whose elements can "represent the contrary hypotheses at the same time."1 He takes Brecht to be the first theorist of such a theatre. I shall argue that Brecht's epistemology is similar to Feyerabend's early epistemology and that his dramatic theory is a consequence of it.2 1 shall also argue, however, that Feyerabend is wrong in saying that Brechtian theatre presents contrary hypotheses at the same time, because plays, like descriptions, are theory-laden and Brecht, in any case, intends to show on stage that tragedies have social origins and not to present contrary hypotheses about human beings. According to Brecht, most people improperly assume that human behavior and social relations follow fixed patterns inherent in nature because they have been unable to compare the human behavior they know with that in other societies. They take what they experience to be typically human. Moreover, they interpret their social world as they have been taught: "A child, living in a world of old men... knows the run of things before he can walk."3 Feyerabend brings out the effect of such training very vividly: "The teaching procedures both shape the 'appearance,' or 'phenomenon' and establish a firm connection with words, so that finally the phenomena seem to speak for themselves...."4 Because these interpretations of the social world which children are taught are descriptive, explanatory, and prescriptive, they are more 117 118Philosophy and Literature complex and more dangerous than the interpretations of physical objects they are taught. For example, children learn different evaluations of precisely the same behavior in males and females through being taught how to describe it. In being taught to describe certain behavior as "manly" they are taught both that it arises from a male's nature and that it is laudable behavior for boys but not for girls. "Manly" behavior in a woman is not "confident" or "forthright," but "aggressive" or "pushy." In order to stop us from regarding traditional behavior patterns and social relations as unchangeable, and to enable us to question our descriptions of them, Brecht argues that the dramatist must cause us to cease to regard such patterns and social relations as familiar givens that can only be described in one way. To achieve this, he must not structure his plays on the Aristotelian model. The Aristotelian model makes audiences incapable of criticizing the dramatic message, imparts the view that the sources of tragedy lie in an inexplicable human essence, and presents social rules as if they were unquestionable natural laws. Instead, he should structure his plays to induce in audiences a scientific attitude to social relations and patterns of behavior. Like Feyerabend, Brecht realizes that a scientific attitude is not displayed by collecting descriptions of experience without considering whether the interpretations contained in the descriptions are correct. In Galileo, his view of those who mechanically describe experience in traditional terms is shown in Galileo's replies to the Aristotelian arguments of Andrea. When Andrea argues, "I can see that the sun's not in the same place in the evening and morning. So it can't stand still. It just can't," Galileo replies, "You 'W! What do you see? You see nothing at all. You're just gaping. Gaping isn't seeing." He then demonstrates to Andrea that the apparent motions of objects need not be their real motions because an apparent motion can be caused in more than one way. 5 Brecht shows that the central question for the scientist is not "How shall I collect descriptions of appearances?" but "What is it that I really perceive and how is it caused?" He argues elsewhere that "there's a vast difference between experiment and experience" because experiments are set up to test... (shrink)

To what extent is any individual morally obligated to live environmentally sustainably? In answering this, I reject views I see as constituting two extremes. On one, it depends entirely on whether there exists a collective agreement; and if no such agreement exists, no one is obligated to reduce her/his consumption or pollution unilaterally. On the other, the lack of a collective agreement is morally irrelevant, and regardless of what others are doing, each person is obligated to limit her/his pollution and (...) consumption to a level that would be sustainable if everyone were to act in this way. I argue that the truth is somewhere between these, but that a very precise specification of the extent of one's responsibility is impossible. Roughly, what can be said is that each individual ought constantly to strive to do more than she/he does currently and to push her/himself into new, uncomfortable territory, though no one is obligated to martyr her/himself for an environmental cause. (shrink)

Drama, at least according to the Aristotelian view, is effective inasmuch as it successfully mirrors real aspects of human behavior. This leads to the hypothesis that successful dramas will portray fictional social networks that have the same properties as those typical of human beings across ages and cultures. We outline a methodology for investigating this hypothesis and use it to examine ten of Shakespeare’s plays. The cliques and groups portrayed in the plays correspond closely to those which have been (...) observed in spontaneous human interaction, including in hunter-gatherer societies, and the networks of the plays exhibit “small world” properties of the type which have been observed in many human-made and natural systems. (shrink)

The question that will be the focus of this paper is this: what is the significance of disagreement between those who are epistemic peers? There are two answers to this question found in the recent literature. On the one hand, there are those who hold that one can continue to rationally believe that p despite the fact that one’s epistemic peer explicitly believes that not-p. I shall call those who hold this view nonconformists. In contrast, there are those who (...) hold that one cannot continue to rationally believe that p when one is faced with an epistemic peer who explicitly believes that not-p. I shall call those who hold this view conformists. Inthis paper, I shall argue that neither nonconformism nor conformism provides a plausible account of the epistemic significance of peer disagreement. I shall then develop my justificationist account of peer disagreement’s epistemic significance. Whereas current views maintain that disagreement, by itself, either simply does or does not possess epistemic power, my account holds that its epistemic power, or lack thereof, is explainable in terms of its interaction with other features,particularly the degree of justified confidence with which the belief in question is held and the presence of information that one possesses about one’s own epistemic situation. (shrink)

Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism:Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’sAccount of the Structure and Content ofConceptual NormsRobert B. BrandomThis paper could equally well have been titled ‘Some Idealist Themes in Hegel’sPragmatism’. Both idealism and pragmatism are capacious concepts, encompassingmany distinguishable theses. I will focus on one pragmatist thesis and one ideal-ist thesis (though we will come within sight of some others). The pragmatistthesis (what I will call ‘the semantic pragmatist thesis’) is that the use of conceptsdetermines their content, that is, (...) that concepts can have no content apart from thatconferred on them by their use. The idealist thesis is that the structure and unityof the concept is the same as the structure and unity of the self. The semantic prag-matist thesis is a commonplace of our Wittgensteinean philosophical world. Theidealist thesis is, to say the least, not. I don’t believe there is any serious contem-porary semantic thinker who is pursuing the thought that concepts might best beunderstood by modelling them on selves. Indeed, from the point of view ofcontemporary semantics it is hard to know even what one could mean by such athought: what relatively unproblematic features of selves are supposed to illumi-nate what relatively problematic features of concepts? Why should we think thatunderstanding something about, say, personal identity would help us under-stand issues concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From acontemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appearinitially as something between unpromising and crazy.My interpretive claim here will be that the idealist thesis is Hegel’s way of makingthe pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments andinsights. My philosophical claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn fromthis strategy about contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our wayto the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this essay, I cannot properly justify thefirst claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of neces-sity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, andinteresting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward. (shrink)

This article analyzes the depiction of the impossible in Paolo Mantegazza's L'anno 3000. Starting from the literary theory of possible worlds, it will be shown that the depiction of the impossible in Mantegazza's novel is associated with specific technologies that implicate different types of perception. The three forms of perception developed in the novel move from possible to highly impossible depictions regarding the scientific culture of fin de siècle Italy.

Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, according to which material objects are composed of both matter and form. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, material constitution, the (...) ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession. (shrink)

The author comments on the Consensus Statement from the point of view of an ethics consultant in Germany. Since many hospitals in Germany are under considerable competitive pressure, mission statements are becoming more and more important in order to draw a distinction between the different hospital types and to convey the meaning of the corporate identity both internally and externally. The Consensus Statement, which provides basic orientation without going into too much detail, can be a helpful initial document. However, (...) it does not deal with two specific problem areas which are examined more closely in the commentary: the application of risk-of-death algorithms in ICUs and the question of church membership of the caregivers to enable a proper preparation for death. The commentary also reveals certain differences in the discussions taking place in Anglo-Saxon countries and Continental Europe. (shrink)

This work deals with questions that range across the traditional disciplines of natural science and philosophy. Of these questions, some are about things usually thought of as scientific, such as embryonic development and evolution; others are about things, such as human language, intelligence and learning, which have been the concern if both scientists and philosophers.

This essay examines the textual evidence and arguments for two rival ways of interpreting Xunzi's accounts of the origins and normative bases of ritual and the Way: a human-centered line of interpretation which maintains that the moral order constituted by the Confucian Way and its ritual tradition was the artificial creation of a group of ancient sages, and a Heaven-centered line of interpretation which maintains, in contrast, that those same sages based the Confucian Way and its ritual tradition on a (...) cosmic moral order that they discovered already existing in the world. It argues that the weight of textual evidence best supports a version of the former view, and shows that three representative versions of the latter view do not withstand critical scrutiny. (shrink)

This article examines Wilfrid Sellars's views on the epistemic status of philosophical propositions. It suggests that according to Sellars philosophical propositions are normative and practically oriented. They do not form a theory for the description of reality; their function is, rather, that of motivating actions which aim at changing reality. The article argues that the role of philosophical propositions can be illuminated if they are understood as a special kind of (proposed) “material” rules of inference, provided that the latter are (...) construed as being firmly entrenched in practice. To this end, a distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” anomalies is drawn to better elucidate—and in some cases criticize and further expand—Sellars's position on the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophical activity. In this connection, the Weberian notion of the “disenchantment of the world” is used to throw light on the relation between these two dimensions. (shrink)