Understanding how scientific activities use naming stories to achieve disciplinary status is important not only for insight into the past, but for evaluating current claims that new disciplines are emerging. In order to gain a historical understanding of how new disciplines develop in relation to these baptismal narratives, we compare two recently formed disciplines, systems biology and genomics, with two earlier related life sciences, genetics and molecular biology. These four disciplines span the twentieth century, a period in which the processes (...) of disciplinary demarcation fundamentally changed from those characteristic of the nineteenth century. We outline how the establishment of each discipline relies upon an interplay of factors that include paradigmatic achievements, technological innovation, and social formations. Our focus, however, is the baptism stories that give the new discipline a founding narrative and articulate core problems, general approaches and constitutive methods. The highly plastic process of achieving disciplinary identity is further marked by the openness of disciplinary definition, tension between technological possibilities and the ways in which scientific issues are conceived and approached, synthesis of reductive and integrative strategies, and complex social interactions. The importance – albeit highly variable – of naming stories in these four cases indicates the scope for future studies that focus on failed disciplines or competing names. Further attention to disciplinary histories could, we suggest, give us richer insight into scientific development. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to reconsider MacIntyre’s notion of an educated public. In particular, I aim to do so in light of his recent elucidation of the role of philosophical education in rejecting, or at least challenging, predominant and shared cultural assumptions. I begin by outlining MacIntyre’s original case for an educated public as found in The Idea of an Educated Public. I then briefly consider and respond to three prominent criticisms of MacIntyre’s original explication of the notion. In (...) responding to these criticisms, it will be made clear that subtle shifts in MacIntyre’s subsequent treatments of the notion reduces the dependency of such a public’s existence on the university. I conclude by arguing that the development in MacIntyre’s articulation of the necessary conditions for an educated public when considered in conjunction with his recent defence of the conditions for an ‘adequate philosophical education’ provides his philosophy of education with the conceptual resources needed to break free of a final difficulty which MacIntyre himself has articulated. Specifically, I contend that the four stages of an adequate philosophical education MacIntyre outlines are such that they need not be restricted to implementation in formal educational institutions such as the university. (shrink)

Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration of Moritz’s aesthetics (...) and mythography, before turning briefly to consider his influence on the authors of Early German Romanticism. An understanding of the role of Moritz’s thought supports a number of recent claims that challenge the conventional reading of Romanticism. At the same time it allows us to see Romanticism’s unconventional realist theological programme, permitting us to overcome the problematic secularising readings of the movement. I would like to thank Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, as well as Fredrick Beiser and Lars Fischer for their help with this project. (shrink)

' But, although such a being (a purely intellectual being) might perhaps be conceived to exist, and although, in studying our internal frame, ...

Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual claims. But, although this claim about laws might be true with respect to physics, laws in the special sciences (such as biology, psychology, economics etc.) (...) appear to have—maybe not surprisingly—different features than the laws of physics. Special science laws—for instance, the economic law “Under the condition of perfect competition, an increase of demand of a commodity leads to an increase of price, given that the quantity of the supplied commodity remains constant” and, in biology, Mendel's Laws—are usually taken to “have exceptions”, to be “non-universal” or “to be ceteris paribus laws”. How and whether the laws of physics and the laws of the special sciences differ is one of the crucial questions motivating the debate on ceteris paribus laws. Another major, controversial question concerns the determination of the precise meaning of “ceteris paribus”. Philosophers have attempted to explicate the meaning of ceteris paribus clauses in different ways. The question of meaning is connected to the problem of empirical content, i.e., the question whether ceteris paribus laws have non-trivial and empirically testable content. Since many philosophers have argued that ceteris paribus laws lack empirically testable content, this problem constitutes a major challenge to a theory of ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that many causal relations can be regarded as dependent upon causal relations that are in some way more basic. For example, knocking down the first domino in a row of one hundred dominoes will be the cause of the hundredth domino falling. But this causal relation exists in virtue of the knocking of the first domino causing the falling of the second domino, and so forth. In such a case, A causes B in virtue of there (...) being intermediate events I1 . . . In such that A causes I1, I1 causes I2, . . . , In−1 causes In, and In causes B. Cases of this sort include my putting my foot on the brake causing the car to slow, the smoke from a fire causing the fire brigade to be alerted, and so forth. In other cases the more basic causal relations may not be intermediate (or at least it is controversial that they are). My seeing that it is raining may cause me to want to stay inside, and this causal relation depends upon more basic causal relations among various components of my brain. But it does not seem possible to analyze this in terms of my perception causing certain brain events, which cause other brain events, which eventually cause my desire. Rather it seems as if the principle causal relation, between perception and desire, is constituted, rather than mediated, by the more basic causal relations in the brain. The same is true of the operation of the dynamo causing the current to flow. Again there are not intermediate events, but rather the causal relation between them is constituted by the motion of the charged particles in the wires moving though a magnetic field, which causes an electric field, which causes the charges to move in the wire. There are thus at least two kinds of complex causal relation: the chain kind and the constitution kind. If we wish to understand causation, we need to understand the basic causal relations, at least as found in the chain kind. That is, to understand what it is for A to cause B when the latter is a causal relation of the chain kind, requires understanding what it is for the intermediate, basic causal relations to hold. In the case of a complex causal relation of the constitution kind, it is may be that understanding what it is for A and B to be causally related does not require understanding what it is for the constituting causal relations to hold.. (shrink)

In this volume Mueller and Gould present the translation of Alexander’s commentary on chapters 14–22 of the first book of the Prior Analytics. These chapters deal with modal logic as applied to contingent propositions and to combinations of unqualified premises and of one assertoric proposition. In the 58 page introduction Professor Mueller presents first a survey of Aristotle’s assertoric syllogistic to turn next to combinations with a contingent premise in the three figures. He then passes to modal syllogistic without (...) contingency. Modal syllogistic can be understood as an extension of assertoric syllogistic. Aristotle seeks to determine which modal propositions related to first figure assertoric syllogisms are true syllogisms. The translation of Alexander’s text is excellent. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy’s three main naturalisms are methodological, ontological and epistemological. Methodological naturalism states that the only authoritative standards are those of science. Ontological and epistemological naturalism respectively state that all entities and all valid methods of inquiry are in some sense natural. In philosophy of mathematics of the past few decades methodological naturalism has received the lion’s share of the attention, so we concentrate on this. Ontological and epistemological naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics are discussed more briefly in section (...) 6. (shrink)

Damn Great Empires! offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It shows how James located a craving for authority (...) at the heart of empire as a way of life, a craving he diagnosed and unsettled through his insistence on a modern world without ultimate foundations. Livingston explores the persistence of political questions in James's major works, from his writings on the self in The Principles of Psychology to the method of Pragmatism, the study of faith and conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the metaphysical inquiries in A Pluralistic Universe. Against the conventional view of James as a thinker who remained silent on questions of politics, this book places him in dialogue with a transatlantic critique of modernity, as well as with champions and critics of American imperialism, from Theodore Roosevelt to W. E. B. Du Bois, in order to excavate James's anarchistic political vision. Bringing the history of political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory, Damn Great Empires! offers a fresh and original reexamination of the political consequences of pragmatism as a public philosophy. (shrink)

Gerard of Abbeville's inception speech, which he delivered during the 1250s as a graduating master in theology at the University of Paris, stands out among the extant principia. While many thirteenth-century inception speeches drew clear distinctions between philosophy and theology, and metaphysics and revealed theology in particular, Gerard - who was the foremost secular master of his day - adopted a different strategy in order to establish the preeminence of theology with regard to all other sciences. Consciously avoiding to pit (...) theology against philosophy, he proposed to redefine the relations between both within the conceptual frame of sapiential knowledge. The article analyses how Gerard argues in favor of a supreme wisdom, capable of accommodating Aristotle's first philosophy and Christian theology. Showing that Gerard's approach did not remain uncontested, it traces the remarkable influence of his principium. (shrink)

The current interest in bioregionalism, stimulated in part by Kirkpatrick Sale’s Dwellers in the Land, shows that people are looking for a form of political praxis which addresses the importance of region. In this paper, I argue that much of the bioregional literature written to date mystifies the concept of region, discounting the role of subjectivity and culture in shaping regional boundaries and veers toward asimplistic view of “nature knows best.” Bioregionalism can be rehabilitated, provided we treat it not as (...) a “revealed wisdom” for the reconstruction of human society, but as a sensibility and environmental ethic that can infuse our work even as we make use of the functional regionalisms that increasingly shape people’s consciousness. I conclude by citing Lewis Mumford’s concept of a region as capturing the dialectical interplay of natural and cultural elements. (shrink)

Emergent properties are intended to be genuine, natural higher level causally efficacious properties irreducible to physical ones. At the same time they are somehow dependent on or 'emergent from' complexes of physical properties, so that the doctrine of emergent properties is not supposed to be returned to dualism. The doctrine faces two challenges: (i) to explain precisely how it is that such properties emerge - what is emergence; (ii) to explain how they sidestep the exclusion problem - how it is (...) that there is room for these properties to be causally efficacious, given the causal completeness of the physical. In this paper I explain how functional properties can meet both challenges. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

There is no need to explain the difficulties connected with the scholarly study of Shakespeare in a foreign country. In this respect Soviet scholars are in much the same position as other scholars outside England and the USA, which possess the most source material, books and manuscripts. However, thanks to the rich collections in the public libraries in Moscow—the Lenin Library—and Leningrad—the Saltykov-Schedrin Library—and in the Arts faculties of the universities as well, practically all of world Shakespeareana is available to (...) Soviet students. They also profit by communication with such important centers of scholarship as the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-on-Avon and the Folger Shakespeare Library at Washington. (shrink)

Fractal versus fragment -- From proto-modernity to pseudo-modernity. Kant and his descendants -- The politics of re-presentation. a collection of fractals -- Epilogue or after the end -- From sophisticated meaninglessness to sophisticated primitivism -- The state of mindlessness. the rise of the pseudo-modern world -- Ideologies of the non-world. the post-colonial and the subaltern.

The paper argues that renormalization in quantum field theory was not a radically new - and possibly ad hoc - technique to save a badly flawed theory, but rather the culmination of a methodological strategy that physicists had been applying for a long time. The strategy was to obtain reliable results from unreliable theories by making the derivation of the results independent of possible future modifications of the theory. Examples of this practice include Bohr's use of the Correspondence Principle and (...) Heisenberg's S-matrix theory. (shrink)

Defiendo la legitimidad de la pregunta acerca de cuál puede ser el estatuto cognitivo de la Teoría Económica, y sostengo que la Teoría se comprende mejor como una rama de la Filosofía Política formal, en concreto, como una especie de contractualismo. Esto parece particularmente adecuado corno explicación de la Teoría deI equilibrio general. Dado el carácter intencional de las variables explicativas de la Teoría Económica y el papel de la información al realizar una elección, se argumenta que es improbable que (...) dicha Teoría pueda garantizar el poder predictivo, que le permitiría funcionar corno teoría factual en vez de corno teoría normativa.I defend the integrity of the question of what the cognitive status of economic theory could amount to, and I argue that the theory is best understood as a compartment of formal political philosophy, in particular a species of contractarianism. This seems particularly apt as an account of general equilibrium theory. Given the intentional character of the explanatory variables of economic theory and the role of information in effecting choice, it is argued that economic theory is unlikely to secure the predictive power that would enable it to function as a factual instead of a normative theory. (shrink)

Semantic realism, as I shall understand it it in this paper, is the combination of the views that sentential understanding is constituted by grasp of truth conditions and that the notion of truth which figures therein is essentially epistemically unconstrained. In a single slogan, understanding a sentence consists in some cases in grasp of potentially recognition-transcendent truth conditions. For example, a semantic realist about the past holds that our understanding of 'Caesar sneezed fifteen times on his 19th birthday' consists in (...) grasp of its truth condition, where this is capable of obtaining even though there is no guarantee that we shall be able, even in principle, to recognize that that is so. (shrink)

Even good lawyers get a bad rap. One explanation for this is that the professional rules governing lawyers permit and even require behavior that strikes many as immoral. The standard accounts of legal ethics that seek to defend these professional rules do little to dispel this air of immorality. The revisionary accounts of legal ethics that criticize the professional rules inject a hearty dose of morality, but at the cost of leaving lawyers unrecognizable as lawyers. This article suggests that the (...) problem with both the professional rules and the extant accounts of legal ethics is that they treat the role of lawyer as largely uniform, whereas lawyers actually serve several importantly different roles in different contexts. The central insight of the article is that legal ethics must be fundamentally context-sensitive: what lawyers are morally permitted or required to do depends on the background context in which they are working. Additionally, by taking context into account, this article is the first to present a theory of legal ethics as appropriately shaped and constrained by normative political philosophy and norms of political legitimacy. -/- Specifically, the article argues that people act as lawyers in three different contexts: State v. Individual (situations in which the State seeks to apply some general law to a particular individual), Individual v. Individual (situations in which private individuals are engaged in a dispute), and Individual v. State (situations in which individuals object to State conduct on constitutional or other grounds unrelated to the question of whether a general law applies to their particular case); that the value of lawyers, qua lawyers, stems from a different source in each of these contexts; and that a theory of legal ethics must take into account both of these first two claims. This article develops one such theory - the Multi-Context View. To demonstrate how the theory applies in practice, the article applies the Multi-Context View to two significant issues in legal ethics: the ethical issues involved in deciding whether to represent a client and the moral permissibility of the use of tactical delay. (shrink)

James Mill - A Biography is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1882. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)