The volume collects classics of Marxist historiography of science, including a new translation of Boris Hessen's “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's ...

Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played (...) by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse conceptions of induction and certainty in Wolff and Crusius, highlighting their competing conceptions of physics. We discuss (i) the perspective of Wolff, who assigned induction an important role in physics, but argued that physics should be an axiomatic science containing certain statements, and (ii) the perspective of Crusius, who adopted parts of the ideal of axiomatic physics but criticized the scope of Wolff’s ideal of certain science. Against interpretations that take Wolff’s proofs in physics to (...) be based on empirical statements that are probable, we show how inductively established statements, coupled with assumptions concerning the uniformity of nature, can be certain according to Wolff. We examine Crusius’ little known work on physics and show that he attacked Wolff, arguing that many statements of physics are probable. We provide a discussion of the reception of methodological rules similar to Newton’s Regulae Philosophandi, discussing different interpretations of such rules. We conclude by briefly hinting at how the debate between Wolff and Crusius provides historical context for understanding Kant’s philosophy of natural science. (shrink)

Starting from the idea that functions are formally similar to actions in that they are described and explained in a similar way, so that both admit of an accordion effect, I turn to Anscombe’s insight that the point of practical reasoning is to render explicit the relation between the different descriptions of an action generated by the accordion effect. The upshot is, roughly, that an item has a function if what it does can be accounted for by functional reasoning. Put (...) differently, a part of a system has a function if what it does is a functional part of what the system does. (shrink)

Whilst previous studies indicate perceived company ethicality as a driver of job seekers’ job-pursuit intentions, it is poorly understood how and why ethical market signals actually affect their application decisions. Perceptions of company ethicality result from market signals that are either within the control of the company and from market signals that are beyond the company’s control. Building on communication and information processing theories, this study therefore considers both types of ethical market signals, and examines the psychological mechanisms through which (...) they affect job seekers’ intention to apply for a job. The results from a controlled online experiment show that both types of ethical market signals increase job seekers’ job-pursuit intentions. These relationships are mediated by applicants’ attitude towards the job advertisement, their perceptions of corporate employment image and self-referencing. Consequently, the present study alerts practitioners to consider the effects of company-controlled and non-company-controlled ethical market signals, particularly when aiming to recruit highly-qualified millennial candidates. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a strong push for binding human rights due diligence (HRDD) legislation, both at the national and European levels. As empirical evidence of such legislation's impact gradually emerges, it is time to take stock. In this article, we conduct a systematic literature review to assess available empirical evidence on (1) how HRDD legislation affects the policies and practices through which companies engage with human rights; (2) how these policies and practices, in turn, affect different actors in companies’ (...) value chains. While it is too early to make conclusive judgements, existing evidence allows us to identify several worrying trends: most companies opt for managerialist and compliance-oriented approaches to HRDD; revert primarily to earlier (and flawed) private governance mechanisms; and try to cascade responsibilities and costs in their supply chain. This risks perpetuating or reinforcing marginalisation and exclusion dynamics. Based on these findings, we formulate some lessons for policy-makers. (shrink)

Boris Kment takes a new approach to the study of modality that emphasises the origin of modal notions in everyday thought. He argues that the concepts of necessity and possibility originate in counterfactual reasoning, which allows us to investigate explanatory connections. Contrary to accepted views, explanation is more fundamental than modality.

Background: Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieve high diagnostic accuracy for detecting Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, they are not yet applied in clinical routine. One important reason for this is a lack of model comprehensibility. Recently developed visualization methods for deriving CNN relevance maps may help to fill this gap as they allow the visualization of key input image features that drive the decision of the model. We investigated whether models with higher accuracy (...) also rely more on discriminative brain regions predefined by prior knowledge. Methods: We trained a CNN for the detection of AD in N = 663 T1-weighted MRI scans of patients with dementia and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and verified the accuracy of the models via cross-validation and in three independent samples including in total N = 1655 cases. We evaluated the association of relevance scores and hippocampus volume to validate the clinical utility of this approach. To improve model comprehensibility, we implemented an interactive visualization of 3D CNN relevance maps, thereby allowing intuitive model inspection. Results: Across the three independent datasets, group separation showed high accuracy for AD dementia versus controls (AUC ≥ 0.91) and moderate accuracy for amnestic MCI versus controls (AUC ≈ 0.74). Relevance maps indicated that hippocampal atrophy was considered the most informative factor for AD detection, with additional contributions from atrophy in other cortical and subcortical regions. Relevance scores within the hippocampus were highly correlated with hippocampal volumes (Pearson’s r ≈ −0.86, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The relevance maps highlighted atrophy in regions that we had hypothesized a priori. This strengthens the comprehensibility of the CNN models, which were trained in a purely data-driven manner based on the scans and diagnosis labels. The high hippocampus relevance scores as well as the high performance achieved in independent samples support the validity of the CNN models in the detection of AD-related MRI abnormalities. The presented data-driven and hypothesis-free CNN modeling approach might provide a useful tool to automatically derive discriminative features for complex diagnostic tasks where clear clinical criteria are still missing, for instance for the differential diagnosis between various types of dementia. (shrink)

La quatrième de couverture indique : "Ils souffrent comme nous. Comme nous aussi, ils jouissent du bien-être. Mieux que nous parfois, ils s'imposent par la ruse et l'intelligence. Comment continuer à les traiter comme des " choses " dont on se contenterait de condamner l'abus? Mais faut-il pour autant leur accorder des droits, et si oui lesquels? Et qui veillera à leur application? Pour répondre à ces questions et à tant d'autres, Boris Cyrulnik l'éthologue, Elisabeth de Fontenay la philosophe, (...) Peter Singer le bioéthicien croisent leurs regards et confrontent leurs savoirs sur la question animale. Trois sensibilités, trois parcours, trois formes d'engagement : la voie est tracée, au-delà des divergences et des contradictions, et en partie grâce à elles, pour que le législateur s'attelle à la rédaction du contrat qu'il nous faut maintenant passer sans délai avec nos frères en animalité, au nom de la dignité humaine.". (shrink)

In this article we present a notion of “logical perfection”. We first describe through examples a notion oflogical perfectionextracted from the contemporary logical concept of categoricity. Categoricity (in power) has become in the past half century a main driver of ideas in model theory, both mathematically (stability theory may be regarded as a way of approximating categoricity) and philosophically. In the past two decades, categoricity notions have started to overlap with more classical notions of robustness and smoothness. These have been (...) crucial in various parts of mathematics since the nineteenth century. We postulate and present the category of logical perfection. We draw on various notions of perfection from mathematics of the 19th and 20th centuries and then trace the relation to the concept of categoricity in power as a logical notion of what a “mathematically perfect” structure is. (shrink)

There is a growing trend in European countries for childbearing to occur later in women’s lives. The recent increase in the use of ART, together with the long-term trend towards later childbearing, raises questions as to the acceptable age of childbearing in contemporary society. ART legislation varies considerably across Europe and age limits for access to fertility treatment are rarely defined. The legislation takes into account the preferences of potential parents; children’s preferences, however, are not ascertained. The article discusses a (...) research method used in a survey of older children and young adults. The objective of the survey was to answer the following questions: What age would children prefer their parents to be if they could choose? What are their reasons? Respondents were asked the following question: “How old would you like your mother and father to be when you are 20 (version for respondents younger than 16) or 25 (version for those older than 16) if you could wave a magic wand?” Furthermore, their reasons for wishing a change were identified through an open question, “Why would you like to change the age of your parents?”. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we first argue that fairness is a matter of a decision-maker’s relative concern for the plight of people from (...) different groups, rather than of the outcomes produced for different groups. We then show how an agent’s preferences, including in particular their attitudes to error, give rise to their decision thresholds. Tying these points together, we argue that the agent’s relative degrees of concern for different groups manifest in a difference in decision thresholds applied to these groups. (shrink)

The aim of Modality and Explanatory Reasoning (MER) is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs. This topic is approached with two goals: to develop a new and reductive analysis of modality, and to understand the purpose and origin of modal thought. I argue that a proper understanding of modality requires us to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically (...) fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality. The function of modal thought is to facilitate a common type of thought experiment – counterfactual reasoning – that allows us to investigate explanatory connections and which is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of explanation, and modal facts often reflect underlying facts about explanatory relationships. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but largely because they provide evidence about explanatory connections. (shrink)

I propose a general alethic theory of epistemic risk according to which the riskiness of an agent’s credence function encodes her relative sensitivity to different types of graded error. After motivating and mathematically developing this approach, I show that the epistemic risk function is a scaled reflection of expected inaccuracy. This duality between risk and information enables us to explore the relationship between attitudes to epistemic risk, the choice of scoring rules in epistemic utility theory, and the selection of priors (...) in Bayesian epistemology more generally. (shrink)

We continue the research of an extension of the divisibility relation to the Stone‐Čech compactification. First we prove that ultrafilters we call prime actually possess the algebraic property of primality. Several questions concerning the connection between divisibilities in and nonstandard extensions of are answered, providing a few more equivalent conditions for divisibility in. Results on uncountable chains in are proved and used in a construction of a well‐ordered chain of maximal cardinality. Probably the most interesting result is the existence of (...) a chain of type in. Finally, we consider ultrafilters without divisors in and among them find the greatest class. (shrink)

The Russell-Myhill paradox puts pressure on the Russellian structured view of propositions by showing that it conflicts with certain prima facie attractive ontological and logical principles. I describe several versions of RMP and argue that structurists can appeal to natural assumptions about metaphysical grounding to provide independent reasons for rejecting the ontological principles used in these paradoxes. It remains a task for future work to extend this grounding-based approach to all variants of RMP.

In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my brief personal experiences of conducting field research on ways in which way a small group of Tibetan Buddhist monks enact a monastic total institution in Ladakh, India. More specifically, I analyze my experiences in view of the relationship between dual and nondual mind, as discussed by Henry Vyner (2002) in Anthropology of Consciousness, and use this analysis to develop preliminary insights into the ways in which a Tibetan Buddhist monastery is constituted.

Imbert's philosophical writings return time and time again to the question of the image. What follows will explore in what terms she does so. The means I will adopt are a lateral exploration of a series of fragments, an assemblage of sorts, which follows the thread provided by a number of images themselves. Steering a path between logic, anthropology and an expanded aesthetics, I will take up the thread of an ongoing concern in Imbert's philosophical project with what she calls (...) the ‘metamorphoses of the visual’. Philosophically speaking, what is at stake, in these metamorphoses, is the kind of realism for which we opt. This question, as I will show, is also the key to Imbert's understanding of modernism. (shrink)

Antihaecceitists believe that all facts about specific individuals—such as the fact that Fred exists, or that Katie is tall—globally supervene on purely qualitative facts. Haecceitists deny that. The issue is not only of interest in itself, but receives additional importance from its intimate connection to the question of whether all fundamental facts are qualitative or whether they include facts about which specific individuals there are and how qualitative properties and relations are distributed over them. Those who think that all fundamental (...) facts are qualitative are arguably committed to antihaecceitism. The goal of this paper is to point out some problems for antihaecceitism (and therefore for the thesis that all fundamental facts are qualitative). The article focuses on two common assumptions about possible worlds: (i) Sets of possible worlds are the bearers of objective physical chance. (ii) Counterfactual conditionals can be defined by appeal to a relation of closeness between possible worlds. The essay tries to show that absurd consequences ensue if either of these assumptions is combined with antihaecceitism. Then it considers a natural response by the antihaecceitist, which is to deny that worlds play the role described in (i) and (ii). Instead, the reply continues, we can introduce a new set of entities that are defined in terms of worlds and that behave the way worlds do on the haecceitist position. That allows the antihaecceitist to formulate antihaecceitist friendly versions of (i) and (ii) by replacing the appeal to possible worlds with reference to the newly introduced entities. This maneuver invites an obvious reply, however. If the new entities are the things that play the role we typically associate with worlds, as partially described by (i) and (ii), then it is natural to conclude that they really are the entities we talk about when we speak of worlds, so that haecceitism is true after all. (shrink)

Evidential decision theory (EDT) says that the choiceworthiness of an option depends on its evidential connections to possible outcomes. Causal decision theory (CDT) holds that it depends on your beliefs about its causal connections. While Newcomb cases support CDT, Arif Ahmed has described examples that support EDT. A new account is needed to get all cases right. I argue that an option A's choiceworthiness is determined by the probability that a good outcome ensues at possible A‐worlds that match actuality in (...) the facts causally unaffected by your decision (the “unaffected facts”). Moreover, you should evaluate A on the assumption that A is compossible with the unaffected facts. This view entails that you should use EDT when evaluating A on the assumption that the unaffected facts determine your action, but use CDT when assessing A on the opposite assumption. A's choiceworthiness equals a weighted average of these conditional assessments. The weights are determined by your beliefs about whether the unaffected fact determine your action. This account gets both Newcomb and Ahmed cases right. According to an influential view, whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action can make a difference to whether you can regard yourself as free and the action as being under your control. While my account is neutral on this issue, it entails that whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action is important in a different way: it matters to whether you should follow EDT or CDT. (shrink)

We continue the research of the relation $\hspace {1mm}\widetilde {\mid }\hspace {1mm}$ on the set $\beta \mathbb {N}$ of ultrafilters on $\mathbb {N}$, defined as an extension of the divisibility relation. It is a quasiorder, so we see it as an order on the set of $=_{\sim }$ -equivalence classes, where $\mathcal {F}=_{\sim }\mathcal {G}$ means that $\mathcal {F}$ and $\mathcal {G}$ are mutually $\hspace {1mm}\widetilde {\mid }$ -divisible. Here we introduce a new tool: a relation of congruence modulo an (...) ultrafilter. We first recall the congruence of ultrafilters modulo an integer and show that $=_{\sim }$ -equivalent ultrafilters do not necessarily have the same residue modulo $m\in \mathbb {N}$. Then we generalize this relation to congruence modulo an ultrafilter in a natural way. After that, using iterated nonstandard extensions, we introduce a stronger relation, which has nicer properties with respect to addition and multiplication of ultrafilters. Finally, we introduce a strengthening of $\hspace {1mm}\widetilde {\mid }\hspace {1mm}$ and show that it also behaves well with respect to the congruence relation. (shrink)

On the received view, counterfactuals are analysed using the concept of closeness between possible worlds: the counterfactual 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q' is true at a world w just in case q is true at all the possible p-worlds closest to w. The degree of closeness between two worlds is usually thought to be determined by weighting different respects of similarity between them. The question I consider in the (...) paper is which weights attach to different respects of similarity. I start by considering Lewis's answer to the question and argue against it by presenting several counterexamples. I use the same examples to motivate a general principle about closeness: if a fact obtains in both of two worlds, then this similarity is relevant to the closeness between them if and only if the fact has the same explanation in the two worlds. I use this principle and some ideas of Lewis's to formulate a general account of counterfactuals, and I argue that this account can explain the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. The paper concludes with a discussion of some examples that cannot be accommodated by the present version of the account and therefore necessitate further work on the details. (shrink)

We further investigate a divisibility relation on the set of BN ultrafilters on the set of natural numbers. We single out prime ultrafilters (divisible only by 1 and themselves) and establish a hierarchy in which a position of every ultrafilter depends on the set of prime ultrafilters it is divisible by. We also construct ultrafilters with many immediate successors in this hierarchy and find positions of products of ultrafilters.

If definitive evidence concerning treatment effectiveness becomes available from an ongoing randomized clinical trial, then the trial could be stopped early, with the public release of results benefiting current and future patients. However, stopping an ongoing trial based on accruing outcome data requires methodological rigor to preserve validity of the trial conclusions. This has led to the use of formal interim monitoring procedures, which include inefficacy monitoring that will stop a trial early when the experimental treatment appears not to be (...) working. For participants, inefficacy monitoring is especially important as it ensures that they are not being treated worse than if they had not enrolled on the trial. We discuss the importance of reporting with trial results the formal interim inefficacy monitoring guidelines that were utilized, and, if none were used, the reasons for their absence. A survey of two leading medical journals suggests that this is not current practice. (shrink)

The sensorimotor account of perception is akin to Gibsonian direct realism. Both emphasize external properties of the world, challenging views based on the analysis of internal visual processing. To compare the role of distal and retinotopic parameters, distractor effect – an optomotor reaction of midbrain origin – is considered. Even in this case, permanence in the environment, not on the retina, explains the dynamics of habituation.

British social survey movement ‘Mass-Observation’ (M-O) was founded in 1937 by a poet, a film-maker and an ornithologist. It purported to offer a new kind of sociology – one informed by surrealism and working with a ‘mass’ of Observers recording day-to-day interactions. Various commentators have debated the importance and precise identity of M-O in its first phase, especially in light of its combination of social science and surrealism. This article draws on new archival research, in particular into the ‘paperwork’ practices (...) of Charles Madge, arguing that M-O is best understood as an attempt to define a new relationship between the survey subject and information organiser. The latter – as sociologist, planner or artist – was a distinctive interwar persona, central to ‘scientific humanism’. Bathos, as a formal strategy in modernist aesthetics, is introduced as an explanation of the failure of this particular part of the M-O project. Questions of subjectivity and data link M-O to a longer history of heterodox sociological inquiry. This analysis resolves some of the apparent paradoxes that have been prominent in studies of M-O, and draws attention to the unfulfilled promise of a vast archive of social data. (shrink)

En règle générale, l’office du juge est réduit aux possibilités techniques offertes au juge par les codes pour exercer sa fonction. Or, l’office du juge est bien plus que cela. Il est l’expression d’un pouvoir autonome d’une force considérable, distinct du pouvoir qui offre au juge sa légitimité. Qu’est-ce qui fonde alors ce pouvoir propre? Il apparaît que ce « mystère », ainsi que l’évoquait Pierre Ayrault au XVI e siècle, se niche au cœur de la dimension liturgique de la (...) forme de procéder. Or, cette théorie de l’office du juge prend un sens particulier aujourd’hui, dans un monde où l’autorité des normes se renverse. (shrink)

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Ed.): Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1994. Pp. xvi + 421. ISBN 0-521-45281-3.

I will in this paper attempt to extract a positive doctrine on the substantiality of the human soul from Ghazali"s critique of the Aristotelian philosophical tradition. Rather than reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of intercultural dialogue, my aim is to directly engage in such dialogue. Accordingly, I will not suppose that we need to develop and apply external standards according to which one of the two philosophical traditions addressed here, Western and Islamic, may turn out to be superior. Up (...) to a certain point, Western and Islamic philosophy are virtually indistinguishable regarding their style, the main topics, and the arguments discussed, which both take over from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Further, at least up to Ghazali, no Islamic philosopher actually employs standards of rationality that would differ from the standards also accepted in the West. Ghazali himself would certainly be at least as disturbed by a valid philosophical objection to his claims as any other serious philosopher. He does not pursue another kind of project, but submits to the same standards of truth and validity, as far as philosophical argument reaches. His point is, of course, that these standards do not reach as far as some philosophers suppose. But this, again, is not a particularly "Islamic� insight. (shrink)

"PHENOMENON OF RELIGION" - under this name on June 20-21, 1996, the All-Ukrainian Colloquium, convened by the Department of Religious Studies and the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies took place at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The purpose of the colloquium is to discuss the topical issues of Ukrainian religious studies concerning the nature, essence and functionality of religion as a social and historical phenomenon.