Many philosophers deny that two different material objects can “coincide”, i.e. share their spatial location and microscopic parts. But, there seems to be a difficulty in identifying these coinciding objects, since we have many kinds of predicates that appear to show differences between them. One prominent strategy to avoid such a difficulty is to argue that such “problematic” predicates merely indicate our ways of describing objects, and thus that any difference between coinciding objects is only apparent. I call this move (...) "the semantic solution". The goal of this paper is to show that the semantic solution is unmotivated. The semantic solution, I argue, must distinguish problematic predicates from ones that indicate genuine properties. But the trouble is that in doing so it bringsmassive indeterminacy into our understanding of vast numbers predicates. Furthermore, indeterminacy would be hopelessly massive if every actual material object is made of “atomless gunk”, i.e. matter divisible into proper parts ad infinitum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IRBs Under the MicroscopeJonathan D. Moreno (bio)The spring and summer of 1998 were seasons in the sun for institutional review board (IRB) aficionados. Rarely have the arcana of the local human subjects review panels been treated to so much attention in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, not only at the federal but also at the state level. And it looks as if the attention will (...) continue for some time. The spate of interest is due to a series of coincidences: a powerful House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings after its chairman learned about the IRB system during a previous session on research in underdeveloped communities; the Department of Health and Human Services’s Inspector General (DHHS-IG) released a report on IRBs; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research completed a report on clinical trial monitoring; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) readied a report on research involving persons with mental disorders; the states of Maryland and New York completed studies of research with subjects who lack decision-making capacity; and advocacy groups protested a psychiatric research project involving inner city children.Underlying these proximate causes for the IRB blitz is a growing realization that the already considerable clinical trial enterprise will expand significantly over the next few years. Congress is talking about giving the politically popular NIH half again the budget it currently receives, which in turn will stimulate more commercially supported research. The director of the National Cancer Institute is considering a five-fold increase in the number of subjects enrolled in oncology studies over the next several years. Phase I cancer studies are among the most ethically sensitive, so IRBs will have more work cut out for them if this goal is reached. Adding to the rush of interest in IRBs are the government’s recent apology to the survivors of the syphilis study in Tuskegee, continuing congressional dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon handled its vaccine distribution during the Gulf War, and the controversy about AZT trials in developing countries.On the HillCongressman Christopher Shays, the moderate Connecticut Republican who has developed an interest in human research issues, convened hearings on human [End Page 329] subjects research and the IRB system on 11 June 1998. Shays chairs the House Government Reform/Human Resources Subcommittee. The committee’s ranking minority member is Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn, NY, who shares Shays’s interest in this area.The immediate rationale for the hearings was the release that day of the DHHS-IG report, Institutional Review Boards: A Time for Reform. The subtitle was changed from A System in Jeopardy apparently after some people in DHHS expressed reservations about its seemingly alarmist tone, but the IG staffers who testified before Shays’s subcommittee insisted that they stood behind the message that the IRB system is in trouble if considerable reforms are not undertaken. Among the factors in the research environment cited as support for the bleak forecast: managed care, commercialization, multi-site trials, high IRB workloads, minimal IRB oversight of approved studies, conflicts of interest, insufficient training of IRB members and investigators, and lack of IRB self-studies (DHHS-IG 1998).As is normally the case for congressional oversight hearings, the first panel of witnesses consisted of executive branch officials, including Eric Meslin, Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Gary Ellis, Director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR). Shays pressed Ellis on the extent to which OPRR conducts on-site investigations of complaints about abuse of human subjects. Admitting that on-site investigations are rare, Ellis suggested that the agency is inadequately staffed to follow up on complaints as quickly as it might wish. The members of Congress who were present at the hearings generally expressed concern about the DHHS-IG’s findings.The second panel that day, which Shays was unable to attend, set a different tone. Four of the panelists—Paul Appelbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, Robert Levine of Yale University, Angela Bowen of the Western IRB (a private clinical trials review firm), and I—were invited as authorities on the current condition of the IRB system. Bert Spilker... (shrink)

ExcerptEvery new Chinese leader considers it his duty to make his contribution to state administration theory, which, while formally considered to be Marxist, is moving ever further away from the classical doctrines of Marx and Engels and from their Soviet, Leninist-Stalinist version. Chinese party theoreticians explain that it is the changing situation and specific nature of Chinese society, and not just the ambitions of the country’s leaders, that create the need for new theories. It is no coincidence that a (...) whole section of Xi Jinping’s report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was devoted to the “Sinification” (中国化) and “modernization” (时代化) of Marxism, which, together, are acknowledged as one of the CPC’s most important achievements in the field of theory. (shrink)

This collection of essays looks at the distinctively English intellectual, social and political phenomenon of Latitudinarianism, which emerged during the Civil War and Interregnum and came into its own after the Restoration, becoming a virtual orthodoxy after 1688. Dividing into two parts, it first examines the importance of the Cambridge Platonists, who sought to embrace the newest philosophical and scientific movements within Church of England orthodoxy, and then moves into the later seventeenth century, from the Restoration onwards, culminating in essays (...) on the philosopher John Locke. These new contributions establish a firmly interdisciplinary basis for the subject, while collectively gravitating towards the importance of discourse and language as the medium for cultural exchange. The variety of approaches serves to illuminate the cultural indeterminacy of the period, in which inherited models and vocabularies were forced to undergo revisions, coinciding with the formation of many cultural institutions still governing English society. (shrink)

"Beyond Promises" is a memoir of sorts by Ron Corbett, who became the youngest speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives and who now is finishing up his eighth year as mayor of Iowa's second largest city, Cedar Rapids. In the late 1990s, Corbett was considered a possible Republican candidate for Congress or governor. Then he surprised many and resigned from the Legislature so he wouldn't have to spend so much time away from home and his growing family. He headed (...) the local Chamber of Commerce for six years, a period in which he led a community campaign to rebuild schools, another to redevelop the Cedar Rapids riverfront and a third that brought professional management to Cedar Rapids city government. Corbett's tenure as Cedar Rapids mayor coincided with the city's recovery from a devastating flood in 2008, the costliest natural disaster in Iowa history. Can someone who was a leading Republican voice in much of Iowa reclaim statewide prominence and be elected governor? In 2017, that's the elephant in the room-the unstated question lingering in the backdrop of "Beyond Promises." This book is Corbett's first-person account of where he came from and what shaped him, as well as a chronicle of doing, not simply promising. (shrink)

Nietzsche's ideas were widely disseminated among and appropriated by the first Hebrew Zionist writers and leaders. It seems quite appropriate, then, that the first Zionist Congress was held in Basle, where Nietzsche spent several years as a professor of classical philology. This coincidence gains profound significance when we see Nietzsche's impact on the first Zionist leaders and writers in Europe as well as his presence in Palestine and, later, in the State of Israel.--from the Introduction The early Zionists were (...) deeply concerned with the authenticity of the modern Jew qua person and with the content and direction of the reawakening Hebrew culture. Nietzsche too was propagating his highest ideal of a personal authenticity. Yet the affinities in their thought, and the formative impact of Nietzsche on the first leaders and writers of the Zionist movement, have attracted very little attention from intellectual historians. Indeed, the antisemitic uses to which Nietzsche's thought was turned after his death have led most commentators to assume the philosopher's antipathy to Jewish aspirations. Jacob Golomb proposes a Nietzsche whose sympathies overturn such preconceptions and details for the first time how Nietzsche's philosophy inspired Zionist leaders, ideologues, and writers to create a modern Hebrew culture. Golomb cites Ahad Ha'am, Micha Josef Berdichevski, Martin Buber, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Hillel Zeitlin as examples of Zionists who dared to look into Nietzsche's abyss. This book tells us what they found. --Allan Arkush, author of Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment "Jerusalem Post". (shrink)

The report of B. M. Hessen at the I All-Union Congress of physicists. The Congress was held in Odessa from 19 to 24 August 1930. At the plenary meeting B. M. Hessen, made a report on methodological issues of quantum physics, the relationship of physics and philosophy. Mechanistic materialism in his time came to replace the scholastic physics. But he could not solve the problems of development and specificity of forms of movement. B. M. Hessen believed that the development of (...) the basic concepts of natural science (matter, space and time, motion, wave and particle, pattern and randomness) coincides with the approach of dialectical materialism. (shrink)

The BiDil controversy in America coincides with a renewed interest in the linkages between race and therapeutics, whether in the medical history of the United States itself, or in the colonial world. During the colonial era in South Asia, many anthropological and medical researchers conducted research which compared the European and “colonial” body, contrasting everything from blood composition to brain weight between the races of the Indian Empire. This, as Mark Harrison has shown, was fundamentally a phenomenon of the 19th (...) century, arguing that “[i]t was only after 1800 that racial identities came to be fixed and that India was viewed with terror, as a reservoir of filth and disease.” Racist attitudes in British Indian colonial medicine are not hard to discover. They underpinned, for instance, campaigns to improve the appallingly high maternal and infant mortality rates in which the blame was placed squarely upon the women and the indigenous midwives who delivered them rather than the poverty in which they lived. As such, Peers Dimmock, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Calcutta Medical School, opened his address to the First Indian Medical Congress in 1894 with a diatribe against “the unclean and repulsive traditionary [sic] methods of the native midwives.”. (shrink)

Extensive scientific, philosophical and artistic activities were carried out in the Islamic World’s various science and civilization centers during the early Middle Ages. In these centers, noteworthy works of mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine, pharmacology, optics, botany, chemistry and other fields of science, which would later determine improvement paths for these fields, were created. Abu al-Izz Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari (12th-13th centuries), was a magnificent Muslim scientist known for his work named The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Kitab fi (...) ma‘rifati’l-hiyal al-handasiyya) and he was born in geography where many scientists were trained. He contributed to the development of science and civilization, the joint legacy of humanity and demonstrated his true capability and success in the field of ilm al-hiyal (the scientific field which addresses the information and practices regarding mechanical technology and engineering in Islamic science history). From this perspective, it is evident that al-Jazari had a wide field of interest, made his mark in the age he lived in with his brave and innovative ideas, and was a wise engineer. al-Jazari’s detailed descriptions and explanations of water clocks, oil lamp clocks and water pumping machines, as well as their construction, were astounding. In addition, al-Jazari’s studies on metal casting techniques, cone valves, wheel balance and the real-world use of aspiration tubes are important in contemporary engineering studies. When all these are considered, it becomes clear that his designation as the “Leonardo da Vinci of the Islamic World” is not a coincidence. Many studies on al-Jazari’s scientific legacy have been conducted in various parts of the world. There are various manuscripts of his aforementioned book. Based on these manuscripts, the work has been -fully or partially- translated into many languages, including Turkish. The German and English translations served as a basis for studies on al-Jazari in other languages. In recent years, studies conducted on al-Jazari in Türkiye (books, articles, domestic and international symposiums, congresses etc.) have demonstrated his brilliance and competence as a scientist. Furthermore, studies on al-Jazari are still ongoing in Türkiye. As for Russia, the scientific legacy of the scientists raised in the Islamic World such as Avicenna, al-Farabi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, al-Battani, al-Kashi, Abd al-Rahman al-Khazini, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was researched within the scope of a special plan and program. Depending on the relevant studies, al-Jazari and his work drew attention as well. A small portion of the aforementioned Russian studies is known in Türkiye. It is safe to assume that al-Jazari studies in Russia are virtually unknown in Türkiye. The present study primarily aims to contribute to the literature on the scientific legacy of al-Jazari, a Middle Age Islamic scientist best known for his famous work in the mechanical field. More specifically, the present study aims to: 1) to identify the studies on al-Jazari in Russia, and in the former USSR countries, where academic studies are still in Russian after the Soviet Union period, to create a chronological biography and to set forth their compilation; in other words, to create a bibliography which includes Russian studies on al-Jazari; 2) to provide information on the structure and content of the studies in question, to detect the methodological issues encountered in these works, and make solution recommendations to solve these issues; 3) to contribute to continuing and future studies in Türkiye on al-Jazari in terms of source and material index. In conclusion, it should be stated that comparative reading was conducted centered on The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Kitab fi ma‘rifati’l-hiyal al-handasiyya). It should also be noted that Russian popular internet publications (which are not based on academic research and are created/reproduced for commercial and personal purposes) were excluded from the assessment. (shrink)

This paper offers a comprehensive look at the state of empirical research in the field of arbitration. Its release coincides with the reintroduction of the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would constitute the most significant reform of arbitration law in the United States since the FAA's enactment. Moving beyond typical the typical punch/counterpunch that has characterized much of the policy debate in this area, this paper identifies areas of common ground on which arbitration's proponents and opponents can agree. It then consider (...) an issue-by-issue critique of arbitration and responds in detail to several of the recent attacks on the field. The paper closes by charting out a research agenda on arbitration and urges Congress to act cautiously before deciding whether to reform this important method of dispute resolution. (shrink)

The significance of biotechnology in agriculture during the late twentieth century has been as much in the realm of symbol and ideology as in its political economy. The ideological roots of biotechnology are long historical ones. The ideology of “productivism,” which was codified during mid-century out of a coincidence of interest among experiment stations, USDA, Congress, agribusiness, and agricultural commodity groups, has encountered numerous challenges since the 1970s. One of the major responses to the crisis of productionism was to (...) forge a social definition of biotechnology as being a revolutionary technology. I conclude by discussing whether biotechnology, as both symbol and substance, is likely to be a basis for attempts to resuscitate productivism in the 1990s now that biotechnology is being demystified, its limits being appreciated, and its opposition still considerable. (shrink)

Averroes the philosopher was the Commentator of Aristotle. In this, the project of his life coincided with the perception of his contemporary readers & with the esteem governing four centuries of European Aristotelianism. It has been the purpose of the 4th Symposium Averroicum to contribute to a better understanding of this philosophy: both on the basis of Averroes' works & in the light of his sources. The Symposium, held in conjunction with the 6th Editors Conference of the Averrois Opera, brought (...) together eminent scholars & researchers on Averroes & adjacent areas. Their contributions are presented in four sections: * The Project of Averroes * Averroes & the Hellenistic Commentators * Averroes, the Commentator * Averroes & the Latin Tradition A bibliography of editions & contributions to the text is appended (to date 1998). (shrink)

There is no broad dispute in the doctrine on the matter how and on what purpose did the drugs appear in the nature and in the society. Why does a certain spectrum of light and sound waves and electromagnetic radiations bring a person into a state of euphoria? The Author has united biological and chemical substances as well as the sources of other origin changing person’s consciousness into a joint hypersystem: narcogenes’ movement recorded in the past,observable in the present and (...) expected in the future. It is admissible to associate the sources of formation of the modern variety of narcogens with the origin of life by means of «the reasonable plan», «lucky coincidence», panspermia in their interaction or otherwise. The life distribution on the Earth during 3.5 billion years with the participation of narcogenes has caused such global phenomena as drug trafficking and narcomania (toxicomania). Today narcogenes are discovered in all earthly environments and the vector of theirmovement is directed by a man beyond the limits of the earthly surface. In a set of regular medicines they are placed onboard tens thousands flight vehicles, shuttles and ISS are supplied with them. In 1969 onboard «Apollo-11» narcogens were first delivered to an orbitof the Moon. The happenings of their «exterrestia» consumption on the circumterrestrial orbit have already been recorded. Onward are narcogenic mixers, nanorobots, transferring narcogenes in a human’s brain and so forth. The postglobal scope of the narcogenes’ movement may get a colossal swing as the people develop the deep space, build circumplanetary settlements (upward 10 thousand people) and planetary colonies. It is time that the scientists payattention to the prognostic side of the problem under consideration and develop preemptive measures. (shrink)

Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind and (...) body; that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)

Due to the differences of languages, “ontology” in its original Western sense had not been conceptualized in ancient China. The most prominent and unique feature of Confucian philosophy in early ancient China is “Zhongtaology” instead of “ontology”. Zhongtaology is the philosophical inquiring for the way of “Zhong”, which is based on all the primordially related semantic meanings embodied in the Chinese character “zhong”. Zhongtaological philosophy indicates an association between human beings and their world, a coincidence between subjectivity and objectivity, (...) a harmony of internal world and external world, an intersubjective perspective between self and others, an equilibrium among different ideas and divergences. Zhongtaology advocates inclusiveness and harmony when dealing with conflicts and contradictions. The rich historical and cultural background of Zhongtaology enriches it with profound philosophic significance, and makes it a general philosophical methodology of Confucianism. Zhongtaology not only provides a Confucian approach to some fundamental ontological and epistemological issues, a philosophical foundation for establishing ethical norms, moral standards, social justice and political principles, but also provides an angle to understand certain aspects of Chinese way of life. (shrink)

There are various reasons one might think that the semantic content of occurrences of sentences does not coincide with assertoric content –content of belief and assertion– corresponding to those sentences. But if a semantic theory exploiting such distinction is to play a role in explaining communication, there needs to be a tight connection between the two types of content. Drawing upon the considerations of McDowell and Evans concerning rigidity, Stanley proposes to extend Lewis’ argument for the distinction between the two (...) types of content –an argument concerning behavior of certain English language operators– to argue that modals do not operate on assertoric, but merely on semantic contents of sentences they embed. I argue that the Dummett-Evans-Stanley line of argument fails due to its inability to explain the connection between semantic and assertoric content. Unable to provide a plausible way of recovering assertoric content from semantic content, the theory renders successful communication mysterious. The moral of its failure is far-reaching –any theory that appeals to the distinction between these two types of content remains less than fully satisfactory unless the challenge of accounting for their connection is met. (shrink)

In the Choui, the way of worldly change is presented with symbols of Yin and Yang, but the actual situations are discussed with the phase of Gue Hyo (卦爻). And, the operation to determine the phase of Gue Hyo is made by the number. So, the phase number of Gue Hyo and the way order always go along. When we call theoperation that reveals the future world with the specific phase of Gue Hyo as the Jeom (Prediction) of Choui, the (...) Jeom is operated with the number. At this time, the operation method of the number is called Seobeop. In this paper, by examining the Seobeop in the book of Hongbeomhwangeuk (洪範皇極) along with that in Choui, the numerological research will be carried out about the coincidence and difference between the Samjaeron (Three element theory) in theCheonbugeong and the Yin-Yang theory of Choui in the Seobeop. (shrink)

John Dewey’s stay in Tokyo in early 1919 coincided with the height of the social movement calling for parliamentary democracy in Japan. His lectures at Tokyo Imperial University offered a new way of viewing the world and human actions that emphasizes the importance of communication and the growth of democratic personality. Those who expected to hear from him something else were disillusioned. But the disillusionment was mutual. Dewey was disillusioned by the Japanese intellectuals whose affection for European philosophy led them (...) to an uncritical acceptance of the emperor system and Japan’s imperialism abroad. His criticism toward the Japanese intellectuals grew severe as he saw the Japanese aggression while he was on the continent. Dewey’s lecture on democracy left some impact on a few of intellectuals who modified their view of person’s actions that was eventually to be crashed when Japan fell into the all-out war-making. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if the process of globalization leads to more severe social discrepancies that are not acceptable to many groups of people, then globalization would become the factor of primary relevance that threatens democracy; but if globalization and the present democratic order manage to solve social problems, then globalization will be a factor supporting the democratic way of thinking that is not oriented to exclusiveness. Globalization, I believe, coincides rather with a way of thinking that is (...) non-xenophobic and which refuses to see moral thinking in the strict dichotomy of good and evil. (shrink)

The main philosophical question of the contemporaneity consists in that how far mankind is capable to change "direction of development" and to provide itself a Sustainable Future. Today it is obvious that any planetary actions driven by values of modern technocratic (material) civilization assume great risk and can lead tothe global ecological catastrophe. Consequently, the search for new values of civilization development has a truly decisive importance for man and mankind. In our opinion, Sustainable Development and Environmental Ethics are the (...) main components of a new value paradigm of civilization’s transformation. To emphasize fundamental novelty of the above-named value basics of a future civilization and its alternative character with respect to the modern technocraticculture, we introduce the concept of "ecological civilization". We imagine the ecological civilization as the ideal form of integrity preservation of the Whole-Life-System with a view to provide sustainable future for mankind. This is spiritually oriented and highly moral society because the ecological imperative, as a matter of fact, coincides with the ideal of spirituality. We connect prospects of ecological (spiritual) civilization with forming of planetary value consciousness on principles of Environmental Ethics. (shrink)

I have been proposing for ‘christo‐dao’ rather than traditional christo-logy or modern christo‐praxis as a more appropriate paradigm for the understanding of Jesus Christ in the new millennium. This christological paradigm shift solicits a radical change of its root-metaphor, from logos (Christ as the incarnate logos) or praxis (Christ as the praxis of God’s reign) to ‘dao’ (Christ as the embodiment of the Dao, the “theanthropocosmic” Way) with a critical new interpretation. For EastAsian Christians, the christological adoption of dao is (...) as inevitable and legitimate as that of logos for the Western church at the fourth century. This adoption has been operative since the beginning of Korean Christianity. As an example, in this paper, I introduce the intriguing thoughts of Dasŏk Ryu Young-mo 柳永模 (1890-1981). According to John 14:6, Ryu comprehended Jesus as the Dao, the way of the truth toward the life in God. Christ is the brightest way on which we can walk safely (the truth) to attain the unity with God (the life). It coincides with the goal of Confucianism, the anthropocosmic unity of Heaven and humanity. Fromthis vantage point, he further expressed a nobel East Asian definition of God; namely, God is the One who is ‘the Being in Non-Being’ (Ŏpshigyeshin-nim): He believed that this event of Being-in-Non-Being has been historically manifested in the crucifixion (the Non-Being) and the resurrection (Being) of Jesus Christ. Christ is both the Non-Being (the Non-Ultimate, Vacuity) and Being (Great Ultimate, Form). Finally, confessing Jesus as the embodiment of the Dao is none other than Ryu’s East Asian way of saying “the Word made flesh.”. (shrink)

First of all, this paper defines design relation to engineering technology, in terms of philosophy, as the process of externalizing the subject’s consciousness as a medium replacement for a practical technical substance. The essence of design is to exhibit the careful foresight of practical possibility of technical principle and hominisation of technology. Practical possibility means a coincidence between technical principle and social need，technical production is shaped by social restriction. The hominisation of technology means a linkage of human properties with (...) natural attributes. For that reason, technical principle demands personifying so as to be used by man. Secondly, this paper also discusses functions and characteristics of design. The appearance of design gives to knowledge of technology a unique form—a medium replacement or called correct ideology of technology; the appearance of modern design promotes occupation of designer, so individual of technological system is replaced in principle; the appearance of design also separates technical subject into mental subject and manual subject, strengthening the dominant position of mental subject. The separation of technical subject, hence, gives rise to the correct ideology of technical subject at different stages. Compared with science and arts, design has it as its characteristics to solve problems having no definite answers, which are limited undermany conditions. Design is a kind of careful prevision without doing on the-spot making of objects. Design is an art to satisfy practical function andmass-production. The medium-tool plays an important role in design. Key words: Activity of Engineering Technology; Designing philosophy; the essence of design; a medium replacement; correct ideology of technical subject. (shrink)

By analysis of the connection between the "lower" man and the "higher" man within the human person, I have endeavored to show their "coincidence" in the unfolding of the novum or a good conscience. I have also endeavored to show that it can be aroused by the discovery of "homo absconditus" or of "Deus Absconditus." In this way we become able to approach the Divine. Moreover, in each infrastructure there appears the tendency towards "personalization" by "right" of its reality (...) or existence within the personal human being. (shrink)

“Radical understanding” – an expression recalling Quine’s “radical translation” and Davidson’s “radical interpretation” – concerns that necessary presupposition of every understanding that is shown in extreme cases of indecipherability. Such a minimum content consists in understanding an existence. Indeed, Heideggerian ontological hermeneutics has weaved together understanding and existence to the point that it is possible to establish an analogy between the existential analysis and the several grades of text decipherability: the passage from the inauthentic to the authentic existence can be (...) read as a passage from the semantic (radical interpretation) to the syntactic (radical translation) and to the ontological level (radical understanding). The level of radical understanding is the one in which the minimal content of understanding coincides with its formal condition of possibility, in which understanding is to understand an existence. (shrink)

I defend the truth of the principle of methodological individualism in the social sciences. I do so by criticizing mistaken ideas about the relation between individual people and social entities held by earlier defenders of the principle. I argue, first, that social science is committed to the intentional stance; the domain of social science, therefore, coincides with the domain of intentionally described human action. Second, I argue that social entitites are theoretical terms, but quite different from the entities used in (...) the natural sciences to explain our empirical evidence. Social entities are conventional and open-ended constructions, the applications of which is a matter of judgment, not of discovery. The terms in which these social entities are constructed are the beliefs, expectations and desires, and the corresponding actions of individual people. The relation between the social and the individual 'levels' differs fundamentally from that between, say, the cellular and the molecular in biology. Third, I claim that methodological individualism does not amount to a reduction of social science to psychology; rather, the science of psychology should be divided. Intentional psychology forms in tandom with the analysis of social institutions, unitary psycho-social science; cognitive psychology tries to explain how the brain works and especially how the intentional stance is applicable to human behavior. (shrink)

In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

Far from being unwelcome or impossible in a mathematical setting, indeterminacy in various forms can be seen as playing an important role in driving mathematical research forward by providing “sources of newness” in the sense of Hutter and Farías :434–449, 2017). I argue here that mathematical coincidences, phenomena recently under discussion in the philosophy of mathematics, are usefully seen as inducers of indeterminacy and as put to work in guiding mathematical research. I suggest that to call a pair of mathematical (...) facts a coincidence is roughly to suggest that the investigation of connections between these facts isn’t worthwhile. To say of this pair, “That’s no coincidence!” is to suggest just the opposite. I further argue that this perspective on mathematical coincidence, which pays special attention to what mathematical coincidences do, may provide us with a better view of what mathematical coincidences are than extant accounts. I close by reflecting on how understanding mathematical coincidences as generating indeterminacy accords with a conception of mathematical research as ultimately aiming to reduce indeterminacy and complexity to triviality as proposed in Rota Indiscrete thoughts, Birkhäuser, 1997). (shrink)

I give an account of what makes an event a coincidence. -/- I start by critically discussing a couple of other approaches to the notion of coincidence -- particularly that of Lando (2017) -- before developing my own view. The central idea of my view is that the correct understanding of coincidences is closely related to our understanding of the correct 'level' or 'grain' of explanation. Coincidences have a kind of explanatory deficiency — if they did not have (...) this deficiency they would not be coincidences. This deficiency, I claim, is the same explanatory deficiency as when we give low-level explanations of special science phenomena. Such explanations are typically too specific and not robust enough. I claim that there is this same badness in purported explanations of coincidences. -/- I cash out this idea sketching an account of explanatory goodness — an account of what makes explanations better or worse -- and using that to give a more precise account of coincidences. (shrink)

In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. (...) Thus, causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation. (shrink)

This paper critically examines coincidence arguments and evolutionary debunking arguments against non-naturalist realism in metaethics. It advances a version of these arguments that goes roughly like this: Given a non-naturalist, realist metaethic, it would be cosmically coincidental if our first order normative beliefs were true. This coincidence undermines any prima facie justification enjoyed by those beliefs.

This paper argues that unusual coincidences, particularly those involving historical events, can be viewed as design patterns, suggesting an intelligent influence over the course of events. A compelling case examined in detail using probability theory concerns the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) and John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). This and other coincidences involving historical figures disfavor the materialistic perspective and point to the presence of an intelligent agent acting on a global scale, beyond the arrow of time, influencing human lives and (...) the course of history. (shrink)

Following Wiggins’ seminal article, On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time, this article presents the first comprehensive account of the relation of material constitution, an asymmetrical, transitive relation which totally orders distinct ‘entities’ (individuals, pluralities or masses of stuff) which ‘spatially coincide.’ Their coincidence in space is explained by a recursive definition of ‘complete-composition’, weaker than strict mereological indiscernibility, which also explains the variety of logically independent similarities in such cases. This account is ‘analytical’, dealing with (...) ‘putative’ cases in general. The main strategy is to rationally reconstruct Aristotle’s notion of material cause. It is developed more fully with a theory of how to justify admitting generable and perishable things into the natural world, in The Kinds of Things: A Theory of Personal Identity Based on Transcendental Argument (Open Court, 1996). (shrink)

The ‘paradoxes of coincidence’ are generally taken as an important factor for deciding between rival views on persistence through time. In particular, the ability to deal with apparent cases of temporary coincidence is usually regarded as a good reason for favouring perdurantism (or ‘four-dimensionalism’) over endurantism (or ‘three-dimensionalism’). However, the recent work of Gilmore ( 2007 ) and McGrath ( 2007 ) challenges this standard view. For different reasons, both Gilmore and McGrath conclude that perdurantism does not really (...) obtain support from the puzzles of temporary coincidence. In this paper, I will evaluate their arguments and defend the opposite view: that the paradoxes of coincidence do give some support to perdurantism. However, the way in which they do so is rather unexpected. As we will see, there are different ways in which coincidence scenarios may be thought to support perdurantism, some of which have not yet been sufficiently explored. Thus, my immediate goal is to explore one of those directions, bringing into focus a new argument from coincidence to perdurantism. And although I motivate my discussion by examining the arguments in the work of Gilmore and McGrath, the merits of this argument can be independently assessed. More generally, my overall purpose is to contribute to our general understanding of how the topics of coincidence and persistence bear on each other. (shrink)

Eric T. Olson has argued that those who hold that two material objects can exactly coincide at a moment of time, with one of these objects constituting the other, face an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the alleged differences between the objects, such as their being of different kinds and possessing different persistence-conditions. The differences, he suggests, are inexplicable, given that the objects in question are composed of the same particles related in precisely the same way. In response, I show (...) that the differences are not at all inexplicable once it is recognized that the conditions for a persisting object to be composed by certain particles at a moment of time must involve facts concerning other moments of time, and that the relevant facts are different for persisting objects of different kinds. Philosophers who neglect this sort of constraint on composition principles may be said to be victims of the 'cinematographic fallacy'. (shrink)

Pluralists argue for the distinctness of coinciding objects on the grounds that they have different properties. The grounding problem is the problem of explaining how the supposed difference in properties can arise in the first place. This paper considers this problem as an instance of a more general phenomenon, namely, the problem of dealing with underdetermination in asymmetrical systems admitting of non-trivial automorphisms. It argues in favour of primitivism by developing an account of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental (...) bruteness and substantially mitigates the costs of primitivism. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum for (...) examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)