In the 1950s–60s biochemists searched intensively for a series of high-energy molecules in the cell. Although we now believe that these molecules do not exist, biochemists claimed to have isolated or identified them on at least sixteen occasions. The episode parallels the familiar eighteenth-century case of phlogiston, in illustrating how error is not simply the loss of facts but, instead, must be actively constructed. In addition, the debates surrounding each case demonstrate how revolutionary-scale disagreement is sometimes resolved by differentiating or (...) partitioning empirical domains, rather than by replacement of one theory by another. (shrink)

To understand Nietzsche’s pedagogy of self-overcoming and to determine its true import for contemporary education, it is necessary to understand Nietzsche’s view of the self that is to be overcome. Nevertheless, previous interpretations of self-overcoming in the journals of the philosophy of education have lacked serious engagement with the Nietzschean self. I devote the first part of this paper to redressing this neglect and arguing for a view of the Nietzschean self as an assemblage of ontologically basic affects which have (...) been guided and modulated by the incorporation of perspectives. This interpretation has important consequences for self-overcoming, for it constrains the individual’s conscious agency to operations on perspectives. In light of this view I then advance a competing conception of self-overcoming and discuss some of the shortcomings of antecedent interpretations. Although previous interpreters have done their part to exhaust the characteristic actions of self-overcoming, I argue that they have either exaggerated the deleteriousness of social influence in the formation of the authentic individual, or else ignore it altogether. In the final part I reconsider the debate over the democratic or aristocratic nature of Nietzsche’s pedagogy of self-overcoming. Interestingly, self-overcoming cannot be labeled strictly as either, and out of this ambiguity grows the role of the school as an agent of cultural transformation. (shrink)

Argumentation, which can be abstractly defined as the interaction of different arguments for and against some conclusion, is an important skill to learn for everyday life, law, science, politics and business. The best way to learn it is to try it out on real instances of arguments found in everyday conversational exchanges and legal argumentation. The introductory chapter of this book gives a clear general idea of what the methods of argumentation are and how they work as tools that can (...) be used to analyze arguments. Each subsequent chapter then applies these methods to a leading problem of argumentation. Today the field of computing has embraced argumentation as a paradigm for research in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. Another purpose of this book is to present and refine tools and techniques from computing as components of the methods that can be handily used by scholars in other fields. (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work ...

The notion of burden of proof and its companion notion of presumption are central to argumentation studies. This book argues that we can learn a lot from how the courts have developed procedures over the years for allocating and reasoning with presumptions and burdens of proof, and from how artificial intelligence has built precise formal and computational systems to represent this kind of reasoning. The book provides a model of reasoning with burden of proof and presumption, based on analyses of (...) many clearly explained legal and non-legal examples. The model is shown to fit cases of everyday conversational argumentation as well as argumentation in legal cases. Burden of proof determines under what conditions an arguer is obliged to support a claim with an argument that backs it up and how strong that argument needs to be to prove the claim in question. (shrink)

Do we determine our actions, or are our actions ruled by the structure of our society? Does our culture create us, or do we create our culture? Within history and social theory there is a fundamental division of opinion between those who explain human action by considering the intentions, reasons and motives of individuals and those who use broader social structures. Structural Idealism presents a theory of social and historical explanation which argues that “idealists” such as Hegel, who champion human (...) agency, and “materialists” such as Marx, who support social structure, have grasped but part of a larger truth. The book contends that we have to explain human actions simultaneously by both the ideas human actors bring to a situation and the way in which previous actions have created social structures that condition those ideas. Through this realization we can see how all forms of knowledge, from the historical roots of modern philosophy to today’s popular culture, both condition and are conditioned by structural ideals. This book challenges our perception of how cultures and ideals are formed, and shows that while structural ideals allow people to co-operate as they work toward goals — their own or those of their community — these images of perfection, so easily accepted as the unalterable structure of our society, can be changed, and are changed, by individuals. Structural Idealism asks us to think beneath the surface of our society, and will be of special interest to philosophers, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists. (shrink)

In a dialogue whose precedents include Oscar Wilde's “Critic as Artist,” two fictional professors of English take up the relationship between aestheticism and quietism. Their conversation begins with a debate on the necessity of treating sociopolitical contexts when teaching literature then moves to connections among aesthetic experience, political disengagement, inactivity, and contemplation explored by Wilde, Miguel de Molinos, Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Walter Pater, Arthur Schopenhauer, Johann Winckelmann, and others. Having described the influence of nineteenth-century science and determinism on Wilde's gospel (...) of inaction, as well as Pater's adaptation of the Winckelmannian view that people and things express their nature most truly when still, one speaker wonders whether aesthetic experience gains some of its significance from its affiliation with leisure. The other resists the idea that repose might constitute one of life's key desiderata, but notes at the close how both his own view and his interlocutor's are adumbrated in the Wallace Stevens poem that furnishes the dialogue its title. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not difficult to read, but he is famously difficult to understand. This is because of the bewildering array of words, phrases or metaphors that he uses. The Nietzsche Dictionary aims to help, by giving readers a road map to Nietzsche's language, and thus how his terminology and images relate together, forming an overall philosophical picture. The Dictionary also includes synopses of Nietzsche's key works, and short articles on the main philosophical and cultural influences leading up to, and resulting (...) from, Nietzsche. It is designed to be a resource that all readers of Nietzsche will find invaluable, from beginners to more advanced readers.In order to make the book easy to use and navigate, all entries are treated thematically and are of seven types:1. Influences on, or the contemporary context of, Nietzsche2. Major influences of Nietzsche3. Key concepts4. Key metaphors or images5. Alternative translations of the above6. Other words or phrases found in Nietzsche that are cross-referenced to a main entry7. Synopses of major works by Nietzsche. (shrink)

We are conscious beings who think, understand, feel and perceive. We are also material beings composed out of ordinary material stuff. Determining the precise connections between the psychological and the material remains problematic. The harmonia theory is one of the first attempts to frame this as a problem about composite objects. The theory itself is simple: the soul is the harmonia of the material parts of the body. But what a harmonia is and what the theory amounts to are matters (...) of much dispute. I argue that a harmonia is best understood as the structure of the body's material parts. Plato introduces the theory in the Phaedo, and Aristotle mentions it in On the Soul. In both instances it is roundly criticized. Given that Plato thinks the soul is independent of the body, it is not surprising that he rejects the harmonia theory. However, he has been described as "extraordinarily obtuse" for arguing against the view, since doing so seems to undermine his arguments for a tripartite soul. Aristotle's rejection has been thought equally perplexing, since his own positive view looks very much like a version of the harmonia theory. Looking closely at the harmonia theory helps clarify persistent misunderstandings of the view and the reasons Plato and Aristotle reject it. This avenue offers insight into Plato's and Aristotle's positive theories about the soul and its relation to matter. In addition, their rejections of the theory shed light on how they understand the relation between parts and wholes. The problems lying behind the ancient debate about the harmonia theory are not just historically significant, but also resonate with contemporary discussions about material composition and the metaphysics of mind. Plato articulates a version of the harmonia theory which is perhaps the first expression of a supervenience thesis about the mental, but the precise sort of supervenience at issue hasn't been well understood. But most importantly, whether wholes and souls are causally relevant and whether conscious beings are mereologically simple are issues at the heart of the debate, both ancient and modern. (shrink)

Perhaps the two main contemporary formulations of ethical naturalism – Synthetic Ethical Naturalism (SEN) and Analytical Descriptivism – seem to conflict with plausible views about cases where moral debate and disagreement is possible. Both lack safeguards to avoid divergence of reference across different communities, which can scupper the prospects for genuine moral disagreement. I explore the prospects for supplementing both views with Lewis's notion of eligibility, arguing that this can solve the problem for a modified form of analytical descriptivism, and (...) for a modified form of SEN too (though perhaps more controversially). I close by considering the appropriateness of using the notions of eligibility and joint-carving in ethics. (shrink)

This investigation uses the technique of the profile of dialogue as a tool for the evaluation of arguments from ignorance (also called lack-of-evidence arguments, negative evidence, ad ignorantiam arguments and ex silentio arguments). Such arguments have traditionally been classified as fallacies by the logic textbooks, but recent research has shown that in many cases they can be used reasonably. A profile of dialogue is a connected sequence of moves and countermoves in a conversational exchange of a type that is goal-directed (...) and can be represented in a normative model of dialogue. Selected case studies are used to probe special features of using the profile technique as applied to arguments from ignorance of a kind that occur frequently in everyday conversational exchanges. One of these special features is the use of Gricean implicature. Another is the need to use negative profiles of argument. (shrink)

: Errors in science range along a spectrum from those relatively local to the phenomenon (usually easily remedied in the laboratory) to those more conceptually derived (involving theory or cultural factors, sometimes quite long-term). One may classify error types broadly as material, observational, conceptual or discoursive. This framework bridges philosophical and sociological perspectives, offering a basis for interfield discourse. A repertoire of error types also supports error analytics, a program for deepening reliability through strategies for regulating and probing error.

Memory theories of personal identity are subject to the difficulty that distinct simultaneous person stages may both stand in the memory relation to an earlier person stage. Apparently, Such theories entail that these two duplicate person stages are stages of the same person, A claim argued to be "obviously false". In this paper, I argue that the characteristics of these duplication cases usually cited to support this claim do not provide adequate evidence to make it cogent.

In 2010, the Venter lab announced that it had created the first bacterium with an entirely synthetic genome. This was reported to be the first instance of ‘artificial life,’ and in the ethical and policy discussions that followed it was widely assumed that the creation of artificial life is in itself morally significant. We cast doubt on this assumption. First we offer an account of the creation of artificial life that distinguishes this from the derivation of organisms from existing life (...) and clarify what we mean in asking whether the creation of artificial life has moral significance. We then articulate and evaluate three attempts to establish that the creation of artificial life is morally significant. These appeal to the claim that the creation of artificial life involves playing God, as expressed in three distinct formulations; the claim that the creation of artificial life will encourage reductionist attitudes toward the living world that undermine the special moral value accorded to life; and the worry that artificial organisms will have an uncertain functional status and consequently an uncertain moral status. We argue that all three attempts to ground the moral significance of the creation of artificial life fail, because none of them establishes that the creation of artificial life is morally problematic in a way that the derivation of organisms from existing life forms is not. We conclude that the decisive moral consideration is not how life is created but what non-genealogical properties it possesses. (shrink)

The translation of Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle finally provides an English-speaking audience with access to one of the most influential texts in the French Nietzsche tradition. First published in France in 1969, Klossowski's text consummated over three decades of intense work and discussion on Nietzsche's most enigmatic and original ideas. Working with Bataille and the famous College de Sociologie, Klossowski published a series of important studies of Nietzsche culminating in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle which Foucault described (...) in a letter to Klossowski as "the greatest book of philosophy I have read" in addition to Nietzsche himself. Deeply influencing Deleuze, Lyotard, and other major Nietzscheans, Klossowski's work remains a seminal text of the contemporary French reading of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Felix reaches up to catch a high line drive to left field and fires the ball off to Benji at home plate, who then tags the runner trying to score. For Felix to catch the ball and transfer it from his glove to his throwing hand, he needs to have a sense of where his hands are relative to one another and the rest of his body. This sort of information is subconsciously tracked in the body schema (or postural schema), (...) a representation of the current bodily posture that is updated on the basis of proprioceptive inputs. While the existence of the body schema in not in dispute, its origin is. After reviewing the competing proposals, I introduce the conceptual tools needed to move the debate forward and apply them to the question of the extent to which the body schema could be learned from perceptual input in utero. I argue that it could give rise to something recognizable as the body schema, though not quite rising to the level of the mature body schema. After considering the implications for further research on the origins of the body schema, I show how these results apply to other body representations, helping clarify the vexing question of the number, nature, and interactions among body representations in the brain. This theoretical work also promises to advance our understanding and treatment protocols for disorders affecting such body representations (e.g., anorexia nervosa). (shrink)

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

We wholeheartedly agree with Schmidt and colleagues’ efforts to promote equity in intensive care unit triage. We also take issue with their characterisation of the New Jersey allocation framework for ICU beds and ventilators, which is modelled after the multi-principle allocation framework we developed early in the pandemic. They characterise it as a two-criterion allocation framework and claim—without evidence—that it will ‘compound disadvantage for black patients’. However, the NJ triage framework—like the model allocation policy we developed—actually contains four allocation criteria: (...) the two criteria that the authors mentioned and two criteria that they failed to mention which we included to promote equity: giving priority to frontline essential workers and giving priority to younger patients. These omissions are problematic both for reasons of factual accuracy and because the two criteria they failed to acknowledge would likely mitigate rather than exacerbate racial disparities during triage. (shrink)

While Nietzsche is notorious for seeing philosophy as a mode of autobiographical confession, other philosophers, such as Habermas, see philosophy as a discipline of rigorous argumentation and theory construction that constitutes a form of discourse to be sharply separated from literature and narrative. As with philosophical antinomies, these one-sided positions need to be overcome and we should see philosophy both as a commentary on the times framed by one’s social positionality and life-experiences, and a discursive practice that attempts to produce (...) more general theoretical arguments and knowledge. Yet it is extremely difficult, I have found, to reflect on how one’s life and times have influenced one’s own theoretical work and I fear that the following reflections are more of a narrative construct than “scientific” commentary. Yet since such binary oppositions are ripe for deconstruction, I will gamely attempt to describe my philosophical adventures and speculate on what might have influenced my theoretical and political itinerary. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 51, Issue 5, Page 42-47, September‐October 2021.

In an age of spectacle politics, presidencies are staged and presented to the public in cinematic terms, using media spectacle to sell the policies, person, and image of the president to vast and diverse publics. The media are complicit, reducing politics to image, spectacle, and story in forms ranging from daily news to synoptic or topical documentaries to fictional films that narrativize especially dramatic events or entire presidential dynasties. Consequently, publics come to see presidencies and politics of the day as (...) narrative and spectacle in an era when entertainment and information inexorably merge, and politics and everyday life are modeled on media forms, with entertainment becoming a dominant mode of media culture and a potent and seductive factor in shaping everyday life. (shrink)

(Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 2007) > Another look at Bar-On, Horisk and Lycan’s criticism of deflationism. I claim that their argument turns on a simple confusion about definitions and thereby fails to establish that deflationism somehow requires meaning to be explained in terms of truth conditions.

Baudrillard, Jean (1929) was born in the cathedral town of Reims, France. His grandparents were peasants, his parents became civil servants, and he was the first member of his family to pursue an advanced education. In 1956, he began working as a professor of secondary education in a French high school (Lyceé) and in the early 1960s did editorial work for the French publisher Seuil. Trained as a Germanist, Baudrillard translated Germany literary works including Brecht and Peter Weiss, although he (...) turned to the study of sociology and for some decades was a sociology professor at Nanterre. (shrink)

"Sometimes I call this reality Science, sometimes I call it Truth. But it is something we draw by pain and effort out of the heart of life, that we disentangle and make clear. Other men serve it, I know, in art, in literature, in social invention, and see it in a thousand different figures, under a hundred names... I do not know what it is, this something, except that it is supreme.".

Not long before he died, Henry David Thoreau was asked by a friend where religion was to be found in his writings. Thoreau responded by saying that his religiosity pervaded his works but that no one noticed it. This result was enabled by the cultural belief that religiosity entailed formal religion, creeds, fixed rituals, and overt discussions of God or gods. Thoreau’s point—a development of Emerson’s “Divinity School Address”—was to show the mistakenness of this compartmentalization of one’s religious life. For (...) Thoreau, genuine religiosity pervades and marks every aspect of one’s being—body and soul. “Our life,” Thoreau wrote in his journal in 1840, “is but the Soul made known by its fruits, the .. (shrink)

The philosophical and natural law basis of the American order: remote and immediate ancestors -- The declaration and its constitution: linking first principle to necessary means -- A structurally-divided, but workable, government -- A limited government of enumerated power -- A government mindful of dual sovereignty -- A fair government -- A government commitment to freedom -- A government commitment to equality -- A government of imperfect knowledge of inkblots, liberty and life itself.