Four experiments and 2 corpus-based studies demonstrate that negation is a determinant factor affecting novel nonliteral utterance-interpretation by default. For a nonliteral utterance-interpretation to be favored by default, utterances should be potentially ambiguous between literal and nonliteral interpretations. They should therefore be (a) unfamiliar, (b) free of semantic anomaly or any kind of internal incongruity, and (c) unbiased by contextual information. Experiments 1–3 demonstrate that negative utterances, meeting these 3 conditions, were interpreted metaphorically (This is not a safe) or sarcastically (...) (Ambitious she is not) when presented in isolation and were therefore processed faster in contexts strongly biasing them toward their nonliteral than toward their (equally biased) literal interpretation. Experiment 4 reduces the possibility that it is structural markedness on its own that induces nonliteralness. Two corpus-based studies provide corroborating evidence, supporting the view of negation as an operator generating nonliteral interpretations by default. (shrink)

Although random mutation is central to models of evolutionary change, a lack of clarity remains regarding the conceptual possibilities for thinking about the nature and role of mutation in evolution. We distinguish several claims at the intersection of mutation, evolution, and directionality and then characterize a previously unrecognized category: complex conditioned mutation. Empirical evidence in support of this category suggests that the historically famous fluctuation test should be revisited, and new experiments should be undertaken with emerging experimental techniques to facilitate (...) detecting mutation rates within specific loci at an ultra‐high, individual base pair resolution. (shrink)

Anthony Collins is known mostly as an eighteenth-century freethinker who contributed to ideas of rational religion and religious toleration, as a close friend of John Locke, and as a necessitarian and materialist who held a significant correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Yet, his political philosophy has rarely received serious attention, and he remains a neglected figure in the history of political thought. This article attempts to recover Collins as a philosopher who developed a complex political theory, by focusing on his conceptions (...) of liberty and authority. It shows that he conceptualised liberty, and liberty of thought in particular, both as non-interference and non-domination, namely, an absence of censorship as well as an absence of continuous tyranny over the minds of humankind. Then, it shows that Collins also developed a thorough idea of civil authority, according to which even religious liberties may depend in some cases on the discretion of the civil sovereign. Finally, this article suggests that Collins’s multi-layered theory continued to develop after his lifetime, and that he therefore had a prominent place in eighteenth-century debates of liberty and authority. (shrink)

A short book of intellectual history is a rare treat. Such is Robin Mills’s recent study of the religious innatism debate in Britain: in just a few brief chapters, we get a comprehensive guide of t...

In this paper, dealing with Platonic and Stoic dialectic in Philo, I wish to make a proposal that may offer some solution to the problem of the surprising absence of a proper use of the dialectic of the late Platonic dialogues in Philo’s works. Philonic scholars have not, to the best of my knowledge, raised this question; but Philo’s very rare allusions to Plato’s later dialogues were noted in David T. Runia’s comprehensive study on Philo and Plato’s Timaeus.

The problem of moral sunk costs pervades decision-making with respect to war. In the terms of just war theory, it may seem that incurring a large moral cost results in permissiveness: if a just goal may be reached at a small cost beyond that which was deemed proportionate at the outset of war, how can it be reasonable to require cessation? On this view, moral costs already expended could have major implications for the ethics of conflict termination. Discussion of sunk (...) costs in moral theorizing about war has settled into four camps: Quota, Prospect, Addition, and Discount. In this paper, I offer a mathematical model that articulates each of these views. The purpose of the mathematisation is threefold. First, to unify the sunk costs problem. Second, to show that these views differ in the nature of their justifications: some are justified qualitatively and others quantitatively. Third, to clarify the differential force of qualitative and quantitative critiques of these four views. (shrink)

This article responds to the challenge of decolonizing epistemic injustice by offering the project of inter-epistemic thought or ‘Inter-Epistemology'. The point of departure is a critical epistemology of Western science, which seeks to go beyond the negative moment of self-critique. Instead, it seeks to confront Western science with actually existing divergent systems of knowledge. This kind of confrontation implies epistemic plurality and requires the theory and methodology of inter-epistemic knowledge. The paper argues that a main challenge to inter-epistemic theory is (...) the paradox of knowing the epistemic other. To face this challenge, it is proposed that the preliminary task of inter-epistemology is not to overcome the absence of the epistemic other but to overcome the simulated other, through operations of un-knowing. (shrink)

This book presents Jewish thought as a new perspective for perceiving and examining Heidegger's philosophy in relation to the Western intellectual tradition, offering new and constructive directions for the current Black Notebooks debate and featuring work by the leading authors of that debate.

In response to foreign interference in elections, warlike language is understandable. As a hostile violation of sovereignty, election meddling fits one technical description of an invasion. However, just war theory, the most influential source of objective guidance for the ethical prosecution of wars, and the philosophical heart of international law concerning war, offers a sobering rejoinder. The theory suggests that, while election meddling is in fact a belligerent act, no actual use of military force could ever be ethically justified as (...) a response. (shrink)

Hobbes left a complicated legacy for the English Whigs. They thought that his Leviathan was all too powerful, but they found other elements in his thought more appealing – mostly his anticlericalism. Still, the precise relationship between Hobbes and the Whigs has remained underexplored, while some still argue that Hobbes was simply too much of an absolutist for the Whigs to rely on his political ideas. This article attempts to show that Hobbes was, in fact, recruited by proto- and early (...) Whigs for their causes. It shows how Hobbesian ideas were used in the toleration debates of the 1660s and 1670s, and even in debates on human reason and liberty of conscience. Then it demonstrates how similar Hobbesian principles, and even phrases, were used subsequently in the formative years of Whiggism from the 1680s to the 1720s, by thinkers who were worried, as Hobbes was, about the political aspirations of the Church. By collecting a series of prominent thinkers who are associated with Whiggism and who engaged with Hobbes in various ways – including Buckingham, Marvell, Cavendish, Warren, Blount, Tindal, Trenchard and Gordon – this article shows that Hobbes was employed systematically in the service of Whig causes, such as limited toleration, civil religion and an opposition to religious persecution. (shrink)

Much of revisionist just war theory is individualistic in nature: morality in war is just an extension of morality in interpersonal circumstances, so that killing in war is subject to the same moral principles that govern personal self-defense and defense of others. Recent work in the ethics of self-defense suggests that this individualism leads to a puzzle, which I call the puzzle of aggregation, when many threateners contribute to a single threatened harm. In this paper, I investigate the moral problems (...) posed by the puzzle of aggregation and develop a novel account recently proposed by Jeff McMahan, which he calls “proportionality in the aggregate”. I argue that accepting proportionality in the aggregate as a moral constraint on the use of force has significant implications for the ethics of war and self-defense. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine some actual examples of written verbal irony that contain apposition. Meta-linguistic knowledge about apposition as a syntactic structure is claimed to be involved in the interpretation process of the utterance and especially in recognizing the victim of the irony. This discussion demonstrates the interdependence between apposition, its echoic quality in particular cases, and the victim of the irony. Since syntactic structure may serve as a cue to indirect meaning, pointing at the specific (...) meta-linguistic knowledge used for interpreting ironic utterances may enrich the discussion and enhance the description of the interpretation process. Different types of echoing are demonstrated and examined. The analysis also suggests that untruthfulness may serve mainly as a cue to the presence of irony, rather than as an essential component of this phenomenon. (shrink)

The question as to what makes something “fake” is not an ordinary one. It bears traces of the very beginning of philosophy, where Plato faced the need to discern between the true and the false clai...

Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of groups. First, the existence of mutually supporting, rather than antagonistic, interactants is sufficient to constitute a “social group.” Second, conflict does not necessarily mark group boundaries but can also exist within an ingroup. Third, psychological representations of social groups do not only trace, but also perpetuate the existence of groups.

Despite his commitment to freedom, Leibniz’ philosophy is also founded on pre-established harmony. Understanding the life of the individual as a spiritual automaton led Leibniz to refer to the puzzle of the way out of determinism as the Labyrinth of Freedom. Leibniz claimed that infinite complexity is the reason why it is impossible to prove a contingent truth. But by means of Leibniz’ calculus, it actually can be shown in a finite number of steps how to calculate a summation of (...) infinite parts. It appears that the analogy Leibniz drew between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of contingent truths did more harm than good. A solution consistent with Leibniz’ perception of infinity is proposed. Alongside the existence of the aforementioned analogy, it is based on a disanalogy between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of infinitely complex truths. This is a disanalogy that Leibniz had already used to solve the Labyrinth of Continuum which he declared more than once could, like the Labyrinth of Freedom, be solved by means of the nature of infinity. The solution of both labyrinths is based on the fictitiousness of the infinitesimal. (shrink)

The question of what role sex plays in evolution is still open despite decades of research. It has often been assumed that sex should facilitate the increase in fitness. Hence, the fact that it may break down highly favorable genetic combinations has been seen as a problem. Here, we consider an alternative approach. We define a measure that represents the ability of alleles to perform well across different combinations and, using numerical iterations within a classical population-genetic framework, show that selection (...) in the presence of sex favors this ability in a highly robust manner. We also show that the mechanism responsible for this effect has been out of the purview of previous theory, because it operates during the evolutionary transient, and that the breaking down of favorable genetic combinations is an integral part of it. Implications of these results and more to evolutionary theory are discussed. (shrink)

Im November 1672 schloss Leibniz, dass ein Kontinuum nicht aus Punkten besteht. Der Beweis, der als Diagonal-Paradox Bekanntheit erlangte, wurde von Leibniz vorgebracht, nachdem er die Existenz einer unendlichen Zahl verneint hatte. Vor kurzem haben mehrere Kommentatoren darzustellen versucht, dass der Leibniz'sche Beweis, unter dem Aspekt von Cantors Mengenlehre und seiner Lehre von den Kardinalzahlen gesehen, nicht stichhaltig sei. In diesem Artikel unternehme ich den Versuch, die philosophischen Annahmen, denen Leibniz' Gebrauch des Diagonal-Paradox unterliegt, offenzulegen, um zu zeigen, dass eine (...) solche Kritik unmöglich ist. Die Kritik gründet sich auf die Forderung, zwischen zwei Wegen, Größen miteinander zu vergleichen, zu unterscheiden; jedoch hatte Leibniz solch eine Unterscheidung schon im Sinn, die er 1672 aber vermeiden wollte. Gegen Ende 1670 dachte Leibniz, dass ein Weg existiere, ein Kontinuum aus Punkten durch eine Unterscheidung zwischen der Ausdehnung eines Körpers und seiner Größe zusammenzusetzen. Diese Unterscheidung erlaubte es Leibniz ebenfalls, verschiedene Größen gleichzusetzen und somit dem Diagonal-Paradox auszuweichen. Im November 1672 versuchte Leibniz jedoch, diese Unterscheidung zwischen Ausdehnung und Größe zu vermeiden, weil er davon überzeugt war, dass eine unendliche Zahl nicht möglich ist, was ihn dazu brachte, den Punkt als einen Bestandteil des Kontinuums zu verneinen. (shrink)

State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel explores the relations between post-Holocaust Jewish thought and postcolonial thought through the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In the last decade, thinkers have criticized Levinas for his Eurocentrism; however, author Elad Lapidot argues that Levinas anticipated this critique and, from the 1960s onward, began setting the foundations for decolonial Jewish thought-and for decolonial Zionism. State of Others offers an innovative analysis of Levinas's intellectual project as articulated around a turn in the year 1968. (...) This turn relates to the relationship between Judaism and Western civilization. Prior to 1968, Levinas considered the historical Jewish collective, Israel, as the avant-garde of Western humanism. After 1968, with the rise of decolonial discourse, Levinas's concept of Israel shifts roles and becomes the paradigmatic victim of Western imperialism. State of Others demonstrates how Levinas simultaneously developed his dual narratives-before and after the pivotal year of 1968-across his philosophical and Jewish writings, with a special emphasis on the Talmudic Readings. It presents for the first time a cohesive overview of Levinas's writings, both early and late, as interconnected components of a singular intellectual endeavor. The ethical principles concerning the other, as articulated by Levinas, are conceptually linked to his reflections on the State of Israel. (shrink)

A Hobbesian utopia might sound paradoxical. Hobbes never prescribed a utopia per se, and he is well-known for his practical and pragmatic approach to human nature and to politics. Yet, this article identifies several utopian elements in Hobbes, starting with the ways in which his contemporaries thought of his work as utopian. Following Galileo and others, Hobbes might have been part of a utopian moment, or at least believed that he was, especially due to his novel and historic philosophy. Behind (...) his dystopian description of the state of nature there is a utopian vision of a civilized, peaceful, and industrious society, the result of true moral philosophy. Finally, the differences between Hobbes and Plato notwithstanding, there might be one overlooked similarity: if Plato designed a republic where Socrates would not have been persecuted, Hobbes might have designed a commonwealth that would produce and allow future Galileos to work without hindrance. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 166 - 187 The connection that Hobbes makes between reason, method, and science renders reason a faculty that is not only natural but also acquired and even somewhat exclusive. This idea might pose a serious problem to Hobbes’s political theory, as it relies heavily on the successful use of reason. This problem is demonstrated in Hobbes’s account of the laws of nature, for which some equality in human reason is clearly needed, but Hobbes (...) is not explicit about the relationship between that and the more advanced form of reason that eventually leads to science. This article suggests that Hobbes’s account of reason is developmental. The seed of natural reason is common to everyone, and is sufficient for the establishment of the commonwealth. Thereafter, peace and leisure provide the necessary conditions for developing the rational skill, that is, fulfilling the human potential for rationality. Consequently, under the right circumstances, knowledge and science are expected to progress dramatically for the benefit of society, an open-ended vision which Hobbes nevertheless leaves implicit. Following Hobbes’s account of reason and philosophy closely can therefore show that he might have had great hopes for humankind, and that in this sense he was a key member of an English Enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper applies the argumentative perspective to the concept of scientific fact by combining the rhetorical and the sociological perspectives. The scientific fact is presented as an entity having both an epistemic and a social meaning, and the scientific paper is presented as a discourse that has both an epistemic value and role related to knowledge and to the description of the ‘world,’ and a social value, fulfilling social roles within its relevant discourse community. The discussion leads to some insights (...) into the connection between scientific language and facts. Scientific language reflects the degree of facticity of the utterance at every stage: various linguistic and discursive elements reflect the current factual status of the utterance. This conception of fact is dynamic and open to discussion, and it is presented from the author’s point of view. On the other hand, language, or the choice of language usage, creates facticity in the sense of social acceptance: by using language, the researcher reports on his belief that what he is describing is indeed a fact. The essence of the scientific paper as an argumentative text is that its point of departure is the faith of the speaker in the facticity of the new information, and its rhetorical aim is to convince the audience, based on its disciplinary rationality, to accept that same faith and thereby usher the new claim into the shared disciplinary body of knowledge. (shrink)

This article explores the challenges of intercultural dialogue between European and non-European epistemologies through a study of Heidegger’s conversation with a Japanese thinker. It discusses the inherent challenges and potential failures in such dialogues, emphasizing the differences in language and thought systems, and concludes by considering the ethical implications of these dialogues and the necessity of an “ethics of not speaking”.

Sartre’s thinking in L’être et le néant is driven by a conceptual choice that radically breaks with the philosophical spirit of Sein und Zeit and, in the same gesture, problematizes it. This rupture involves three moments. The first moment appears when Sartre transforms Heidegger’s emphasis on ‘being and time’ into ‘being and nothingness’. The second moment occurs when that transformation effectuates a conceptual shift which results in the inversion of the relationship that Heidegger establishes between anxiety and freedom: whereas in (...) Sein und Zeit anxiety is the precondition of freedom, in Sartre freedom becomes the precondition of anxiety. Finally, in the third moment, the absolute primacy of spontaneity in L’être et le néant ultimately serves as the cornerstone for Sartre’s reevaluation of truth, challenging the fundamental concept of ‘Geworfenheit’ in Sein und Zeit. Unlike Heidegger’s view where truth (alètheia) coincides with existence, in L’être et le néant, truth is portrayed as an ongoing struggle: consciousness must consistently fight against it in bad faith or forcefully liberate it from bad faith. Together, these three moments constitute the primary components of Sartre’s originality in relation to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. (shrink)

This article reflects on the work of Emmanuel Levinas as a textual site for the critique of the notion of Jewish epistemic difference. The first part discusses critical readings of Levinas, which indicated how his Jewish otherness grounds powerful sameness, of oppressive and imperial nature. The strongest thrust of this critique is characterized as postcolonial. The second part suggests a hermeneutics perspective on Levinas’s work for a reading whereby Levinas himself anticipated contemporary critique and in response to it developed what (...) can be called a decolonial notion of Jewish difference—“decolonial Israel.” The third part offers a reading in Levinas’s work that indicates the horizon for this possible reading. (shrink)

Different kinds of fakery and imposture can be differentiated by means of the imaginary regimes within which a performative simulation unfolds. Engaging with Sartre’s analysis of the imaginary, we will identify three such regimes, calling them the objective, the reflective, and the phantasmatic. Each of these regimes involves its own kind of image and accordingly a specific type of simulation. It is proper to the objective image to attain dissimulation of the self by replacing the real with fiction. In the (...) reflective regime, the real is not substituted by the imaginary, but rather contaminated by it. Finally, whereas the objective and the reflective regimes operate within the sphere of intentional simulation, the phantasmatic image carries us beyond Sartre’s findings, as it shapes the very structure of pre-reflective disclosedness which provides the background for our projects. (shrink)

This paper will revitalize the notion of force in Sartre’s phenomenology by reinterpreting thrown-projection as propulsion. From there, Sartre’s analysis of agency will be explored as regards the constitutive moments pertaining to the dynamics of striving. We will see that such striving relates to Deleuze’s ideas on how bodily forces take consciousness into possession. In the final steps of the analysis, it will turn out that freedom is dependent on a rupture that emerges from self-determination of consciousness, which is itself (...) not of the order of freedom. (shrink)

This book reflects on the role that the opposition to anti-Semitism has been playing in shaping political philosophy after the Holocaust. Its premise is that in post-Holocaust philosophy anti-Semitism has become a paradigm of evil ideology or politics, a negative Politeia. The analysis proceeds through critical readings in prominent political philosophers, from Adorno, Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt, to Alain Badiou and most recently Jean-Luc Nancy, as well as the debates and contemporary scholarship around them. Through these readings the (...) book develops a critical observation, demonstrating how post-Holocaust philosophy has identified the fundamental, epistemological evil of anti-Semitic thought not in thinking against Jews, but in thinking of Jews. In other words, so the book’s claim, what philosophy has been denouncing as anti-Semitic is the figure of “the Jew” in thought. The book thus reveals how it is paradoxically the opposition to anti-Semitism that has been generating in post-Holocaust philosophy a rejection of Jewish thought. With respect to this rejection, this book makes two claims: first, that in rejecting Jewish thought the opposition to anti-Semitism comes dangerously close to anti-Semitism; second, that at work in this rejection is a problematic understanding of the relations between politics and thought, i.e. a problematic “political epistemology”. It is the critique of this political epistemology, as foundational for contemporary political thought, which is the ultimate aim of the book. The book’s original contribution consists in offering the first systematic analysis of the contemporary philosophical problem of anti-Semitism and the opposition to anti-Semitism. It intervenes in current conversations on the relations between Western philosophy, anti-Semitism and Jewish thought, the relation between politics and truth, and the relations between religion and race, among others in the context of the critiques of orientalism and secularism as well as post-colonial theory. (shrink)

Whenever we think of impostors, we tend to think of liars. Yet impostures cannot be phenomenologically reduced to lies. Every lie presupposes a distinction between true and false, and it operates through a negation of reality, presenting falsity as truth and vice versa. An imposture, on the other hand, seeks to erase the distinction between true and false altogether. An impostor constructs a fiction that aims at substituting reality. In this process, an entire network of lies is put to work (...) in order to attain the ontological status of the real. This results in a dynamic that deprives truths of their authority, while making untruths highly potent in terms of their capacity to produce effects. (shrink)

Robert Wallace (1697–1771) was a leading minister of the Church of Scotland, but he remains a largely overlooked figure in the literature. Nevertheless, his participation in philosophical and theological debates offers a glimpse of the complex positions of the Scottish clergy – and of Scottish moderation on its own terms. Wallace’s moderation was evident, for example, in his opposition both to radical deism and orthodox dogmatism. Yet what makes Wallace’s case particularly interesting is that he described himself as a ‘moderate (...) freethinker’ in a letter to David Hume, while distinguishing elsewhere the ‘moderate’ and ‘sober’ freethinkers from the dangerously sceptical ones. Exploring his consistent statements on this issue in various writings throughout his career, this article investigates the self-identified moderation of Wallace – in opposition, for example, to his rival freethinker William Dudgeon – and thus the clergy’s attempt to use this category in the shaping of their vision of the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper examines Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical development from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being as a self-critique and revised understanding of Martin Heidegger. It focuses on later Levinas’s analysis of language in terms of the difference between Saying and Said. For Levinas, the Said represents the betrayal of ethical Saying into ontological essence. This echoes Heidegger’s notion of the forgetfulness of Being in beings. However, Levinas critiques Heidegger’s own philosophy as remaining within the Said. The paper explores three strategies (...) of “unsaying” that Levinas discerns in Western philosophy to disrupt ontological Said: ontology itself, skepticism, and philosophical conversation. It argues that Levinas ultimately seeks an alternative “prophetic” mode of language beyond philosophy that enacts difference, which the paper relates to Talmud. The paper claims that the later Levinas no longer simply opposes Greek to Jewish thought, but rather seeks to deploy a specifically Jewish form of language to interrupt Western metaphysics from within. (shrink)

This essay concerns the idea of nature in Judaism. It is a part of my ongoing reflection on the relations between our ecological concerns and the various cosmological, anthropological, and ontological conceptions in our different intellectual traditions, such as Jewish traditions of text and thought. I examine how contemporary philosophy has interpreted the meaning of nature in Judaism, in contrast with Greek civilization, focusing on the works of Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. There are three different and competing (...) constellations of the Greco-Jewish contrast, as defined by what is criticized and what is affirmed: one is pro-Greek and anti-Jewish; another is pro-Jewish and anti-Greek; and another, the most complex, is anti-Greco-Jewish and pro- some other alternative. This essay does not simply attribute each of the three constellations to Heidegger, Jonas, or Levinas; rather, it shows how a careful hermeneutics can reveal more than one constellation in each thinker, depending on the text or reading. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is dedicated to Elliot Wolfson’s new book on Heidegger and Kabbalah. Wolfson’s project is read here as a philosophical reflection and scholarly intervention on the “and,” that is, on pluralism in thought. Wolfson juxtaposes Heideggerian and kabbalistic corpora as expressing the same conception of non-totalitarian, plural thought, and criticizes both Heidegger and Kabbalah for betraying this pluralism in their ethnocentric tendencies. As a scholarly “ethical corrective,” Wolfson indicates in both corpora a countermeasure: A Gnostic disengagement of thought (...) from politics, in favor of poetics. The essay critiques this corrective by pointing at the different constellations of Gnosis and politics in Heidegger and Kabbalah. (shrink)

Gnosis und spätantiker Geist. Teil II ist Jonas’ unvollendetes Buch. Seine Situation ist bemerkenswert und zweifellos verwirrend. Im Allgemeinen wurde es weitgehend vergessen.