The connection between the concept of dialogue and the philosophy of education has a long history in Western culture, going back to Socrates’s dialogues with his fellow Athenians some 2,500 years ago. One recent example of the extensive corpus of literature on this topic is Empowering Dialogues in Humanistic Education,1 edited by Nimrod Aloni, that explores the notion of educational dialogues as discussed by thinkers ranging from Confucius to Janusz Korczac, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paulo Freire and, most recently, Nel Noddings. In (...) the course of the twentieth century, dialogue has come to be viewed as an educational and cultural phenomenon whose promotion will ensure a humanistic, pluralistic, and humane model of... (shrink)

Eli Alshanetsky considers how we make our thoughts clear to ourselves in the process of putting them into words and examines the paradox of those difficult cases where we do not already know what we are struggling to articulate.

This article targets the use of unclaimed bodies at American medical schools. Despite a growing sensitivity to the ethics of whole body donation in the field of clinical anatomy, unclaimed bodies continue to be used in teaching and research across the United States. I argue that the ongoing use of unclaimed bodies is unethical on the basis of its disregard for autonomy and consent, its potential to harm various individuals and groups, considerations of justice, and the threat it poses to (...) public trust in medical institutions. Additionally, I show how the best available defenses of the use of unclaimed bodies fail to be ethically persuasive. I argue that whole body donation ethically requires either the prior consent of the deceased or the explicit permission of their next of kin. Finally, I offer practical suggestions for institutions transitioning away from the use of unclaimed bodies. (shrink)

Quantifier variance is a well-known view in contemporary metaontology, but it remains very widely misunderstood by critics. Here we briefly and clearly explain the metasemantics of quantifier variance and distinguish between modest and strong forms of variance (Section I), explain some key applications (Section II), clear up some misunderstandings and address objections (Section III), and point the way toward future directions of quantifier-variance-related research (Section IV).

In 1986, Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his victory over “the powers of death and degradation, and to support the struggle of good against evil in the world.” Soon after, he and his wife, Marion, created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. A project at the heart of the Foundation’s mission is its Ethics Prize—a remarkable essay-writing contest through which thousands of students from colleges across the country are encouraged to confront ethical issues of personal (...) significance. The Ethics Prize has grown exponentially over the past twenty years. “Of all the projects our Foundation has been involved in, none has been more exciting than this opportunity to inspire young students to examine the ethical aspect of what they have learned in their personal lives and from their teachers in the classroom,” writes Elie Wiesel. Readers will find essays on Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, sweatshops and globalization, and the political obligations of the mothers of Argentina’s Disappeared. Other essays tell of a white student who joins a black gospel choir, a young woman who learns to share in Ladakh, and the outsize implications of reporting on something as small as a cracked windshield. Readers will be fascinated by the ways in which essays on conflict, conscience, memory, illness, and God overlap and resonate with one another. These essays reflect those who are “sensitive to the sufferings and defects that confront a society yearning for guidance and eager to hear ethical voices,” writes Elie Wiesel. “And they are a beacon for what our schools must realize as an essential component of a true education.”. (shrink)

In recent years, inter-medial studies have attracted increasing attention in arts theory. The notion of 'inter-mediality' presupposes that each established art - such as theatre, painting, and cinema - indicates the existence of a particular medium, which preserves its distinct features in translations from art to art and, especially, in its combinations with others in single works. Nonetheless, this field of research is presupposed already in the traditional studies of 'ekphrasis', which focus on the verbal accounts of nonverbal works of (...) art; and in Wagner's notion of Gesamtkuntswerk. This renewed interest generated new fields of research, such as (a) the likelihood of the arts reflecting common grounds; (b) the necessity of a shared metalanguage; (b) the possibility of inter-medial translation; and (d) the inter-medial coexistence within a single work of art, without hindering the reading, interpreting and experiencing abilities of receivers. In honor of Eli Rozik, Ph.D., professor emeritus, former head of the Department of Theatre Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University, this collection provides overviews of all these theoretical issues, and tackles the contemporary practical questions that arise from attempts to transgress the boundaries between the established disciplines of arts studies. Considering first the theoretical aspects of inter-art, inter-mediality, and nonverbal literacy, Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts goes on to discuss by means of performance analysis; dialogues between the arts within a single work; and correspondences between visual and auditory stimuli in musical contexts. It concludes with a discussion of practical examples of inter-mediality in religious representations, official processions, and public performances. (shrink)

Proposition I--Every event has determinate characters in terms of which it can be described; it is thus the substantial correlate of at least one proposition having the form "This is an X.".

English summary: The Spitzer Manuscript is one of the oldest Sanskrit manuscripts found on the Silk Road. The work preserved in it is unique; no further manuscripts of it have been discovered so far, nor is it transmitted in Tibetan or Chinese translations. The present volume contains an introduction which summarizes previous research and discusses grammatical, lexical and palaeographical aspects of the work, together with an outline of its content. It is followed by a complete facsimile edition of the fragments (...) accompanied by transliterations. These are supplemented by transcriptions of some fragments which are no longer available, recovered from the estate of the Indologist Dr. Moritz Spitzer. A concordance juxtaposes the earlier and present-day arrangements of the fragments, and an extensive character table documents the peculiarities of the Ku'a'a-Brahma script used in the manuscript. A complete word index and a study which aims at reconstructing the last part of the manuscript conclude the volume. As well as Buddhist scholastics the work also deals with a number of non-Buddhist topics, such as a theory of Vaise'ika qualities completely unknown from other sources it contains, inter alia, the oldest list of books of the Mahabharata and an enumeration of the sixty-four arts and sciences. The last part of the work is devoted to dialectics. German description: Das Spitzer-Manuskript ist eine der altesten Sanskrithandschriften, die an der Seidenstrasse gefunden wurde. Das in ihm erhaltene Werk ist ein Unikum; bis jetzt wurden keine weiteren Manuskripte dieses Werkes entdeckt und es ist auch nicht in tibetischer oder chinesischer Ubersetzung uberliefert. Der vorliegende Band enthalt eine Einleitung, die den Forschungsstand zusammenfasst, grammatische, lexikalische und palaographische Aspekte des Werks diskutiert und eine Inhaltsubersicht bietet. \nHierauf folgt eine vollstandige Faksimileausgabe der Fragmente zusammen mit ihren Transliterationen. Diese werden erganzt durch Transkriptionen einiger verloren gegangener Fragmente, die dem Nachlass des Indologen Dr. Moritz Spitzer entnommen wurden. Eine Konkordanz stellt die heutige und fruhere Anordnung der Fragmente gegenuber; eine ausfuhrliche Zeichentabelle dokumentiert die Besonderheiten der Ku'a'a-Brahma -Schrift des Manuskripts. Ein vollstandiger Wortindex und eine Studie, die die Rekonstruktion des letzten Teils des Manuskripts zum Ziel hat, beschliessen den Band. Neben Themen der buddhistischen Scholastik behandelt das Werk auch eine Zahl nicht-buddhistischer Themen, wie eine Vaise'ika-Theorie der Eigenschaften, die aus anderen Quellen nicht bekannt ist; ferner enthalt es u. a. die alteste Liste der Bucher des Mahabharata und eine Aufzahlung der vierundsechzig Kunste und Wissenschaften. Der letzte Teil des Werkes ist der Dialektik gewidmet. (shrink)

In this book, Eli Hirsch focuses on identity through time, first with respect to ordinary bodies, then underlying matter, and eventually persons.

I argue that scientific and poetic modes of objectivity are perspectival duals: 'views' from and onto basic natural forces, respectively. I ground this analysis in a general account of objectivity, not in terms of either 'universal' or 'inter-subjective' validity, but as receptivity to basic features of reality. Contra traditionalists, bare truth, factual knowledge, and universally valid representation are not inherently valuable. But modern critics who focus primarily on the self-expressive aspect of science are also wrong to claim that our knowledge (...) is or should be ultimately mediated by ourselves. In objective science, we represent nature as a field of phenomena determined by and within explanatorily-basic physical structures that encode the causal impact of elemental physical forces. These causally-basic forces hence ground the possibility of objective scientific theory, even though (I argue) they are systematically excluded from its representational contents. I show how my notions of force and field emerge partly through my effort to naturalize concepts of 'God' and 'Laws' in 17th-century natural philosophy. In science, we use the structure of basic forces' impact to see corresponding objects. We do not see these forces themselves—and this relates to the 'transcendence' of 'God'. I supplement this historical analysis by critiquing standard accounts of objectivity, and by synthesizing elements from neo-Kantian epistemology and current 'structural' realism into a view that I call 'dynamic structuralism'. Finally, I argue that physics systematically relies on passive characterizations of phenomena like inertia and impressed force. Dynamic alternatives that are just as empirically adequate are possible, but they are non-scientific. Poetic objectivity involves a direct presentation of nature as an order of interacting forces. I elaborate first by developing a novel theory of the relation between beauty and sublimity, mediated by a basic category of 'sensory force' (e.g. a 'singing' tone in a beautiful melody). I then describe the interaction between sensory and affective dimensions of aesthetic experience, in relation to an original historical analysis of passion and 'disinterestedness' in Kant, Schiller and Nietzsche. I synthesize these lines of analysis into a critique of the role of 'expression' in art. I also resist 'spectator'-centric aesthetics, in this connection, by developing an account of artistic objectivity in dialogue with Ruskin's critique of the 'pathetic fallacy'. I contrast artistic objectivity with Romantic ideals of self-expression, while elaborating its positive relation to certain currents within Victorian and Modernist aesthetics, including Imagists' stress on 'exteriority'. My project creatively extends Nietzsche's view that philosophical and scientific theories are 'perspectival' expressions of theorists' drives. It is a virtue of Nietzsche's account that he takes the outlet of strong human drives in creative acts of theorizing to be just one among many higher modes of 'will to power' in nature—many of which are totally impersonal. But Nietzsche is still too focused on self-expression or willing one's own power. Objective science involves external forces' 'expression' in and through us, not just 'expressing' our own powers. And Nietzsche's vitalistic 'will to power' must be replaced by a basic ontology that better accommodates inorganic phenomena, like the 'lawful' order of celestial motions. Thus I aim to de-anthropomorphize and 'de-organicize' post-Kantian notions of willful striving and organic development, while preserving for force the primary ontological and evaluative status that theorists from Schiller and Goethe to Schelling and Schlegel to Emerson and Nietzsche attributed to will or to life. (shrink)

Eli Maor examines the role of infinity in mathematics and geometry and its cultural impact on the arts and sciences. He evokes the profound intellectual impact the infinite has exercised on the human mind--from the "horror infiniti" of the Greeks to the works of M. C. Escher from the ornamental designs of the Moslems, to the sage Giordano Bruno, whose belief in an infinite universe led to his death at the hands of the Inquisition. But above all, the book describes (...) the mathematician's fascination with infinity--a fascination mingled with puzzlement. "Maor explores the idea of infinity in mathematics and in art and argues that this is the point of contact between the two, best exemplified by the work of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, six of whose works are shown here in beautiful color plates."--Los Angeles Times "[Eli Maor's] enthusiasm for the topic carries the reader through a rich panorama."--Choice "Fascinating and enjoyable.... places the ideas of infinity in a cultural context and shows how they have been espoused and molded by mathematics."--Science. (shrink)

Einstein Versus Bohr is unlike other books on science written by experts for non-experts, because it presents the history of science in terms of problems, conflicts, contradictions, and arguments. Science normally "keeps a tidy workshop." Professor Sachs breaks with convention by taking us into the theoretical workshop, giving us a problem-oriented account of modern physics, an account that concentrates on underlying concepts and debate. The book contains mathematical explanations, but it is so-designed that the whole argument can be followed with (...) the math omitted. Professor Sachs' story begins with classical and nineteenth century physics, describes the early discoveries in particle theory, and introduces the "old" quantum theory, which evolved into the quantum mechanics of the Copenhagen School. Such important ideas as the Einstein Photon Box experiment and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox, and Schrodinger's Cat Paradox are clearly expounded, followed by a completely fresh explanation of relativity in conceptual terms, showing how apparent paradoxes can be removed by Einstein's own interpretation, especially that of his later years. Professor Sachs gives a detailed comparison of the fundamentals of the quantum and relativity theories, suggesting how the contradictions might be resolved. In an epilogue, he makes suggestions, with reference to religious notions, Taoism, and Buber's theory of I-Thou, for generalizing Einstein's approach beyond physics. (shrink)

Applying fresh tools from economics to explain puzzling behaviors of religious radicals: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish; violent and benign. How do radical religious sects run such deadly terrorist organizations? Hezbollah, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Taliban all began as religious groups dedicated to piety and charity. Yet once they turned to violence, they became horribly potent, executing campaigns of terrorism deadlier than those of their secular rivals. In Radical, Religious, and Violent, Eli Berman approaches the question using the economics of organizations. (...) He first dispels some myths: radical religious terrorists are not generally motivated by the promise of rewards in the afterlife (including the infamous seventy-two virgins) or even by religious ideas in general. He argues that these terrorists (even suicide terrorists) are best understood as rational altruists seeking to help their own communities. Yet despite the vast pool of potential recruits—young altruists who feel their communities are repressed or endangered—there are less than a dozen highly lethal terrorist organizations in the world capable of sustained and coordinated violence that threatens governments and makes hundreds of millions of civilians hesitate before boarding an airplane. What's special about these organizations, and why are most of their followers religious radicals? Drawing on parallel research on radical religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Berman shows that the most lethal terrorist groups have a common characteristic: their leaders have found a way to control defection. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Taliban, for example, built loyalty and cohesion by means of mutual aid, weeding out “free riders” and producing a cadre of members they could rely on. The secret of their deadly effectiveness lies in their resilience and cohesion when incentives to defect are strong.These insights suggest that provision of basic social services by competent governments adds a critical, nonviolent component to counterterrorism strategies. It undermines the violent potential of radical religious organizations without disturbing free religious practice, being drawn into theological debates with Jihadists, or endangering civilians. (shrink)

Il s'agit là d'un livre sur la lecture et l'écriture. Son véritable thème est cependant l'impertinence, voire l'impossibilité. A quoi bon, en effet, écrire sur la lecture quand il suffit de lire? Et que peut-on dire de plus sur l'écriture si l'on écrit déjà? Ainsi ce livre ne comportera-t-il, à proprement parler, aucune matière, et ne transmettra-t-il essentiellement qu'un mouvement : celui de la lecture des testes des autres et de l'écriture qu'elle entraînera. Seul le mouvement peut changer une impossibilité (...) en possibilité, voire en nécessité. Ayant compris, dans une vie antérieure de lecteur, l'impossibilité du Tractatus de Wittgenstein comme livre de pensée, on touchera ici à la nécessité qu'il soit écrit. Puis on explorera, avec " Pierre Ménard, auteur, du Quichotte ", une curieuse possibilité, celle que cette nécessité d'écrire soit le fait du lecteur et non pas de l'auteur. Enfin on aboutira, avec Joseph Joubert et Maurice Blanchot, à l'impossibilité d'écrire, c'est-à-dire à la question de la possibilité de la littérature posée enfin avant celle de la philosophie. C'est en effet avec Blanchot que s'ouvrira le passage entre la philosophie et la littérature et que l'engin de l'écriture atteindra sa " vitesse de libération ". Il prendra alors tout son sens d'une écriture postérieure qui, bien qu'elle fasse suite à l'impossibilité de la pensée, n'en a plus forcément besoin du " pré-texte ". C'est le moment où l'on conçoit, avec Blanchot, " que, dans une œuvre littéraire, on puisse exprimer des pensées aussi difficiles et d'une forme aussi abstraite que dans un ouvrage philosophique, mais à condition qu'elles ne soient pas encore pensées ". (shrink)

No philosopher has argued as forcefully and as convincingly for the fallibility of human knowledge as Hans Albert has done in his classic Traktat über kritische Vernunft. He exposed all those who, through a process of immunization, make some chosen aspects of their knowledge impervious to all criticism.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What makes our utterances mean what they do? In this work I formulate and justify a structural constraint on possible answers to this key question in the philosophy of language, and I show that accepting this constraint leads naturally to the adoption of an algebraic formalization of truth-theoretic semantics. I develop such a formalization, and show that applying algebraic methodology to the theory of meaning yields important insights into the nature of language. ;The constraint I propose is, roughly, this: the (...) meaning of an utterance of a natural language sentence is derived from the place of that sentence within a system that includes other sentences, and is structured in virtue of primitive semantic facts about complete sentences. This constraint calls for a formal semantics program where the meaning of natural language sentences is represented by an appropriate assignment of the elements of an algebraic structure to sentences, an assignment that represents facts concerning complete sentences. I call the above constraint 'The Algebraic Thesis', and the corresponding formal semantics program 'Algebraic Semantics.' ;I introduce AT by carving it out of the holistic views of language of Quine and Davidson, and I show that it is independent of other important features of these philosophers' views. I then argue for AT, taking into account recent work by Brandom, Dummett, Fodor and Lepore, Gaifman and Perry. In developing Algebraic Semantics I present structures of two basic types: Boolean algebras and cylindric algebras; these structures are construed in the context of AT in a novel way: they are treated as applying to classes of sentences as numbers apply to physical objects in measurement. Applying algebraic methodology to formal semantics and to the theory of meaning, I develop these results: ; An account of the semantics of necessity and possibility that avoids both Quine's dismissal of these notions and their reduction by David Lewis to quantification over possible worlds; ; The application of the model-theoretic notion of expansion to capture the process of our learning progressively more of the meaning of expressions in our first languages. (shrink)

According to one view, death is bad for the one who dies. The challenge for this view is to explain exactly why and when death is bad for the one who dies. According to an alternative view, death is not actually bad for the one who dies. There is a third alternative, according to which the thought of one’s own death elicits an experience that reveals the horror of one’s own death in a way that is ineffable. This paper explores (...) this third alternative. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

Fictionalism is the view that a serious intellectual inquiry need not aim at truth. It came to prominence in philosophy in 1980, when Hartry Field argued that mathematics does not have to be true to be good, and Bas van Fraassen argued that the aim of science is not truth but empirical adequacy. Both suggested that the acceptance of a mathematical or scientific theory need not involve belief in its content. Thus the distinctive commitment of fictionalism is that acceptance in (...) a given domain of inquiry need not be truth-normed, and that the acceptance of a sentence from the associated region of discourse need not involve belief in its content. In metaphysics fictionalism is now widely regarded as an option worthy of serious consideration. This volume represents a major benchmark in the debate: it brings together an impressive international team of contributors, whose essays represent the state of the art in various areas of metaphysical controversy, relating to language, mathematics, modality, truth, belief, ontology, and morality. (shrink)

Rather than a return to Bergson, the ‘Kyoto manifesto’ argues for a renewed, expanded Bergsonism: a philosophical inquiry that lives up to the methodological standards set by Bergson, even if this implies prolonging some of his intuitions in different directions—possibly against himself. Several aspects of this endeavour are examined in turn: the meaning of ‘intuition’ and the prospects of speculative empiricism, the ontological scope of scientific theories, emergentism and the virtual, the relevance of space-time for duration, the place of metaphysical (...) imagination and its capacity to probe the utopian potential of a truly open science. (shrink)

A sense of unity -- Basic objects : a reply to Xu -- Objectivity without objects -- The vagueness of identity -- Quantifier variance and realism -- Against revisionary ontology -- Comments on Theodore Sider's four dimensionalism -- Sosa's existential relativism -- Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sense -- Ontological arguments : interpretive charity and quantifier variance -- Language, ontology, and structure -- Ontology and alternative languages.