In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E. R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?" Praised by reviewers as "an event in modern Greek scholarship" and "a book which it would (...) be difficult to over-praise," _The Greeks and the Irrational _was Volume 25 of the Sather Classical Lectures series. (shrink)

Bioethics has made a compelling case for the role of experience and empirical research in ethics. This may explain why the movement for empirical ethics has such a firm grounding in bioethics. However, the theoretical framework according to which empirical research contributes to ethics—and the specific role it can or should play—remains manifold and unclear. In this paper, we build from pragmatic theory stressing the importance of experience and outcomes in establishing the meaning of ethics concepts. We then propose three (...) methodological steps according to which the meaning of ethics concepts can be refined based on experience and empirical research: function identification, function enrichment, and function testing. These steps are explained and situated within the broader commitment of pragmatic ethics to a perspective of moral growth and human flourishing. We hope that this proposal will give specific direction to the bridging of theoretical and empirical research in ethics and thus support stronger actualization of ethics concepts. (shrink)

This book comprises essays that focus on a range of thinkers that challenge the boundaries of the just war tradition. The ethics of war scholarship has become a rigid and highly disciplined activity, closely associated with a very particular canon of thinkers. This volume moves beyond this by presenting thinkers not typically regarded as part of that canon, but who have interesting and potentially important things to say about the ethics of war. The book presents twenty profile essays on an (...) eclectic cast of heretics, humanists, and radicals, from Epictetus to Rosa Luxemburg to Frantz Fanon and Judith Butler. The book asks whether there is a good reason for the marginalisation of these thinkers and what ethics of war scholars might benefit from engaging with them. Some of these thinkers engage directly with-to augment or criticise-the just war tradition, while others contribute to military thinking across the ages and push the boundaries of what was acceptable in war. Many proffer alternative moral frameworks regarding the legitimacy of political violence. The present volume thus invites scholars to reconsider the ethics of war in a way that challenges the standard delineation between just war theory, realism, and pacifism, and to reflect on how those positions might inform our own approach to these matters. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics of war, war studies and International Relations. (shrink)

The chemical nature of element 72, subsequently named hafnium, is generally regarded as a prediction from Bohr's theory of the periodic system and hence as a prediction from quantum theory. It is argued that both of these views and in particular the latter are mistaken. The claim in favour of Bohr's theory is weakened by his accommodation of independent chemical arguments and the claim in favour of quantum theory is untenable since the prediction is not strictly deductive.

Ethics theory is highly valued to the point that some commentators have claimed that it has taken on a life of its own, with too much focus on the justification of moral judgment and not enough on the needs of users of such theory. Building from various personal experiences of interdisciplinary ethics collaborative developments and empirical research projects, the wisdom gleaned by others, as well as insights from pragmatist theory, this article offers five (non-exhaustive) expectations for ethics theory from the (...) standpoint of a user. The article is intended to prompt broad reflection on expectations toward ethics theory and why user perspectives should be considered early in the development of ethics scholarship. (shrink)

The introduction considers the state of scholarship on empiricism as a philosophical and historical category, particularly as it pertains to experimental philosophy. It concludes that empiricism properly understood is a rich category encompassing epistemic, semantic, methodological, experimental, and moral elements. Its richness makes it a suitable lens through which to account for actual historical complexity. The introduction relates the category to the work of Sir Isaac Newton, who influenced all of empiricism’s elements.

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics, and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications and limitations. This new scholarly debate includes not only economists, but also contributors from philosophy, cognitive psychology, legal studies, and public policy who can further illuminate the justification and moral implications of this method and specify alternative measures. These articles originally appeared in the Journal of Legal Studies. (...) Contributors: - Matthew D. Adler - Gary S. Becker - John Broome - Robert H. Frank - Robert W. Hahn - Lewis A. Kornhauser - Martha C. Nussbaum - Eric A. Posner - Richard A. Posner - Henry S. Richardson - Amartya Sen - Cass R. Sunstein - W. Kip Viscusi. (shrink)

Research on the perception of silence has led to insights regarding its positive effects on individuals. We conducted a series of studies during which individuals were exposed to several minutes of silence in different contexts. Participants were introduced to different social and environmental settings, either in a seminar room at a university or in a city garden, alone or in a group. Instructions across studies varied, as participants were exposed to real waiting situations, were asked to just think and to (...) explicitly experience the time interval without further instructions or following a session of Depth Relaxation Music Therapy (DRMT)/ Hypnomusictherapy (HMT). Silence was judged to significantly increase relaxation, improve mood states, and alter the perception of time and the orientation towards the present moment. We controlled for influences of trait variables, such as impulsivity, mindfulness, daydreaming, and time perspective. Findings empirically demonstrate that exposure to silence can be effective in therapeutic and educational contexts to promote relaxation and well-being. (shrink)

In this paper I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein’s claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the (...) Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity is the actualization of that disposition; a necessary condition for the actualization of the disposition is the actual obtaining of a relation between two bodies having the disposition. The cause of gravity is not essential to matter because God could have created matter without that disposition. Nevertheless, at least a part of the cause of gravity inheres in individual bodies and were there one body in the universe it would inhere in that body. On the other hand, the force of gravity is neither essential to matter nor inherent in matter, because (to repeat) it is the actualization of a shared disposition. A lone part-less particle would, thus, not generate a gravity field. Seeing this allows us to helpfully distinguish among a) accepting gravity as causally real; b) the cause(s) (e.g. the qualities of matter) of the properties of gravity; c) making claims about the mechanism or medium by which gravity is transmitted. This will help clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I present my argument in opposition to Andrew Janiak’s influential and fine 2007 paper. Along the way, I call attention to my disagreement with Janiak on a number of secondary issues (e.g. Janiak’s attribution to Newton of a distinction between ‘local’ and ‘distant’ action; Janiak’s reading of the “Letter to Bentley,” etc). (shrink)

Philosophy of Chemistry—A New Interdisciplinary Field? What could possibly be the connection between chemistry and philosophy, apart from the obvious superficial one of their both representing quests for knowledge? How do contemporary chemists and philosophers generally view one another? These are some of the questions I will try to put before going on to describe the connections that have recently been forged between these two seemingly very diverse fields of academic study.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi defies coherent interpretation. This is an inextricable part of the beauty and power of his work. The text – by which I mean the “Inner Chapters” of the text traditionally attributed to him, the authentic core of the book – is incomprehensible as a whole. It consists of shards, in a distinctive voice – a voice distinctive enough that its absence is plain in most or all of the “Outer” and “Miscellaneous” Chapters, and which I (...) will treat as the voice of a single author. Despite repeating imagery, ideas, style, and tone, these shards cannot be pieced together into a self-consistent philosophy. This lack of self-consistency is a positive feature of Zhuangzi. It is part of what makes him the great and unusual philosopher he is, defying reduction and summary. (shrink)

This article carefully analyzes a recent paper by Weisberg in which it is claimed that when Mendeleev discovered the periodic table he was not working as a modeler but instead as a theorist. I argue that Weisberg is mistaken in several respects and that the periodic table should be regarded as a classification, not as a theory. In the second part of the article an attempt is made to elevate the status of classifications by suggesting that they provide a form (...) of ‘side-ways explanation’. (shrink)

We are material things of a specific sort: animals of the primate species Homo sapiens. This is the view known as animalism. The most common reason for rejecting animalism is that it is has unattractive consequences about what it takes for philosophers to persist through time. If human animals are animals essentially, then our being animals implies that we are animals essentially. If they are animals accidentally, then animalism implies that we are animals only accidentally. Aristotelians say that an animal (...) is a compound of matter and form. Animalists accept the indisputable fact that we have important features not shared by any nonhuman organisms that we know of: the capacity for sophisticated rational thought, for instance, and to speak a language with a complex grammatical structure. Since animals are bodies, it follows that people are not animals. Animals, even human animals, cannot have life after death. (shrink)

Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans mandates that all research involving human subjects be reviewed and approved by a research ethics board . We have little evidence on how researchers are dealing with this requirement in multisite studies, which involve more than one REB. We retrospectively examined 22 REB submissions for two minimal-risk, multisite studies in leading Canadian institutions. Most REBs granted expedited review to the studies, while one declared the application to be exempt from review. (...) Time between submission and approval ranged greatly, from four to 546 days. We received a total of 155 REB queries for changes and clarifications, most of which asked for further information, clarification, or additional documents. Less than a third of the REB queries were requests for specific changes, and a vast majority had a very limited impact on the research projects. Institutions also varied broadly in their description of what was required of local principal investigators. We conclude that the organizational and practical challenges these results imply could deter researchers from embarking on multisite research projects, and that recently proposed changes to the TCPS will not solve these problems. (shrink)

Neuroscience has been described as a revolutionary force that will transform our understanding of common morality and of ethics as a discipline. To such strong naturalistic claims, critiques have responded with an arsenal of antinaturalistic arguments, often negating any contribution of neuroscience. In this paper, I review the terms of the debate between strong naturalists and anti-naturalists and offer a moderate (pragmatic) naturalistic approach as a constructive middle-ground position. Inspired by Dewey’s moral philosophy, I offer an alternate account of how (...) neuroscience broadens our understanding of ethics and moral situations and thus supports a deliberative and iterative process of wisdom-generation. (shrink)

Assuming the position that takes properties to be tropes rather than universals and takes ordinary objects as bundles of tropes, the essay first argues that the Law of the Identity of Indiscernibles survives the challenge raised by Black's "two-sphere universe". It is because the Law of Indiscernibles becomes a trivialconsequence of the assumed trope ontology. The essay then considers four construals of the thesis of Uniqueness differing in strength. The construals are developed in terms of both the possibility that tropes (...) of an object may be transferred to another object and the possibility that objects may survive cross-worldproperty changes. Finally, the essay argues that a trilemma arises from three intuitively innocent claims: (1) that same world objects do not share tropes, (2) that cross world objects may share some (but not all) tropes, and (3) that objects may survive cross-world property changes. And, unfortunately, Indiscernibles plays a role in giving rise to one horn of the trilemma. The essay suggests "ultraessentialism" as a possible way out of the trilemma. (shrink)

Bible myths, fairy tales, and science fictions all offer narratives that imply and sometimes question boundaries for human behavior. By subscription to certain narratives, individuals can enter and leave social groups; by evolving narratives, groups can adjust the realm of the allowable and the realm of the forbidden; and by selective transgression, individuals can gain power beyond that initially granted by the group. All these functions of narrative contribute to the sociobiological vigor of the individuals and groups that subscribe to (...) them, suggesting that the creation and use of narratives has proadaptive functions. (shrink)

Cette étude cherchera à montrer qu’une lecture des textes autographes de la liasse 8 des Pensées de Pascal titrée "Divertissement" permet de remonter à une figure du rapport à soi originale et distincte de la forme ultérieure de la subjectivité. Il est nécessaire pour cela de partir de l’étude des fragments manuscrits et d’une réflexion sur la méthode permettant d’en obtenir une lecture, et d’en produire des copies figurées. Sur cette base, il est possible de montrer que l’intériorité pascalienne se (...) définit comme désertée par la présence divine : le fond du coeur est dans "l’homme sans Dieu" un gouffre infini et la connaissance de soi une saisie de son néant propre. (shrink)

Ce livre presente les films de Lynch en montrant que ce qui deja apparait dans Eraserhead trouve son prolongement et sa cle dans Inland Empire (en passant bien sur par les autres oeuvres et tout particulierement Lost Highway et Mulholland Drive). A savoir que, comme dans le premier chapitre de Matiere et memoire de Bergson, le monde est image, de sorte que la matiere se resout dans son image et que ce sont les images qui, par leur agencement, creent le (...) monde dans sa solidite et sa fixite. Avec cette difference toutefois: les films de Lynch fonctionnent sur un desenchainement des images qui, d'abord, donne une matiere a l'image, et, ensuite, a pour consequence que ces images entrent sans cesse dans de nouvelles series. Ces series produisent non seulement des mondes possibles qui annulent le privilege d'un monde reel (parce que celui-ci devient un monde possible au meme titre que les autres), mais elles entremelent aussi differentes temporalites ou la linearite passe-present-futur disparait. (shrink)

Relevant logic is a proper subset of classical logic. It does not include among its theorems any ofpositive paradox A (B A).

This paper challenges Stephen Turner’s reading of Feyerabend’s Science in a Free Society. In particular, according to Turner, Feyerabend’s “critique represents a recognition that the regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive. But if regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive, what remains is the problem of our choice of regimes, and how to accommodate them in a democratic order.” This paper shows that by stretching the meaning of coercion so widely, Turner has misrepresented (...) Feyerabend’s position. In fact, the paper argues that Feyerabend offers a vision of liberal politics and science that can be made uncoercive, or at least worth having. In particular, this paper offers a new reading of Feyerabend’s account of ‘free exchange’ as an immanent critique of J.S. Mill’s liberalism. The paper concludes by diagnosing some tensions in Feyerabend’s vision and thereby also criticize Turner. (shrink)