An odd, but persistent question. In _Guns, Steel and Germs, Jared Diamond's answer is that history is or should be a science. Like sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists, he wants to extend the methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences and the humanities. My answer is an emphatic 'no!' E. H. Carr's _What is History? made an extended case for scientific history. The main burden of my essay is a dismantling of Carr's argument. Concerned with objective truth (_pace the (...) radical skeptics), history writing may have science in its tool kit. But it is essentially an interpretive, narrative art. (shrink)

In substantial ways, the strangest aspects of Leibniz's wild metaphysical architecture (monads and all that) lie grounded in his efforts to understand the "unreasonable effectiveness" of the mathematics utilized in the classical modeling of ordinary materials (of which we will adopt sword steel as a chief paradigm, for reasons to be explained later). In doing so, Leibniz proceeds in a more acutely reasoned fashion than does Eugene Wigner in the famously fuzzy article from which the phrase "unreasonable effectiveness" descends. (...) There Wigner stirs up a blurry mysticism through the loose invocation of an heterogeneous set of examples. But "Explain all of this in one stroke, can you?"represents the usual rhetorical gambit of zealots urging us to abandon science for faith (although that was probably not Wigner's own intent'). (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James was America's most widely read philosopher. In addition to being one of the founders of pragmatism, however, he was also a leading psychologist and author of the seminal work, The Principles of Psychology. While scholars argue that James withdrew from the study of psychology after 1890, Eugene Taylor demonstrates convincingly that James remained preeminently a psychologist until his death in 1910.Taylor details James's contributions to experimental psychopathology, psychical research, and the (...) psychology of religion. Moreover, Taylor's work shows that out of his scientific study of consciousness, James formulated a sophisticated metaphysics of radical empiricism. In light of historical developments in psychology, as well as the current philosophic implications of the neuroscience revolution related to the biology of consciousness, Taylor argues that both the subject matter of James's investigations and his metaphysics of radical empiricism are just as important for psychology today as James believed they were in his own time.This book represents a major new contribution both to James scholarship and to the history of American psychology. Although philosophers have analyzed radical empiricism, this book is the first to trace the development of radical empiricism as a metaphysics addressed to psychologists. It is also the first to show James's involvement in depth-psychology and psychotherapeutics and to trace historical continuity between James's work on consciousness and subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, personality theory, and humanistic psychology. (shrink)

What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character.

The 2500-year-old teachings of the Buddha Dharma penetrated Europe during the nineteenth century. These teachings came to the Lands of the Czech Crown in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and subsequently Czechoslovakia, mainly due to the Theosophical Society as Neobuddhism, which had an esoteric character. In 1891, Gustav Meyrink, a world-famous writer of Austrian origin, became the first practitioner. In addition, original Buddhism in the Czech Republic became an object of academic study. Other influences were attributed to personalities such as Helena Petrovna (...) Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, Karl Eugen Neumann, Hermann Oldenberg, Anton Gueth-Nyanatiloka, Lama Anagarik Govinda, as well as organizations such as the Maha Bodhi Society. The first translation of Buddhist text into Czech dates back to 1392. In addition to academic studies primarily based on Theravada, practical Buddhism had foundations in Hermeticism, Yoga, and esoteric Vajrayana. Vajrayana has long been considered a part of the so-called Neobuddhism, but there are indications that some of the first Czechoslovak Buddhists officially converted to it. The first Czech and Slovak Buddhists came from both the study and the practice of these religious foundations. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that which explanation is (...) the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

In this major contribution to philosophy and rhetoric, Eugene Garver shows how Aristotle integrates logic and virtue in his great treatise, the _Rhetoric._ He raises and answers a central question: can there be a civic art of rhetoric, an art that forms the character of citizens? By demonstrating the importance of the _Rhetoric_ for understanding current philosophical problems of practical reason, virtue, and character, Garver has written the first work to treat the _Rhetoric_ as philosophy and to connect its (...) themes with parallel problems in Aristotle's _Ethics_ and _Politics._ Garver's study will help put rhetoric at the center of investigations of practice and practical reason. (shrink)

У статті простежено формування та динаміку розвитку тіньової економіки в Україні. Показано, що реформування економіки країни на початку 1990-х років без належного наукового обґрунтування призвело до механічного копіювання та реалізації монетаристської моделі регулювання економічних процесів. Реалізація закордонних "рецептів" реформування економіки без урахування національної специфіки призвела до появи нових форм та методів тіньової економічної діяльності.

There are at least two plausible generalisations of subjective expected utility (SEU) theory: cumulative prospect theory (which relaxes the independence axiom) and Levi’s decision theory (which relaxes at least ordering). These theories call for a re-assessment of the minimal requirements of rational choice. Here, I consider how an analysis of sequential decision making contributes to this assessment. I criticise Hammond’s (Economica 44(176):337–350, 1977; Econ Philos 4:292–297, 1988a; Risk, decision and rationality, 1988b; Theory Decis 25:25–78, 1988c) ‘consequentialist’ argument for the SEU (...) preference axioms, but go on to formulate a related diachronic-Dutch-book-style’ argument that better achieves Hammond’s aims. Some deny the importance of Dutch-book sure losses, however, in which case, Seidenfeld’s (Econ Philos 4:267–290, 1988a) argument that distinguishes between theories that relax independence and those that relax ordering is relevant. I unravel Seidenfeld’s argument in light of the various criticisms of it and show that the crux of the argument is somewhat different and much more persuasive than what others have taken it to be; the critical issue is the modelling of future choices between ‘indifferent’ decision-tree branches in the sequential setting. Finally, I consider how Seidenfeld’s conclusions might nonetheless be resisted. (shrink)

The aim of this paper has been to draw attention to the non-cognitive aspects of Vygotsky's theoretical heritage. We hope that we have succeeded in presenting here his principal ideas on motivation and volition in the present-day problem context. It should be noted that the problem of human freedom and self-determination was of great importance for Vygotsky, though the explicit discussion of this problem is not common in his writings. Approaching this problem both as a philosopher and as a psychologist, (...) Vygotsky inevitably had first to get some idea of the general psychological regularities which could serve as a concrete-psychological basis for the constructive paradigm in the explanation of the phenomena of human freedom and “non-freedom.” It is highly probable that he planned to discuss this problem at length in his last uncompleted book,Doctrine of Affects. However, even the existing texts provide a weighty and insightful basis not only for scientific research but also for creating applied methods of enhancement of human will-power, or, more exactly, the talent to will. Some of the possibilities, revealed by the Vygotskian approach, are presented in the last section. Many other of Vygotsky's brilliant ideas still await an unbiased reading in the contemporary, rather than merely historical, context. (shrink)

Commentary on ‘The View from Within’, edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear.

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware, USA and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and crossfertilization of the partners’ practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and (...) structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and cross-fertilization of the partners' practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. (shrink)

Eternal return is the paradox that accounts for the interplay between difference and repetition, a dynamic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy, and Blanchot's approach to this paradox, even and especially through what it elides, further illuminates it. Deleuze draws on Blanchot's characterisations of difference, forgetting, and the unlivable to depict the ‘sense’ produced via eternal return, which, for Blanchot, is where repetition implicates or ‘carries’ pure difference. However, for Deleuze, difference and the unlivable are also developed by the living (...) repetition or ‘contraction’ of habit, which results in his distinctive characterization of ‘force’, ‘levity’, and sense in eternal return. (shrink)

From the early ninth century until about eight centuries later, the Middle East witnessed a series of both simple and systematic astronomical observations for the purpose of testing contemporary astronomical tables and deriving the fundamental solar, lunar, and planetary parameters. Of them, the extensive observations of lunar eclipses available before 1000 AD for testing the ephemeredes computed from the astronomical tables are in a relatively sharp contrast to the twelve lunar observations that are pertained to the four extant accounts of (...) the measurements of the basic parameters of Ptolemaic lunar model. The last of them are Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ma‘rūf’s trio of lunar eclipses observed from Istanbul, Cairo, and Thessalonica in 1576–1577 and documented in chapter 2 of book 5 of his famous work, Sidrat muntaha al-afkar fī malakūt al-falak al-dawwār. In this article, we provide a detailed analysis of the accuracy of his solar and lunar observations. (shrink)

We sometimes seem to face fundamental moral uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about what is morally good or morally right that cannot be reduced to ordinary descriptive uncertainty. This phenomenon raises a puzzle for noncognitivism, according to which moral judgments are desire-like attitudes as opposed to belief-like attitudes. Can a state of moral uncertainty really be a noncognitive state? So far, noncognitivists have not been able to offer a completely satisfactory account. Here, we argue that noncognitivists should exploit the formal analogy between (...) moral uncertainty and moral multi-objective decision problems. Our ‘multi-objective story’ enables noncognitivists to save our moral uncertainty thought and talk by explaining how the underlying phenomenon could be noncognitive. (shrink)

After completing his first degree with first class honors in philosophy and classics at Edinburgh in 1878, Pringle-Pattison was awarded a Hibbert Travelling Scholarship which he used to travel to Germany to study the work of Kant and Hegel. Interest in Hegel in Germany had waned at this time, however, and Pringle-Pattison commented that Germany was the worst place to study Hegel. In Berlin he boarded with the Stropp family whose daughter he would later marry. From Berlin he went to (...) Jena where he found John Haldane, brother of his friend and fellow student, R. B. Haldane, along with a group of Scottish students, with whom he met weekly to study Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. In the summer of 1880 he went to Göttingen with the aim of studying with Hermann Lotze. Pringle-Pattison respected Lotze for his reassertion of the fundamental truth of the world implied in moral and spiritual experience. J. H. Muirhead says that he "was born by the Lotzean reaction to suspect the whole idea of the Absolute as a menace to individual reality in general and human personality in particular." Lotze, however, was lecturing only to beginning students that summer and Pringle-Pattison set to work on his essay for the Hibbert Trust which was published in 1882 under the title The Development From Kant to Hegel. Pringle-Pattison returned to Edinburgh in 1880 where he succeeded Sorley as Campbell Fraser's assistant. In 1883, as was mentioned above, Pringle-Pattison and R. B. Haldane edited a volume of essays written by younger Hegelians which was intended to show dissatisfaction with the content of the journal, Mind, which was dominated by English empiricism. One year later he moved to Cardiff where he took the foundation chair of philosophy. (shrink)

A simple quantum relativistic model of ν µ − ντ neutrino oscillations in the OPERA experiment is presented. This model suggests that the two components in the neutrino beam are separated in space. After being created in a meson decay, the µ-neutrino moves 18 meters ahead of the beam’s center of energy, while the τ -neutrino is behind. Both neutrinos have subluminal speeds, however the advanced start of the ν µ explains why it arrives in the detector 60 ns earlier (...) than expected. Our model does violate the special-relativistic ban on superluminal signals. However, usual arguments about violation of causality are not applicable here. The invalidity of standard special-relativistic arguments is related to the interaction-dependence of the boost operator, which implies that boost-transformed space-time coordinates of events with interacting particles do not obey linear and universal Lorentz formulas. (shrink)

Written in D. H. Lawrence's most productive period, 'Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious' and 'Fantasia of the Unconscious' were undertaken initially in response to psychoanalytic criticism of his novel Sons and Lovers. They soon developed more generally to propose an alternative to what Lawrence perceived as the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the incest motive. The essays also develop his ideas about the upbringing and education of children, about marriage, and about social and even political action. Lawrence described them (...) as 'this pseudo-philosophy of mine which was deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The absolute need one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's experiences as a writer and as a man'. These conclusions form an illuminating guide to his works and therein lies their peculiar value. (shrink)