The Doomsday argument purports to show that the risk of the human species going extinct soon has been systematically underestimated. This argument has something in common with controversial forms of reasoning in other areas, including: game theoretic problems with imperfect recall, the methodology of cosmology, the epistemology of indexical belief, and the debate over so-called fine-tuning arguments for the design hypothesis. The common denominator is a certain premiss: the Self-Sampling Assumption. We present two strands of argument in favor of (...) this assumption. Through a series of thought experiments we then investigate some bizarre prima facie consequences – backward causation, psychic powers, and an apparent conflict with the Principal Principle. (shrink)

We start by remarks on the scientific and societal context of today's theoretical physics. Major classes of models for physics to be explored at the LHC are then reviewed. This leads us to propose an LHC timeline and a list of potential effects on theoretical physics and the society. We then explore three conceptual questions connected with the LHC physics: symmetry (and symmetry breaking), effective field theory, and fine tuning.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II by Brian A. GraebeAaron Pidel S.J.Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II. By Brian A. Graebe (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 351 pp.Though Mary's undiminished virginity in giving birth (virginitas in partu) was long understood to be an event as miraculous and a teaching as authoritative as her virginity in conceiving (...) (virginitas ante partum), virginitas in partu underwent a kind of existential reinterpretation in the middle of the twentieth century. Authors such as Albert Mitterer and Karl Rahner suggested that, physically speaking, Jesus's birth might have happened like any other, rupturing the hymen, distending the birth canal, and causing Mary pain, albeit not in the spiritually disintegrating way common to postlapsarian humanity. These arguments effectively "unsettled" the traditional understanding of virginitas in partu, leading theologians of the highest stature to distinguish between the doctrine itself and the anatomical aspects attached to it over time. Fr. Brian Graebe has written a fine book arguing that the bodily dimensions of the virgin birth, including the physical "seal" of virginity, belong to the substance of the doctrine. This more inclusive understanding not only does better justice to the data of tradition, he argues, but illuminates the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. The book impresses by its theologically reflective method, its clarity of exposition, [End Page 1106] and its depth of research—especially into the archival and antepreparatory sources of Vatican II.Vessel of Honor responds in effect to Rahner's argument that physical intactness is peripheral to the dogmatic core of Mary's virginity in partu. To show otherwise, Rahner contended, one would need to show that such a doctrine can be found directly in the apostolic teaching, or that it, "being implicitly contained therein, has grown out of the apostolic doctrine, by a legitimate historical, logical, and theological process, as its authentic development" (68–69). If the bodily aspects of this doctrine really belonged to the deposit of faith, in other words, one would need to show how they are implied in the traditio divino-apostolica, as well as how they cohere organically with the rest of the deposit. The two major parts of Vessel of Honor respond in turn to each aspect of Rahner's challenge.The first three chapters argue that Mary's bodily integrity in parturition belongs at least implicitly to the traditio divino-apostolica. Turning first to the postapostolic tradition, Fr. Graebe shows that—apart from the early exceptions of Origen and Tertullian—patristic sources either affirm or strongly imply a miraculous delivery. This constant witness culminates in the Lateran Council (649 AD), which, while not itself an ecumenical council, was received into the magisterium of Pope Martin and affirmed by the Third Council of Constantinople (680 AD). Its teaching that Mary "gave birth without corruption" (incorruptibiliter... genuisse) would be defended by Paschasius, Ratramnus, Thomas Aquinas, and others. This consensus remained undisturbed until the eve of Vatican II.Even at Vatican II, Fr. Graebe argues in the next chapter, the Council Fathers intended to reaffirm the more inclusive idea of virginitas in partu against those who would marginalize its bodily dimensions. Here he really breaks new ground, delving deep into the antepreparatory, preparatory, and conciliar drafting history. He shows convincingly that many of the chief drafters of the final formula—"Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it..." (Lumen Gentium §57)—saw it as excluding Rahner's and Mitterer's minimalizing interpretations. Drawing on material from the Vatican Apostolic Archives, Fr. Graebe shows that some of the very theologians who voted to omit the pointed phrase "in the birth itself" (in ipsomet partu) did so for tonal rather than substantive reasons.The third chapter argues that Mary's physical integrity in birth is to be believed with divine and Catholic faith, despite the ongoing confusion introduced by Rahner and others. Admittedly, Vatican II did not define but merely reaffirmed the traditional understanding of virginitas in partu. But there are other reasons for including it in the traditio divino-apostolica. [End Page 1107] Drawing heavily... (shrink)

In this article, we provide the first commented edition and translation of an important fragment from Vladimir Zabugin’s posthumous work “The History of the Christian Renaissance in Italy” (Milan, 1924). Zabugin was a Russian historian, philologist and thinker, who lived and worked in Italy in the first quarter of the 20th century. He made an important contribution to the history of ideas with his concept of “Christian Renaissance”, abolishing the postulated antithesis of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well as (...) the idea of the Renaissance as the revival of antiquity. A sudden death in a mountaineering accident in the Italian Alps prevented Zabugin from completing his outstanding monography: editing the text, compiling notes, bibliography, name index, the absence of which made it very difficult for specialists to refer to the text. That is because a special focus of the present article lies in commenting the fragment and guiding the reader through Zabugin’s key conceptional points. The presented fragment of the first chapter of the book sought to emphasize the continuity of classical and christian culture in Italian proto-Renaissance literature, philosophy, architecture, fine arts. Refering to the eve of the Renaissance (13th century), Zabugin clearly demonstrates how the Christian culture “imperat” here, and the pagan one “ministrat”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 283 with his intention to kill himself, finds therein a common point of contact and identifies himself with Jerusalem to whom he lends his own motives of his love affair. By means of this phantasy he protects himself against the effect of his experience. Thus Shakespeare is right in his conjunction of poetry with "fine frenzy." According to the editor, Ernst Kris, who provides an excellent (...) preface to the whole volume and very knowledgeable footnotes, Freud developed the above ideas in Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Der Wahn und die Triiume in W. Jensens "Gradiva" (1907), and Der Dichter und dos Phantasieren (1908). Another "note" in the same enclosure gives a "Definition of the Holy": "Holy" is that which consists in the fact that men have sacrificed a part of their freedom of sexual perversion for the good of a larger community. The abhorrence of incest (wicked) is based on the fact that as a result of sexual promiscuity (also in childhnod) the members of the fainily continuously hohl together and become unable to join strangers. It is therefore antisocial. Culture consists in this permanent renunciation. As against this the "superman." Kris comments thus: "This seems to be the earliest formulation of Freud's view that the process of civilization is inimical to drives (Triebfeindlichkeit). It was later on expressed in The "cultural" sexual murder and the modern nervousness (1908), in Totem and Taboo (1912-13), in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1929) and in Why War? (1932). This shows clearly, however, that Freud regards the philosophy of Nietzsche as a revulsion against the process of civilization as such, or as one of the symptoms of this revulsion. In a letter of January 1, 1898 (p. 209), Freud gives a definition of happiness: "Happiness is the subsequent fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. Therefore riches bring one very little happiness. Money is no child-wish." "Prehistoric" means here the stage of early unremembered childhood. Freud is a rigorous determinist, and he states in a supplement to a letter of August 27, 1899: "There is nothing arbitrary or undetermined in the psychical." This determinacy concerns even such trivial facts as why Freud imagined the figure of 2467. The self-critical acumen of Freud is remarkable. In a letter of October 31, 1895, shortly after the writing of the Draft of a Psychology, he writes to Fliess (about the latter's ideas): "First impression: Surprise that there is one man who is still more of a visionary than myself and that this happens to be my friend Wilhelm" (p. 116). Freud employs here the expression "Phantast" (for visionary) which means that his own (Freud's) ideas and those of Fliess are "phantastic." This is of course primarily a criticism of Fliess. Professor Kraft-Ebbing (author of Psychopathia sexualis and head of the clinic of nervous diseases in Vienna), who was friendly to Freud and helped him to gain the title of professor of the university but remained sceptical--just as did Breuer--called Freud's theory "a scientific tale" (ein wissenschaftliches Miirchen). MAX RIESER New York City L'esprit, la verit~ et l'histoire. By Giovanni Gentile. Trans. by Joseph Moreau. (Paris: Aubier, 1962. Pp. 331.) Giovanni Gentile (1875--1944), the most thorough-going Hegelian in the whole history of Western philosophy, suffered decline in Italy on the eve of World War II (primarily for political reasons), but in recent years a return to Gentile the philosopher has been increasingly noticeable there and elsewhere. Proof of this renewed interest is the above French edition of Gentile, which is a collection of excerpts from his systematic writings, selected by an indefatigable disciple, Vito A. Bellezza. 284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Although this is not the first time that Gentile has been translated into French (a major work of his, L'esprit, acte pur, was published in Paris in 1925), the fact remains nevertheless that his neo-Hegelian system of philosophy fell on deaf ears originally in France, due to the predominance then of Bergsonism and positivi.sm in different areas of French thought. However, as Michele F. Sciacca (another commentator on Gentile) notes in the Preface, the Gentilian system of "actual idealism" should get... (shrink)

Le but de ce recueil est d’offrir des commentaires accessibles et introductifs aux textes classiques qu’ils accompagnent, en ouvrant des perspectives de discussion sur le thème du capitalisme. C’est en ce sens qu’Emmanuel Chaput lance le débat en commentant le texte de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, « Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? ». Les textes de Karl Marx ne sont bien sûr pas laissés pour compte : Samuel-Élie Lesage s’engage fermement dans cette voie en discutant L’idéologie allemande de Karl Marx, Christiane Bailey (...) nous offre d’approcher différemment l’œuvre marxienne en abordant son traitement de la question animale dans des extraits du Manifeste du parti communiste et du Travail salarié et capital, et Mathieu Joffre-Lainé nous présente une analyse fine des questions proprement économiques du Capital. Abordant les alternatives au capitalisme dans la pensée de Léon Bourgeois, Éliot Litalien commente La Solidarité et Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette s’attaque à l’analyse de l’Essai d’une philosophie de la solidarité. Enfin, en liant capitalisme, patriarcat et pouvoir politique, Tara Chanady propose une lecture du texte Du mariage et de l’amour de Emma Goldman. La conclusion de Marie-Eve Jalbert se situe dans une perspective contemporaine et critique en décortiquant la critique du socialisme avancée par Friedrich A. Hayek. (shrink)

"This is the book that I have been waiting for for twenty years. With exceptional clarity, Draine introduces the underlying physics and brings the basic pieces together to describe the multiphase structure of the interstellar and intergalactic medium. Combined with many useful tables and figures, this book will rapidly become a hit with students and researchers alike. It continues the fine tradition of Princeton professors writing seminal books on this topic."--Ewine van Dishoeck, Leiden University "A true tour de force, (...) providing a definitive account of the physics of interstellar matter. Written with authority and insight by a master of the subject, Bruce Draine's book will be a treasured guide for new graduate students as well as a comprehensive and rigorous reference for galactic and extragalactic researchers."--Eve Ostriker, University of Maryland "Draine has written an interstellar-medium textbook worthy of Lyman Spitzer, updated thirty years later. His coverage of atomic, molecular, radiative, thermal, and dynamical processes is excellent. Most valuable to students and professionals are the combinations of physical processes with multiwavelength observations appropriate for the modern astronomer."--J. Michael Shull, University of Colorado at Boulder "This book is a comprehensive account of the physical processes that take place in the interstellar medium and that determine its behavior. It is likely to become the bible on the subject."--Alexander Dalgarno, Harvard University "This is an outstanding text on an important topic in astrophysics. Draine carefully goes into the physical processes, providing a unifying discussion that is often missing in other treatments."--Christopher F. McKee, University of California, Berkeley. (shrink)

This book offers a new approach to the analysis of the multiple meanings of English modals, conjunctions, conditionals, and perception verbs. Although such ambiguities cannot easily be accounted for by feature-analyses of word meaning, Eve Sweetser's argument shows that they can be analyzed both readily and systematically. Meaning relationships in general cannot be understood independently of human cognitive structure, including the metaphorical and cultural aspects of that structure. Sweetser shows that both lexical polysemy and pragmatic ambiguity are shaped by our (...) metaphorical folk understanding of epistemic processes and of speech interaction. Similar regularities can be shown to structure the contrast among root, epistemic and speech act uses of modal verbs, multiple uses of conjunctions and conditionals, and certain processes of historical change observed in Indo-European languages. Since polysemy is typically the intermediate step in semantic change, the same regularities observable in polysemy can be extended to an analysis of semantic change. (shrink)

Like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an extraordinarily moving and engaging look at loss and death. Eve Joseph is an award-winning poet who worked for twenty years as a palliative care counselor in a hospice. When she was a young girl, she lost a much older brother, and her experience as a grown woman helping others face death, dying, and grief opens the path for her to recollect and understand his loss in a way she could not as (...) a child. In the Slender Margin is an insider's look at an experience that awaits us all, and that is at once deeply fascinating, frightening, and in modern society shunned. The book is an intimate invitation to consider death and our response to it without fear or morbidity, but rather with wonder and a curious mind. Writing with a poet's precise language and in short meditative chapters leavened with insight, warmth, and occasional humor, Joseph cites her hospice experience as well as the writings of others across generations--from the realms of mythology, psychology, science, religion, history, and literature--to illuminate the many facets of dying and death. Offering examples from cultural traditions, practices, and beliefs from around the world, her book is at once an exploration of the unknowable and a very humane journey through the land of grief. (shrink)

This essay focuses on conceptual engineers who aim to improve other people's patterns of inference and attention by shaping their concepts. Such conceptual engineers sometimes engage in a form of epistemic paternalism that I call paternalistic cognitive engineering: instead of explicitly persuading, informing and educating others, the engineers non-consultatively rely on assumptions about the target agents’ cognitive systems to improve their belief forming. The target agents could reasonably regard such benevolent exercises of control as violating their sovereignty over their own (...) belief formation. This is a pro tanto reason against such engineering. In addition to the relevant projects of conceptual engineering, paternalistic cognitive engineering plausibly includes certain kinds of nudging and evidence suppression. I distinguish the sovereignty-based concern from other ethical worries about conceptual engineering and discuss how one might justify the relevant conceptual engineering projects despite the sovereignty-based reason against them. (shrink)

"These essays advance a reinterpretation of pivotal categories such as self-knowing, moral agency, and altruism.

The study of the notion of ideology shows that this corpus lends itself to a wide variety of different definitions. A certain opposition runs all the way through this set of definitions. Ideology would appear to be torn between a conception that emphasises its distortion and dissimulation dimensions and another conception which views as a set of social representations. After rapidly presenting the main characteristics of these two polar extremes, Paul Ricoeur's suggestion that these two conceptions can be united is (...) discussed and illustrated by the concept of the `spirit of capitalism', as defined in the book by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999). It is shown that this constitutes an ideology which is in fact an attempt to encompass both these conceptions. It is also shown that the concept of `trial' as proposed in that book helps greatly to understand how this reconciliation is actually possible. (shrink)

Kit Fine develops a Fregean theory of abstraction, and suggests that it may yield a new philosophical foundation for mathematics, one that can account for both our reference to various mathematical objects and our knowledge of various mathematical truths. The Limits ofion breaks new ground both technically and philosophically.

A short intellectual biography of Kit Fine, provided by himself.

We readily claim that great moral catastrophes such as the Holocaust involve evil in some way, although it' not clear what this amounts to in a secular context. This paper seeks to provide a secular account of what evil is. It examines what is intuitively the most plausible account, namely that the evil act involves the production of great suffering (or other disvalue), and argues that such outcomes are neither necessary nor sufficient for an act to be evil. Only an (...) appeal to distinctive patterns of motivation, so it is argued, will allow us to accommodate our intuitionsabout which acts are evil, and hence will provide an adequate account of the nature of evil. (shrink)

Looks at animal welfare in society and the sciences, including laboratory animals, pets, and the effect of climate change.

I attempt to meet some criticisms that Williamson makes of my attempt to carry out Prior's project of reducing possibility discourse to actualist discourse.

The idea of cosmopolitanism is increasingly in circulation both in the social sciences and in the language of everyday life. There is, however, much uncertainty about what it means, what it refers to and what role it plays in social scientific thinking. In this book Robert Fine explores the concept of cosmopolitanism, its contribution to critical thought, and its application to a number of pressing political issues: taming global marketisation, resisting the resurgence of nationalism and fundamentalism, constructing transnational forms (...) of political community, enhancing the role of international law and human rights, prosecuting crimes against humanity and assessing the legitimacy of humanitarian military intervention. He explores the idea of cosmopolitanism both as a description of social reality and as a key element in the life of the modern mind. Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative discussion of the social, legal and political dimensions of the cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences. It should be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social theory, sociology, political theory, cultural studies, international relations and law."--Book cover. (shrink)

In this paper, the principal objections to unconditional forgiveness are canvassed, primarily that it fails to take wrongdoing seriously enough, and that it displays a lack of self-respect. It is argued that these objections stem from a mistaken understanding of what forgiveness actually involves, including the erroneous view that forgiveness involves some degree of condoning of the offence, and is incompatible with blaming the offender or punishing him. Two positive reasons for endorsing unconditional forgiveness are considered: respect for persons and (...) human solidarity; and it is argued that the latter provides more plausible grounds for it than the former. (shrink)

I will defend explication, in a Carnapian sense, as a strategy for revisionary ontologists and radical sceptics. The idea is that these revisionary philosophers should explicitly commit to using expressions like “S knows that p” and “Fs exist” differently from how these expressions are used in everyday contexts. I will first motivate this commitment for these revisionary philosophers. Then, I will address the main worries that arise for this strategy: the unintelligibility worry and the topic shift worry. I will focus (...) on the latter worry and provide a solution that makes use of a distinction between practically and theoretically oriented beliefs. On my view, the revisionary philosophers who admit to departing from the everyday language can still criticize everyday knowledge and existence claims, by arguing that while the language embedded in these claims is suitable for beliefs-1, it is not suitable for beliefs-2. (shrink)

Abstract“Science Is Politics By Other Means” (SIPBOM) was coined in The Pasteurization of France, Latour’s 1984 empirical study of the birth of microbiology. Yet, it encapsulates an outstanding political theory of science that Latour has never formalized and that has remained unnoticed to this day. The theory is comprised of two dimensions. The first one is the ontological labor performed by science, that is, the laboratory production of new nonhumans. The second one is the ability of science to devise and (...) implement novel policies targeted at the new beings it produces. These “other means” are incorporated in political projects and contribute to the shaping of society. Fifteen years later, Latour published Politics of Nature ([1999] 2004), a full-blown political treatise equally devoted to the political character of science. It would be mistaken, however, to assume that it falls in the same SIPBOM paradigm as the Pasteur study. The compositionist theory it offers redefines politics as the institution of the nonhumans that make up external reality, a task that has traditionally been monopolized by Science. In this sense, “science is politics by other means” has become “politics is science by other means,” these “other means” now referring to “cosmopolitics,” that is, the due process advocated by compositionism. The first claim of the present paper is that the respective weight ascribed to politics and ontology is different in The Pasteurization of France and in Politics of Nature. The second claim is that compositionism is not as successful as Latour’s early theory to account for the politicity of science. (shrink)

Digital spaces are saturated with metaphor: we have pages, sites, mice, and windows. Yet, in the world of digital textuality, these metaphors no longer function as we might expect. Martin Paul Eve calls attention to the digital-textual metaphors that condition our experience of digital space, and traces their history as they interact with physical cultures. Eve posits that digital-textual metaphors move through three life phases. Initially they are descriptive. Then they encounter a moment of fracture or rupture. Finally, they go (...) on to have a prescriptive life of their own that conditions future possibilities for our text environments - even when the metaphors have become untethered from their original intent. Why is "whitespace" white? Was the digital page always a foregone conclusion? Over a series of theses, Eve addresses these and other questions in order to understand the moments when digital-textual metaphors break and to show us how it is that our textual softwares become locked into paradigms that no longer make sense. Contributing to book history, literary studies, new media studies, and material textual studies, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History provides generative insights into the metaphors that define our digital worlds. (shrink)

Forgiveness usually gets a very good press in our culture: we are deluged with self-help books and television shows all delivering the same message, that forgiveness is good for everyone, and is always the right thing to do. But those who have suffered seriously at the hands of others often and rightly feel that this boosterism about forgiveness is glib and facile. Perhaps forgiveness is not always desirable, especially where the wrongdoing is terrible or the wrongdoer unrepentant. In this book, (...) Garrard and McNaughton suggest that the whole debate suffers from a crippling lack of clarity about what forgiveness really amounts to. They argue that it is more difficult, complex and troubling than many of its advocates suppose. Nevertheless, they conclude, a proper understanding of forgiveness allows us to avoid cheap and shallow forms of it, and enables us to see why it is right and admirable to forgive even unrepentant wrongdoers. (shrink)

In this article, I present my view that only through value conflicts can we become aware of the relevant values influencing science. The discussion about values in science has been ongoing for the past decades; unfortunately, a crucial part of the discussion—value awareness—has not been addressed. This article tries to bridge this gap by focusing on the problem of value recognition through analyzing several cases of value conflicts. I will show that unless some value conflict occurs, the values influencing science (...) remain invisible to us. This means that to discuss the relevant influences of values in science, we need to focus on value conflicts occurring in science. Only then can we recognize the values influencing science and have a meaningful debate about them. This article is the first foray into the issue of value recognition and can help clarify some unaddressed issues in the values in science debate. (shrink)

This article analyzes the institutionalization of the global organic agriculture field and sheds new light on the conventionalization debate. The institutions that shape the field form a tripartite standards regime of governance that links standard-setting, certification, and accreditation activities, in a layering of markets for services that are additional to the market for certified organic products. At each of the three poles of the TSR, i.e., for standard-setting, certification, and accreditation, we describe how the corresponding markets were constructed over time (...) and the role of the different actors in their evolution. We analyze the politics at stake among the actors at each pole, their competing or cooperative interests and visions, and the tensions between them in the promotion of markets. Through the lens of the TSR heuristic, we show that the institutionalization of the organic field beginning in the 1990s and its de facto inclusion in the broader sustainability field beginning in the 2000s contribute to a progressive distancing between the organic movement and its initial political project of alterity, to which public and private actors both contribute actively. As a set of interlinked market institutions, the TSR orients and narrows the scope of debate, which becomes restricted to “market-compatible” dimensions and objects. We conclude that the TSR is a promising heuristic for analyzing contemporary global regulation. (shrink)

Like most bilaterian animals, the annelid Platynereis dumerilii generates the majority of its body axis in an anterior to posterior temporal progression with new segments added sequentially. This process relies on a posterior subterminal proliferative body region, known as the "segment addition zone" (SAZ). We explored some of the molecular and cellular aspects of posterior elongation in Platynereis, in particular to test the hypothesis that the SAZ contains a specific set of stem cells dedicated to posterior elongation.We cloned and characterized (...) the developmental expression patterns of orthologs of 17 genes known to be involved in the formation, behavior, or maintenance of stem cells in other metazoan models. These genes encode RNA-binding proteins(e.g., tudor, musashi, pumilio) or transcription factors(e.g., myc, id, runx) widely conserved in eumetazoans. Most of these genes are expressed both in the migrating primordial germ cells and in overlapping ring-like patterns in the SAZ, similar to some previously analyzed genes(piwi, vasa). The SAZ patterns are coincident with the expression of proliferation markers cyclin B and PCNA. EdU pulse and chase experiments suggest that new segments are produced through many rounds of divisions from small populations of teloblast-like posterior stem cells. The shared molecular signature between primordial germ cells and posterior stem cells in Platynereis thus corresponds to an ancestral "stemness" program. (shrink)

I consider, in the light of Horsten’s and Ito’s paper, how the theory of arbitrary objects might help to make sense of Russell’s views on the nature of variables.

On the day on which Dr Harold Shipman, the Manchester serial killer, was convicted, there was wall-to-wall coverage of it in the media. During the course of one of the many reports, the daughter of one of his victims was interviewed, and asked for her views on why Shipman had acted as he did. What she said was this: she’d tried and tried to understand or explain his deeds, and she could only come to the conclusion that he was a (...) really evil man. In saying this, she clearly meant to convey more than the obvious truth that what Shipman did was very wrong and entirely to be condemned. It seems to me that a secular as well as a religious audience would find the daughter’s appeal to evil as an appropriate explanation perfectly comprehensible. But what exactly was it that was being attributed to Shipman, and how was it thought to explain his actions? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eve W. Stoddard REASON ON TRIAL: LEGAL METAPHORS IN THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 6 6 r I 1WO things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admi_I_ ration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." ' These are perhaps Kant's most well-known and oft-repeated words. They reflect not only the profound feeling (...) that underlies his technical and abstruse treatises, but also his characteristic preoccupation with law. The "starry heavens" are a synecdoche both for the wonder of nature as we perceive it in all its multiplicity, and for the marvel of science's ability to reduce, order, and subdue that infinite multiplicity into a few elegant laws. These two types of law, natural and moral, define the focus of Kant's critical philosophy, and metaphors drawn from jurisprudence pervade all three critiques. In the context of controversial statements on the role of metaphor in philosophical texts by Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Richard Rorty, I will analyze the legal metaphors in the prefaces and Transcendental Deductions of the Critique ofPure Reason. My goal in engaging Kant's texts in this controversy over metaphor is twofold: on the one hand to assess experimentally the value of these positions on metaphor in the history of philosophy, and, on the other hand, to examine the relations between critical conceptualization and insurgent metaphoricity in Kant's carefully elaborated and systematized text. In a textwhose key words are "universal and necessary for all possible experience," contingentand ambiguous metaphors might be expected to cause problematic unravelings. Richard Rorty has argued recently that "the history ofscience, culture and politics" should be viewed "as a history of metaphor rather than of discovery." 2 He compares the creations of new vocabularies to the 245 246Philosophy and Literature invention of "new tools" ("CL," p. 5), alluding to "Nietzsche's definition of truth as a mobile army of metaphors" (p. 6). From Plato's figures of the world as cave and the mind as charioteer with unruly horses, we shift to Locke's view of mind as tahda rasa and Descartes's description of the world as a machine. Rorty's paradigm of cultural history as a history of metaphor enters into an earlier, unresolved debate between Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur over the relationship between metaphor and philosophical discourse. Like Derrida, Rorty follows Nietzsche's claims about metaphor in the history of philosophy, a view Ricoeur wants to disprove so that he can recover the privileged univocity of speculative discourse. However Rorty has nothing in common with die complexity and "invaginated" ambiguities, the dazzling multivocity of Derrida's writing on the economics of metaphor. Although Rorty appears at first to agree with Derrida that there is no truth or reality apart from the linguistic tropes which dominate different epochs and cultures, he retains a metaphysical distinction between literal reference and figurative play. Rorty adopts Donald Davidson's theory that metaphors do not have "meaning" precisely because diey have no place in the language game into which they are inserted. They produce an effect, but it is not meaning: "One can only savour it or spit it out"; it is not a " 'truth-value candidate' " ("CL," p. 6). However, through repeated use, the metaphor will find a role in the language game; dying as a metaphor, it will live as a literal statement. Therefore Rorty agrees with Ricoeur that a moribund metaphor is no longer a metaphor, but a literally functioning segment of discourse. Thus despite his initial move toward a Derridean, or atleast Nietzschean, position, Rorty ultimately takes a stand consonant with Ricoeur's desire to rescue speculative discourse from the unruliness of metaphor. Considering Rorty's celebration of Freud in an article on "The Contingency of Selfhood," 3 his failure to consider the role of unconscious associations and overdetermination in the writing and reading of texts is surprising. Dead or alive, a metaphor brings with it a host ofpersonal and public, conscious and unconscious, new and traditional associations that become juxtaposed against a similar number of associations connected with the signifying chain into which the metaphor has been inserted. In... (shrink)

Introduction -- The perceptual part of the soul -- Human perception -- The duality of the human soul -- Phronesis -- Conclusion.

In the early seventies, several logicians developed a semantics for propositional systems of relevance logic. The essential ingredients of this semantics were a privileged point o, an ‘accessibility’ relation R and a special operator * for evaluating negation. Under the truth- conditions of the semantics, each formula A(Pl,…,Pn) could be seen as expressing a first order condition A+(pl,…,pn, o, R,*) on sets p1,…,pn and o, R, *, while each formula-scheme could be regarded as expressing the second-order condition ∀p1,…,∀pn A+(p1,…,pn, o, (...) R, *). It could then be shown that many standard systems of propositional relevance logic were complete in the sense that their theorems were just those formulas true in all models whose components o, R and * conformed to the second-order conditions expressed by the axioms of the system. (shrink)

The jury remains out about the bottom-line relevance of organisational spirituality. This article reviews the arguments made thus far, using those sources most commonly cited as providing ‹evidence’ that organisational spirituality adds value to the bottom line. Having collated the evidence, this article offers some observation about the robustness of this existing ‹business case’. It then offers some preliminary conclusions on the literature review, examining the merits of pursuing a ‹business case’ in this field and identifying some specific questions for (...) future research. (shrink)

I will clarify when and how a tension arises between epistemic environmentalism (a new focus on assessing and improving the epistemic environment) and respect for epistemic autonomy (allowing, empowering, and requiring people to each govern their own beliefs). Using the example of participatory conceptual engineering (improving the linguistic environment through rational discussion with broad participation), I will also identify an option for avoiding the tension—namely, participatory environmentalism. This means a new focus on how people can each contribute to improving the (...) shared epistemic environment through rational deliberation and thereby govern their own beliefs that are shaped by that environment. (shrink)

Charts the development of feminist philosophy as a recognized contributor to intellectual debate, beginning with its origins outside the philosophical establishment in activism, cultural criticism, and social engagement. The fresh approaches of black feminists, lesbian philosophers, American Indian feminists, and ecological feminists are brought into the dialogue. In addition, Cole surveys feminist criticism of the traditional philosophical problems of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. She concludes that neither feminism nor philosophy thrives when viewed as the "property" of specialists or in-groups, but (...) that feminist philosophy is a powerful, vital, and inclusive conversation about the concerns most basic to human beings. Suggestions for further readings at the end of each chapter assist students to explore subjects of interest in more depth. (shrink)