While interest in Kant's philosophy has increased in recent years, very little of it has focused on his theory of science. This book gives a general account of that theory, of its motives and implications, and of the way it brought forth a new conception of the nature of philosophical thought. To reconstruct Kant's theory of science, the author identifies unifying themes of his philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of physics, both undergirded by his distinctive logical doctrines, and shows how (...) they come together to form a relatively consistent system of ideas. A new analysis of the structure of central arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena draws on recent developments in logic and the philosophy of science. Professor Brittan's unified account of the philosophies of mathematics and physics explores the nature of Kant's commitment to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics as well as providing an integrated reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Contemporary ideas help both to illuminate Kant's position and to show how that position, in turn, illuminates contemporary problems in the philosophy of science. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The economic and moral defense of sweatshops given by Powell and Zwolinski has been criticized in two recent papers. Coakley and Kates focus on putative weaknesses in the logic of Powell’s and Zwolinski’s argument. Preiss :55–82, 2014) argues that, even granting the validity of their economic argument, Powell’s and Zwolinski’s defense is without force when viewed from a Kantian republican viewpoint. We are concerned that sweatshop critics have misinterpreted the economic literature and overstated the conclusions that follow from their ethical (...) premises. We show that the best understanding of the current economic literature supports Powell’s and Zwolinski’s conclusions about the negative effects of sweatshop wage regulation, and that it is unreasonable to reject economic analysis in moral argument against sweatshops even from a Kantian perspective. Additionally, we defend the theory of exploitation as unfairness given by Wertheimer, and show how economic analysis can be applied to that theory to identify cases of sweatshop exploitation. (shrink)

Shareholders of corporations have their liability for actions of the corporation limited by law. Unlike the equity holder in a partnership or proprietorship, the assets that a shareholder has distinct from her holdings in the enterprise can not be taken to satisfy liabilities arising from actions of the enterprise itself. This paper argues that a reasonable principle of fairness argues for an alternative to limited liability, proportional liability. Proportional liability makes a shareholder liable for the same proportion of a corporation''s (...) excess of liabilities over assets that her number of shares bears to the total number of shares outstanding. The key idea is that it is unfair in situations in which explicit agreements can not be reached for shareholders to bear only limited risk when they may receive gains from stock dividends and appreciation that are not limited to any pre-determined amount. Proportional liability has not been much examined in the financial literature. Good utilitarian arguments have been given for limited liability over unlimited liability for corporate shareholders, but these arguments do not clearly support the choice of limited liability over proportional liability. (shrink)

The relationship of consciousness to brain, which Schopenhauer grandly referred to as the "world knot," remains an unsolved problem within both philosophy and science. The central focus in what follows is the relevance of science---from psychoanalysis to neurophysiology and quantum physics-to the mind-brain puzzle. Many would argue that we have advanced little since the age of the Greek philosophers, and that the extraordinary accumulation of neuroscientific knowledge in this century has helped not at all. Increas- ingly, philosophers and scientists have (...) tended to go their separate ways in considering the issues, since they tend to differ in the questions that they ask, the data and ideas which are provided for consideration, their methods for answering these questions, and criteria for judging the acceptability of an answer. But it is our conviction that philosophers and scientists can usefully interchange, at least to the extent that they provide co~straints upon each other’s preferred strategies, and it may prove possible for more substantive progress to be made. Philosophers have said some rather naive things by ignoring the extraordinary advances in the neurosciences in the twentieth century. The skull is not filled with green cheese! On the other hand, the arrogance of many scientists toward philosophy and their faith in the scientific method is equally naive. Scientists clearly have much to learn from philosophy as an intellectual discipline. Manifestations of Mind: Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Walter B. Weimer Pages 5-31 The Mysterious “Split‘: A Clinical Inquiry into Problems of Consciousness and Brain Peter H. Knapp Pages 37-69 Mind, Brain, and the Symbolic Consciousness Irwin Savodnik Pages 73-98 Brain and Free Will John C. Eccles Pages 101-121 An Old Ghost in a New Body C. Wade Savage Pages 125-153 How Dogmatic Can Materialism Be? John C. Eccles Pages 155-160 Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function R. W. Sperry Pages 163-177 Consciousness as an Emergent Causal Agent in the Context of Control System Theory E. M. Dewan Pages 181-198 Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Body Problem William C. Wimsatt Pages 205-267 Mind, Structure, and Contradiction Gordon G. Globus Pages 271-293 Problems Concerning the Structure of Consciousness Karl H. Pribram Pages 297-313 The Role of Scientific Results in Theories of Mind and Brain: A Conversation among Philosophers and Scientists E. M. Dewan, John C. Eccles, Gordon G. Globus, Keith Gunderson, Peter H. Knapp, Grover Maxwell et al. Pages 317-328 Scientific Results and the Mind-Brain Issue: Some Afterthoughts Grover Maxwell Pages 329-358. (shrink)

We argue that cognitive empathy and other instances of mental state attribution are a byproduct of self-awareness. Evidence is brought to bear on this proposition from comparative psychology, early child development, neuropsychology, and abnormal behavior.

Abstract:In contrast to “social contract” theories of the corporation, a moral justification of the corporation as actual, not hypothetical, agreement is presented. Central to the justification is the idea of personal projects, as developed by Loren Lomasky. The key idea is the role that corporations can play in the construction and advancement of personal, value-creating projects. The concept of the corporation as actual agreement, as a type of “right of association” theory, is defended against influential criticism of such theories by (...) Thomas Donaldson. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a new form of moral responsibility, labeled “social products liability,” is relevant to business ethics.In particular, this kind of responsibility might justify recent legal claims against firearm manufacturers. This paper argues that, as ithas been presented, social products liability must rest upon utilitarian considerations or on a deeper, more complete theory of moralresponsibility. In the first case, a new form of responsibility seems unnecessary, since liability could be directly apportioned on utilitariangrounds. In the second case, (...) proponents of social products liability face the tasks of presenting the more complete theory and then anchoring social products liability to it. (shrink)

Jean Hampton has argued that an important case of the free-rider problem has the structure of a battle-of-the-sexes game, rather than the Prisoner's Dilemma, as is often assumed. This case occurs when the collective good to be produced is a ‘step’ or ‘lumpy’ good, one that is produced in a single production step. Battle of the Sexes is a coordination game, with stronger equilibria than games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma or Chicken. Hampton argues that, because of this difference, there (...) is good reason to think that players facing a battle-of-the-sexes game can more easily reach mutually desirable outcomes than players facing these other games. An examination of Hampton's argument, however, shows that she has failed to specify a condition that would clearly distinguish her examples of battle-of-the-sexes games from chicken games. Consequently, Hampton's claim that free riding in the provision of step goods is less tempting than other analyses have suggested because of the presence of coordination equilibria is incorrect as it stands. (shrink)

Kenneth Silver criticizes our use of the Capital Asset Pricing Model to determine the return on investment that is deserved by shareholders, and suggests shareholder primacy follows from the principal/agent model, rather than a concern for risk. We argue that Silver has misunderstood CAPM and our use of it, and that, under current law, more is required from articles of incorporation or corporate bylaws for the principal/agent model to apply to corporations.

Despite the fact that they are in most respects environmentally benign, electricity-generating wind turbines frequently encounter a great deal of resistance. Much of this resistance is aesthetic in character; wind turbines somehow do not "fit" in the landscape. On one view, landscapes are beautiful to the extent that they are "scenic," well-balanced compositions. But wind turbines introduce a discordant note, they are out of "scale." On another view, landscapes are beautiful if their various elements form a stable and integrated organic (...) whole. But wind turbines are difficult to integrate into the biotic community; at least in certain respects, they are like "weeds." Moreover, there is a reason why the 100-meter, three bladed wind turbines now favored by the industry cannot very well be accommodated to any landscape view. They are, as Albert Borgmann would put it, characteristic of contemporary technology, distanced "devices" for the production of a commodity rather than "things" with which one can engage. It follows that the only way in which the aesthetic resistance to wind turbines can be overcome is to make them more "thing-like." One such "thing-like" turbine is discussed. (shrink)

The data reviewed in Barresi & Moore's treatment of social understanding is recast in terms of a model of social intelligence that was advanced some time ago (Gallup 1982). When it comes to their analysis of the behavior of other individuals, most primates (and humans younger than 18 months of age) appear to function as radical behaviorists, whereas chimpanzees and older infants show evidence of becoming primitive cognitive psychologists.

Science is made possible by the introduction of theoretical objects. Why this should be so has never been made clear. Indeed, it has never been made clear how theoretical objects are rightly to be understood, or in what ways they differ from more ordinary sorts of physical objects. What follows is a sketch of a new theory. In my view, this theory becomes explicit on the so-called “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics. But it has implicitly characterized scientific development since the (...) revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries.How are theoretical objects rightly to be understood? I say that they are objects whose existence is postulated by a theory is alright as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. We also need to know what theories are. (shrink)

Excerpt“We are now living in a totally new era,” Henry Kissinger said in May 2022 in an interview with the Financial Times)1.

Day length provides an important environmental cue by signalling conditions favourable for flowering. While Arabidopsis promotes flowering in response to long days, rice promotes flowering in response to short days. Despite this difference, a recent paper reveals that the network controlling this response is highly conserved in these distantly related plants, only the activity of one component is reversed.1 This reveals how an important developmental process can be diversified for adaptation by using the same set of genes, but regulating them (...) differently. BioEssays 25:829–832, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

CHAPTER Heidegger and the Quantum Brain In any case the orientation to "I" and " consciousness" and re-presentation ...

If the brain has a level of quantum functioning that permits superposition of possibilities and nonlocal control of states, then new answers to the problem of the consciousness/brain relation become available. My discussion is based on Yasue and co-workers’ account of a quantum field theory of brain functioning, called ‘quantum brain dynamics’. In the framework developed each person can properly state: ‘I am nonlocal control and my meanings are control variables.’ Cognition is identified with a conjugate reality and perception is (...) where quantum cognition, quantum memory and the quantum re-presentation of quantum reality meet and make a conjugate match. A new problem arises with regard to the world, however, since on this interpretation the one world-in-common is relinquished in favour of multiple parallel world-thrownnesses. But since quantum physics remains to this day deeply uncommonsensical, we should not hope to provide quantum solutions in consciousness studies without overturning the deepest convictions of common sense. (shrink)

Responds to the comments by A. N. Rowan on the current author's original discussion regarding animal rights. In his original paper, Gallup maintains that there are no inherent rights; they are inventions of the human mind. Thus, animals only have rights if we say the do. Rowan, however, asserts there is more universal agreement as to why some beings have certain rights than Gallup credits. Here, Gallup suggests that Rowan has sidestepped the issue. If rights are something other than an (...) invention of the human mind, then what are they, what form do they take, from whence do they come, and how are we to identify them? Contrary to what Rowan implies, Gallup says his intention was not to take a stand on whether or not animals have rights. To reiterate, says Gallup, animals only have rights to the extent that we say they do. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

A possible relation between Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysics and connectionism is explored by considering diffeacuterance in neural nets terms. First diffeacuterance, as the crossing of Saussurian difference and Freudian deferral, is modeled and then the fuller 'sheaf of diffeacuterance is taken up. The metaphysically conceived brain has two versions: in the traditional computational version the brain processes information like a computer and in the connectionist version the brain computes input vector to output vector transformations non-symbolically. The 'deconstructed brain' neither processes (...) information nor computes functions but is spontaneously economical. (shrink)

The "Chinese Room" controversy between Searle and Churchland and Churchland over whether computers can think is subjected to Derridean "deconstruction." There is a hidden complicity underlying the debate which upholds traditional subject/object metaphysics, while deferring to future empirical science an account of the problematic semantic relation between brain syntax and the perceptible world. I show that an empirical solution along the lines hoped for is not scientifically conceivable at present. An alternative account is explored, based on the productivity of neural (...) nets, in which the semantic relation is found to be dynamical - a spontaneous, stochastic, self-organizing process. (shrink)

Quantum degrees of freedom greatly enrich nonlinear systems, which can support nonlocal control and superposition of states. Basing my discussion on Yasue’s quantum brain dynamics, I suggest that the Cartesian subject is a cybernetic process rather than a substance: I am nonlocal control and my meanings are cybernetic variables. Meanings as nonlocal attunements are not mechanically determined, thus is it concluded we have freedom to mean.

Freud considered dreams to be compositions of past waking experiences but this theory is untenable: (1) the process of compositing disparate memories into the seamless dream life is miraculous, and (2) authentically novel dream worlds are experienced. Dennett makes dreams into purely cognitive affairs, a matter of scripts, denying their perceptual appearing. I suggest that dreams are de novo constructions of actual perceptual worlds, not put together from memory scraps. Implications for waking perception are considered.