This book consists of Gregory Vlastos' studies on a variety of themes in Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy.

This collection offers a new understanding of the epistemology of measurement. The interdisciplinary volume explores how measurements are produced, for example, in astronomy and seismology, in studies of human sexuality and ecology, in brain imaging and intelligence testing. It considers photography as a measurement technology and Henry David Thoreau's poetic measures as closing the gap between mind and world. -/- By focusing on measurements as the hard-won results of conceptual as well as technical operations the authors of the book no (...) longer presuppose that measurement is always and exclusively a means of representing some feature of a target object or entity. Measurement also provides knowledge about the degree to which things have been standardized or harmonized – it is an indicator of how closely human practices are attuned to each other and the world. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy, science, and mathematics explore the influence of Kant's philosophy on the evolution of modern scientific thought.

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. (...) The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

In this chapter we draw connections between two seemingly opposing approaches to probability and statistics: evidential probability on the one hand and objective Bayesian epistemology on the other.

This paper is a restatement of my earlier analysis of this argument (1954), Revised in the light of critical comments by other scholars and of closer study of the text. It includes a critical discussion of an alternative formalization of the argument, First offered by wilfrid sellars (1955) and retained (with modifications) by colin strang (1963), Which eliminates successfully the inconsistency of the premises of the argument but has dubious support from plato's text.

Jon Williamson's Objective Bayesian Epistemology relies upon a calibration norm to constrain credal probability by both quantitative and qualitative evidence. One role of the calibration norm is to ensure that evidence works to constrain a convex set of probability functions. This essay brings into focus a problem for Williamson's theory when qualitative evidence specifies non-convex constraints.

For many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins. In its most commonly cited form, scientism consists in claiming that science is the only source of real knowledge and, therefore, that what science does not discover does not exist. Because the charge of scientism is frequently levied, it is important to be clear about what exactly is being claimed in its name. I argue that scientism can best be understood as a fallacy, specifically as a kind (...) of category mistake. Being clear about this requires an examination of the relationship of scientism to the question of demarcation between science and nonscience, a question that has potential implications for theology. (shrink)

Mit Robotik, Digitalisierung, softwaregesteuerten Präzisionsinstrumenten und hochkomplexen Simulationsverfahren wird heute Technik zur treibenden Kraft der wissenschaftlichen Forschungspraxis. Gleichzeitig sieht sich die universitäre Forschung wachsenden gesellschaftlichen Einflüssen ausgesetzt und nähert sich selbst immer mehr der Industrieforschung an, woraus sich neue Fragen nach den Werten und der Objektivität der Wissenschaft ergeben. Derartig weitreichende Veränderungen haben zahlreiche Spekulationen darüber provoziert, ob sich in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte gegenwärtig ein Epochenbruch vollzieht. Dieser Sammelband setzt sich aus philosophischen, historischen und kulturwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven mit den Epochenbruchthesen auseinander, bestätigt (...) und bestreitet ihn. Die Beiträge in diesem Band setzen sich mit der These vom Epochenbruch vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Disziplinen auseinander, darunter Wissenschaftsphilosophie und -geschichte, sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen über Wissenschaft sowie kultur- und medientheoretische Studien zu Wissenschaft und Technik. Die erste Gruppe der Beiträge versucht, die These von einem Epochenbruch im Ganzen zu beurteilen. Den Anfang bilden mehrere Beiträge, die die Debatte eröffnen, indem sie starke Thesen für oder gegen die Vorstellung vorlegen, dass sich das wissenschaftliche Unterfangen in den letzten Jahrzehnten völlig neu orientiert hat. Die Autoren in der zweiten Gruppe setzen sich unter einem spezifischen Gesichtspunkt mit der These auseinander. Sie stellen bestimmte Konzepte in den Mittelpunkt, greifen spezifische technische Entwicklungen heraus oder betrachten einzelne Praktiken und Anwendungskontexte. Diese spezifischen Konzepte, Technologien und Praxisbereiche dienen als Testfeld für die umfassendere These. (shrink)

Erving Goffman's distinctive contribution to an understanding of others was grounded in his information control and ritual models of the interaction process. This contribution centered on the forms of the interaction order rather than self-other relations as traditionally conceived in phenomenology. Goffman came to phenomenology as a sympathetic but critical outsider who sought resources for the sociological mining of the interaction order. His engagement with phenomenological thinkers (principally Gustav Ichheiser, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Schutz) has to be understood in these (...) terms. The article traces basic differences in analytical focus through a range of phenomenological critiques of Goffman and a comparison of salient aspects of Schutz's and Goffman's writings. While the contrasts have perhaps been overplayed, I conclude that Goffman's thinking about others probably owed more to his pragmatist roots than to his later encounters with phenomenology. (shrink)

Few texts summarize and at the same time compound the challenges of their author's philosophy so sharply as Hermann Cohen's Das Prinzip der Infinitesimalmethode und seine Geschichte . The book's meaning and style are greatly illuminated by placing it in the scientific, political, and academic context of late-nineteenth century Germany. As this context changed, so did both the reception of the philosophy of the infinitesimal and of the Marburg school more generally. A study of this transformation casts significant light on (...) the political relevance of the philosophy of science in theWilhelmine era. As a means of following this development across time, Cohen's text is read through its changing reception in the philosophy of his closest disciple, Ernst Cassirer. (shrink)

Recently David Widerker argued that from the widely accepted ought implies can principle one can deduce the controversial and much discussed principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). Actually, he argues that this result is true only of the part of PAP which deals with moral blame. Because there are acts of supererogation, he maintains that it does not apply to the part which deals with moral praise. What Widerker says about supererogation seems true, and I develop and expand upon this idea (...) in the first half of the paper. Then I argue that Widerker's argument regarding moral blame fails. (shrink)

Epistemic probability theories of luck come in two versions. They are easiest to distinguish by the epistemic property they claim eliminates luck. One view says that the property is knowledge. The other view says that the property is being guaranteed by a subject’s evidence. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen defends the Knowledge Account (KA). He has recently argued that his view is preferable to my Epistemic Analysis of Luck (EAL), which defines luck in terms of evidential probability. In this paper, I defend EAL (...) against Steglich-Petersen’s arguments, clarify the view, and argue for the explanatory significance of EAL with respect to some core epistemological issues. My overall goal is to show that an epistemic probability account of luck rooted in the concepts of evidence and evidential support remains a viable and fruitful overall account of luck. (shrink)

Gregory S. Moss examines the central arguments in Ernst Cassirer’s first volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms to show how Cassirer defends language as an autonomous cultural form, and how he borrows the concept of the “concrete universal” from G. W. F. Hegel in order to develop a concept of cultural autonomy.

Following the footsteps of scholars who have made contributions to the debate about the question of method and analysis in Fanon’s work, this article explores the implications of his concerns with the link between madness and struggle on our understanding of the transformative role of radical political strategies in the colonial context and the contemporary world. The main argument it pursues is that Fanon regarded madness and revolutionary violence in the colonial context as effects of colonial alienation. Most importantly, this (...) argument sets the article apart from the works which focus on how Fanon’s proto-structuralist analysis of the process of madness and the question of cure reveals his concerns with the conditions for the possibility of a politico-philosophical paradigm or a universal morality in postcolonial time or national liberation time. (shrink)

The Neoplatonist philosophers who flourished between the third and sixth centuries AD had a profound influence on western philosophy, on both Christian and Islamic literature and the visual arts from the Renaissance to modern times. This extensively revised and updated second edition of Neoplatonists provides a valuable introduction to the thought of four central Neoplatonic philosophers, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Iamblichus. John Gregory presents new translations of a selection of key passages from Neoplatonist writings, an introduction that puts in context (...) the writings, and an epilogue detailing the legacy and influence of Neoplatonist thought. (shrink)

Methodological likelihoodism is the view that it is possible to provide an adequate self-contained methodology for science on the basis of likelihood functions alone. I argue that methodological likelihoodism is false by arguing that an adequate self-contained methodology for science provides good norms of commitment vis-a-vis hypotheses, articulating minimal requirements for a norm of this kind, and proving that no purely likelihood-based norm satisfies those requirements.

I M M Gregory; The Right to Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 7, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 85–102, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.197.

This article examines a questioning strategy in trial crossexamination designed to control an evasive witness, and how that control functions through the interactive contours of verbal and visual conduct to index identity, construct multidimensional forms of participation and project intertextual relations. In the process of nailing down an answer, attorney and witness manipulate linguistic ideologies and project participations of power to calibrate the epistemological criteria for determining the legitimacy of legal realities. I demonstrate how indexical iconicities of trial dialogic form (...) emerge as a contested ritual of truth in the situated details of multimodal discursive practices. (shrink)

Bipartism is the common view that the nature of an intentional state can be wholly explained in terms of (a) its horizontal relations with other such states (as well as peripheral inputs and outputs); and (b) its vertical relations with the world. Extrapolating from Nagel, I try to show that bipartism is fundamentally mistaken. Some intentional states are conscious states, and thus there is something it is like to be in them. This phenomenology is of a piece with such states’ (...) interpretability: to know what it is like to be X at least involves being able to interpret X’s conscious intentional states. But a bi‐partist account of an intentional state is not, by itself, interpretational. So bipartist accounts, at least of conscious intentional states, are incomplete: they fail to capture their phenomenology. (shrink)

Households and banks have increasingly displaced non-financial businesses and governments as the primary debtors in modern capitalist economies, resulting in more severe economic cycles, increased inequality, and external macroeconomic imbalances. Yet while the trend is nearly universal among developed economies, its intensity varies a great deal from country to country. This article highlights the common international causes behind the global expansion of household and financial sector debt; the divergent national approaches to household credit that cause household and financial sector indebtedness (...) to vary from country to country; and the likely causes of these disparate approaches. National approaches to interest rate restrictions, property transfer taxation, high loan-to-value mortgages, mortgage interest taxation, and secondary markets for consumer debt can either encourage or mitigate household and financial sector borrowing. Whether a country encourages or mitigates such credit is determined by an idiosyncratic mix of institutional, political, and ideational factors. Especially important are the size of domestic pension funds, banks’ preferred business models, the political power of financial firms, and whether policymakers are more sensitive to the gains promised by a credit-fueled expansion or to the risks posed by an overleveraged collapse. (shrink)

Nevin & Grace invoke a behavioral metaphor from the physics of momentum. The idealized assumptions they invoke are argued to translate to behavior only in the limited case of steady-state, constant-probability VI responding. Rather than further refine this limit case, mathematical models should be applied to generalizations of the limit case itself, broadening our understanding of behavioral processes.

In this project, I explore and defend William Alston's claim that God does not have beliefs. Rather, He knows what He knows by direct intuition of facts. This direct intuition is absolute immediate awareness. It is immediate in that God knows what He knows without the mediation of other objects of knowledge. It is absolute in that His knowledge is not mediated by any other factors such as causal links between the object of knowledge and God's consciousness of it. ;My (...) central argument is that if God knows all facts by direct intuitive awareness, He must be atemporal. If God is temporal, He could not have direct intuitive awareness of past or future facts. This is because absolute immediate awareness cannot span time. A knowing subject who is temporal can have direct intuitive awareness only of those facts which are temporally present. ;My argument that direct intuitive awareness cannot span time focusses on God's experience of a temporal now. A temporal God will experience what is happening now in a manner which is different than His experience of the past or the future. I argue that God's cognitive experience of past or future facts must be mediated in some way. If this is the case, it is not absolute immediate awareness. Therefore, a temporal God can have direct intuitive awareness only of present facts. In order to have direct intuitive awareness of all facts, regardless of their temporal locations, God must be atemporal. (shrink)

Evan Fales has argued that divine causation is not possible. His central argument involves an analysis of causation that requires that there has to be a mapping feature to guarantee that the particular effect follows the particular cause. He suggests that being related in space and time will provide the means to map the right effects onto their causes. In this paper, I argue that the spatial relation between cause and effect is not necessary to the causal relation. In cases (...) of volition, it appears that the mapping of particular effects onto volitions is achieved by the intentional content of the volition. Therefore, spatial relations are not necessary to causation and the impossibility of divine causation has not been shown. (shrink)