The posthumously published diaries and letters of Beauvoir and Sartre challenge the traditional account of Beauvoir as Sartre's philosophical follower. They show Sartre drawing on Beauvoir's account of relations with the Other in her metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, as he began writing Being and Nothingness, and point to an unexplored Beauvoirean lineage of existentialism, including Bergson as well as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger, and the African-American writer, Richard Wright.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper addresses three problems: the problem of formulating a coherent relativism, the Sorites paradox and a seldom noticed difficulty in the best intuitionistic case for the revision of classical logic. A response to the latter is proposed which, generalised, contributes towards the solution of the other two. The key to this response is a generalised conception of indeterminacy as a specific kind of intellectual bafflement-Quandary. Intuitionistic revisions of classical logic are merited wherever a subject matter is conceived both as (...) liable to generate Quandary and as subject to a broad form of evidential constraint. So motivated, the distinctions enshrined in intuitionistic logic provide both for a satisfying resolution of the Sorites paradox and a coherent outlet for relativistic views about, e.g., matters of taste and morals. An important corollary of the discussion is that an epistemic conception of vagueness can be prised apart from the strong metaphysical realism with which its principal supporters have associated it, and acknowledged to harbour an independent insight. (shrink)

The ontic conception of scientific explanation has been constructed and motivated on the basis of a putative lexical ambiguity in the term explanation. I raise a puzzle for this ambiguity claim, and then give a deflationary solution under which all ontically-rendered talk of explanation is merely elliptical; what it is elliptical for is a view of scientific explanation that altogether avoids the ontic conception. This result has revisionary consequences for New Mechanists and other philosophers of science, many of whom have (...) assimilated their conception of explanation to the ontic conception. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Wesley Salmon’s version of the ontic conception of explanation is a main historical root of contemporary work on mechanistic explanation. This paper examines and critiques the philosophical merits of Salmon’s version, and argues that his conception’s most fundamental construct is either fundamentally obscure, or else reduces to a non-ontic conception of explanation. Either way, the ontic conception is a misconception.

Author Robert Wright shows how Buddhist meditative practice can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and deepen your appreciation of beauty and other people." -- Adapted from book jacket.

This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.

Skepticism about the epistemic value of intuition in theoretical and philosophical inquiry fueled by the empirical discovery of irrational bias (e.g., the order effect) in people's judgments has recently been challenged by research suggesting that people can introspectively track intuitional instability. The two studies reported here build upon this, the first by demonstrating that people are able to introspectively track instability that was experimentally induced by introducing conflicting expert opinion about certain cases, and the second by demonstrating that it was (...) the presence of instability?not merely the presence of conflicting information?that resulted in changes in the relevant attitudinal states (i.e., confidence and belief strength). The paper closes with the suggestion that perhaps the best explanation for these (and other) findings may be that intuitional instability is not actually ?intuitional.? (shrink)

The connections between science and civic culture in the Victorian period have been extensively, and intensively, investigated over the past several decades. Limited attention, however, has been paid to Irish urban contexts. Roman Catholic attitudes towards science in the nineteenth century have also been neglected beyond a rather restricted set of thinkers and topics. This paper is offered as a contribution to addressing these lacunae, and examines in detail the complexities involved in Catholic engagement with science in Victorian Belfast. The (...) political and civic geographies of Catholic involvement in scientific discussions in a divided town are uncovered through an examination of five episodes in the unfolding history of Belfast's intellectual culture. The paper stresses the importance of attending to the particularities of local politics and scientific debate for understanding the complex realities of Catholic appropriations of science in a period and urban context profoundly shaped by competing political and religious factions. It also reflects more generally on how the Belfast story supplements and challenges scholarship on the historical relations between Catholicism and science. (shrink)

According to some theories of testimonial knowledge, testimony can allow you, as a knowing speaker, to transmit your knowledge to me. A question in the epistemology of testimony concerns whether or not the acquisition of testimonial knowledge depends on the speaker's testimony being sincere. In this paper, I outline two notions of sincerity and argue that, construed in a certain way, transmission theorists should endorse the claim that the acquisition of testimonial knowledge requires sincerity.

The regress of reasons threatens an epistemic agent’s right to claim that any beliefs are justified. In response, Peter Klein’s infinitism argues that an infinite series of supporting reasons of the right type not only is not vicious but can make for epistemic justification. In order to resist the sceptic, infinitism needs to provide reason to think that there is at least one justified belief in the world. Under an infinitist conception this involves showing that at least one belief is (...) supported by an infinite series of supporting reasons. This paper argues that showing this makes problems for the infinitist. The finite minds problem that prevents completion of an infinite series is well documented. This paper examines alternative attempts to provide evidence of infinity that the infinitist might take, whether by using a notion of justification without infinite reasons or by altering the notion of evidence. It concludes that both of these fail and consequently infinitism is unable to offer a solution to Agrippa’s trilemma. (shrink)

This lively collection of interdisciplinary essays engages the theology of Craig Keen. Keen’s work responds to the violence of metaphysics through a still and considered focus on divesting oneself of power. Acutely aware of the problems of modern theology, Keen does not set out to solve every puzzle, but instead responds to difficult questions with hope and prayer. For Keen, theology is never to be the acquisition of knowledge, but the giving of love. He writes in such a way as (...) to create space for voices of difference and dissent. The essays included in this volume do not just interpret, explain, or critique Keen’s thought, but they seek to accompany him in attentiveness to difference and pain. As such, they engage with the same concerns as Keen: the violence of concepts, the suffering of individuals, the divestment of power, and the embodiment of prayer and doxology. (shrink)

Revised versions of papers presented at the 1994 Tyndale Fellowship jubilee conference held in Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick.

Patient requests for a healthcare provider of a particular race or sexual orientation create a conflict of obligations. On the one hand, providers have a duty to deliver clinically indicated care consistent with patient preferences. On the other hand, providers have legal, professional, and organizational assurances that they should not suffer workplace discrimination. Protecting healthcare providers from harm while maintaining obligations to patients requires unambiguous messaging to both parties. Providers need to be clear that their organization will not be complicit (...) in discrimination against them, instead supporting their needs and preferences for management of the situation. In a context of patient-centered care, harm principle-based boundaries of respect for autonomy must be defined. A Caregiver preference guideline developed and used at University Health Network, Toronto provides a standardized way for the organization to decide when it will honor patient requests for providers of a particular background. This process stresses dialogue, assessment of clinical feasibility, and empowerment and support for affected care providers. (shrink)

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defence of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

Simulation research has become a growing area of interest in the social studies in recent years. Problematically, the term simulation is used without consistency among practitioners and researchers. The conceptual confusion regarding what simulations are (or are not) muddies the field and makes it difficult for scholars to make sense of this phenomenon or to talk about simulations across findings. In order to bring clarity to the field, this paper is framed around two conceptual and analytic constructs: conceptual analysis and (...) the theory of language games. In this paper, I will provide a rationale for why the social studies field requires a specific definition for simulations. Next, simulations will be defined using four specific criteria: verisimilitude, dynamism, active human agents, and pedagogical mediation. Finally, simulations will be differentiated from three related phenomena with which they are often conflated: games, role-plays, and models. (shrink)

Sunstein's characterization of moral blunders jointly indicts an intuitive process and the structure of heuristics. But intuitions need not lead to error, and the problems with moral heuristics apply also to moral principles. Accordingly, moral development may well involve more, rather than less, intuitive responsiveness. This suggests a novel trajectory for future research into the development of appropriate moral judgments.