We provide a careful development and rigorous proof of the CPT theorem within the framework of mainstream quantum field theory. This is in contrast to the usual rigorous proofs in purely axiomatic frameworks, and non-rigorous proof-sketches in the mainstream approach. We construct the CPT transformation for a general field directly, without appealing to the enumerative classification of representations, and in a manner that is clearly related to the requirements of our proof. Our approach applies equally in Minkowski spacetimes of any (...) dimension at least three, and is in principle neutral between classical and quantum field theories: the quantum CPT theorem has a natural classical analogue. The key mathematical tool is that of complexification; this tool is central to the existing axiomatic proofs, but plays no overt role in the usual mainstream approaches to CPT. (shrink)

Borrowing from epidemiological and economic analysis, we argue that the central constructs by which children are judged educationally rest in contrastive judgements and that such judgements are based on 'everyday' constructs - not objective descriptors. But because these everyday constructs become seemingly objectified by the procedures and discourses of education, they appear reliable and objective. The insistent process of contrastive judgement based on these everyday constructs has its result in cohorts of children forever being judged unfavourably next to others. A (...) model to frame the process is outlined and consequences for children's acceptance and inclusion are discussed. (shrink)

True benevolence is, most fundamentally, a desire that the world be better. It is natural and common, however, to frame thinking about benevolence indirectly, in terms of a desire to make a difference to how good the world is. This would be an innocuous shift if desires to make a difference were extensionally equivalent to desires that the world be better. This paper shows that at least on some common ways of making a “desire to make a difference” precise, this (...) extensional equivalence fails. Where it fails, “difference-making preferences” run counter to the ideals of benevolence. In particular, in the context of decision making under uncertainty, coupling a “difference-making” framing in a natural way with risk aversion leads to preferences that violate stochastic dominance, and that lead to a strong form of collective defeat, from the point of view of betterness. Difference-making framings and true benevolence are not strictly mutually inconsistent, but agents seeking to implement true benevolence must take care to avoid the various pitfalls that we outline. (shrink)

With the increasing professionalization of clinical ethics, some hospitals and health systems utilize both ethics committees and professional clinical ethicists to address their ethics needs. Drawing upon historical critiques of ethics committees and their own experiences, the authors argue that, in ethics programs with one or more professional clinical ethicists, ethics committees should be dissolved when they fail to meet minimum standards of effectiveness. The authors outline several criteria for assessing effectiveness, describe the benefits of a model that places primary (...) responsibility for ethics work with professional clinical ethicists—the PCE-primary model, and offer suggestions for alternative ethics program structures that empower healthcare professionals to contribute to ethics work in ways more tailored to their strengths and skills while minimizing the shortcomings of ethics committees. (shrink)

Research ethics committees ‘(RECs) members’ perceptions of their role in regard to the science of research proposals are discussed. Our study, which involved the interviewing of 20 participants from amongst the UK’s independent (Phase I) ethics committees, revealed that the members consider that it is the role of the REC to examine and approve the scientific adequacy of the research – and this notwithstanding the fact that a more competent body will already have done this and even when that other (...) body has the legal responsibility for this function. The problematic nature of this situation, tantamount to double jeopardy, is considered: it can delay research and so add to costs whilst offering no countervailing benefits, or the double jeopardy may be just the cost society imposes, through its RECs, on researchers as the price for research on human subjects. (shrink)

Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

O artigo visa analisar, em linhas gerais, a arqueologia do sujeito operada por Alain de Libera, o que será feito pela concentração no estudo de duas teses fundamentais: Descartes chegou ao sujeito menos por reflexão e mais por refração, em seu debate com Hobbes e Regius, ao tentar escapar da redução do indivíduo à vida corporal e, portanto, à passividade; Tomás de Aquino e Pedro de João Olivi teriam sido os responsáveis por dar certo acabamento a uma temática elaborada desde (...) a Patrística, eminentemente por Agostinho de Hipona, que teria formulado um esquema compreensivo do eu como suporte e como agente. This article aims to analyze the fundamentals of Alain de Libera’s archeology of the subject. Two central thesis will be investigated here: Descartes arrived at his theory of the subject in a controversy with Hobbes and Regius, in order to avoid the reduction of the individual to bodily life and passivity; Thomas Aquinas and Peter John Olivi were responsible for a mature approach to the theme of the subject, which had been elaborated by Patristic authors, eminently by Augustine of Hippo, who formulated a comprehensive scheme of the self as support and agent. (shrink)

Given the authority accorded to Hilary of Poitiers by ecumenical councils of the 1st millennium, it is of interest to determine his teaching about the disputed question of the eternal relation of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The question is complex, partly because it is one that Hilary in most cases touches upon only indirectly, when arguing for the divinity of the Son, and partly because the meaning of the relevant passages, even on the level of Latin (...) syntax, is often hard to determine, and a matter of disagreement between different translators or editors. Y. Congar and A. E. Siecienski, in their surveys of the discussions of the inter-trinitarian relations of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the patristic age do not examine all these textual difficulties, nor do they discuss the Opus Historicum, which contains a highly relevant passage on this subject. The present article attempts to throw light on the question by examining the key texts and suggesting answers to the problems of translation and interpretation that they present. It concludes that Hilary’s position is substantially identical to that which would later be agreed by the Greek and Latin churches at the council of Florence, and enshrined in the decree Laetentur caeli. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno’s visit to Elizabethan England in the 1580s left its imprint on many fields of contemporary culture, ranging from the newly-developing science, the philosophy of knowledge and language, to the extraordinary flowering of Elizabethan poetry and drama. This book explores Bruno's influence on English figures as different as the ninth Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Originally published in 1989, it is of interest to students and teachers of history of ideas, cultural history, European (...) drama and renaissance England. Bruno's work had particular power and emphasis in the modern world due to his response to the cultural crisis which had developed - his impulse towards a new ‘faculty of knowing’ had a disruptive effect on existing orthodoxies – religious, scientific, philosophical, and political. (shrink)

Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated and empirically informed arguments that cast doubt on the (...) generality of multiple realization in the cognitive sciences. They argue that mind-brain identities have played an important role in the growth and achievements of the cognitive sciences, and suggest that there is little prospect for multiple realization in an empirically-based theory of mind. This leads Polger and Shapiro to offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, as well as in chemistry, biology, and other non-basic sciences. (shrink)

Multiple realizability has recently attractedrenewed attention, for example Bickle, 1998;Bechtel and Mundale, 1999; Bechtel and McCauley,1999; Heil, 1999; and Sober, 1999. Many of thesewriters revisit the topic of multiplerealizability in order to show that someversion of a mind-brain identity theory isviable. Although there is much of value inthese recent explorations, they do not addressthe underlying intuitions that have vexedphilosophers of mind since Hilary Putnamintroduced the concern (1967). I argue that thestandard way of construing multiplerealizability is a much stronger claim (...) thanthat of Putnam's intuition alone. I distinguishfour interpretations of the multiplerealizability intuition. Some commonformulations of multiple realizability arealmost certainly true, while others are not atall plausible. I argue that the plausible formsof multiple realizability do not impugn theprospects for a mind-brain Identity Theory. (shrink)

In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain -- that sensations are brain processes -- and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties -- a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily indentical to brains, a position held (...) by few current identity theorists. Polger's approach to what William James called the "great blooming buzzing confusion" of consciousness begins with the idea that we need to know more about brains in order to understand consciousness fully, but recognizes that biology alone cannot provide the entire explanation. Natural Minds takes on issues from philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, moving freely among them in its discussion.Polger begins by answering two major objections to identity theory -- Hilary Putnam's argument from multiple realizability and Saul Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity. He then offers a detailed account of functionalism and functional realization, which offer the most serious obstacle to consideration of identity theory. Polger argues that identity theory can itself satisfy the kind of explanatory demands that are often believed to favor functionalism. (shrink)

A hilarious new exploration of philosophy through cartoons from the duo who brought you the New York Times bestselling Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar... Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klien have been thinking deep thoughts and writing jokes for decades, and now they are here to help us understand Philosophy through cartoons, and cartoons through Philosophy. Covering topics as diverse as religion, gender, knowledge, morality, and the meaning of life (or the lack thereof), I Think, Therefore I (...) Draw gives a thorough introduction to all of the major debates in philosophy through history and the present. And since they explain with the help of a selection of some of the smartest cartoonists working today, you'll breeze through these weighty topics as you guffaw and slap your knee. Cathcart and Klein's Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... and Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates have been a favorite of philosophers and non-philosophers alike for years. Packed with dozens of witty cartoons and loaded with profound philosophical insight, I Think, Therefore I Draw will delight readers and leave them enlightened. (shrink)

A number of philosophers, from Thomas Reid1 through C. A. J. Coady2, have argued that one is justified in relying on the testimony of others, and furthermore, that this should be taken as a basic epistemic presumption. If such a general presumption were not ultimately dependent on evidence for the reliability of other people, the ground for this presumption would be a priori. Such a presumption would then have a status like that which Roderick Chisholm claims for the epistemic (...) principle that we are justified in believing what our senses tell us. (shrink)

Wie sieht die korrekte Struktur der Rechtfertigung menschlichen Wissens aus? Welches sind ihre legitimen Quellen? Wie groß ist der Umfang unserer gerechtfertigten Meinungen? Von der normativen Erkenntnistheorie erhoffen wir uns Antworten auf diese und ähnliche Fragen. Allzu oft wird dabei übersehen, daß die Antworten ganz entscheidend davon abhängen, was wir unter 'Rechtfertigung' verstehen. Mit den Beiträgen einer internationalen Autorenschaft möchte das Buch durch die Konfrontation der traditionellen Erkenntnistheorie mit ihren Gegnern die versteckten Prämissen und Implikationen der traditionellen Perspektive transparenter machen. (...) Mit Beiträgen von: Thomas Bartelborth, Peter Baumann, Sven Bernecker, Elke Brendel, Fred Dretske, Thomas Grundmann, Frank Hofmann, Dirk Koppelberg, Hilary Kornblith, Wolfgang Spohn, Catrin Misselhorn, Richard Schantz, Christiane Schildknecht, Oliver Scholz, Karsten Stüber, Marcus Willaschek, Michael Williams. (shrink)

This chapter considers how Liberal Naturalism interacts with the main problems and theories in the philosophy of perception. After briefly summarising the traditional philosophical problems of perception and outlining the standard philosophical theories of perceptual experience, it discusses whether a Liberal Naturalist outlook should incline one towards or away from any of these standard theories. Particular attention is paid to the work of John McDowell and Hilary Putnam, two of the most prominent Liberal Naturalists, whose work was also very (...) influential in the philosophy of perception. There is also a section focusing on colour, an especially important topic not only for debates about perceptual experience but also for debates concerning how our ‘manifest image’ of the natural world relates to our best theories in the physical sciences. (shrink)

“Splendid is the name of peace.” So begins the conciliar decree issued by five Aquitanian bishops meeting in synod at Poitiers sometime around, and quite probably in, the year 1000. The phrase had particular meaning and authority for tenth-century Aquitanian bishops, since it was borrowed from a letter by Hilary, the famed fourth-century bishop of Poitiers. The bishops went on to assert that they were meeting “for the restoration of peace and justice” in condemning, among other offenses, attacks on (...) ecclesiastical property. They cited as precedent both a council held five years earlier and one held at the abbey of Charroux. The bishops of the very same sees as those represented at Poitiers had indeed gathered in June of 989 at Charroux. They had claimed to have assembled so that “the criminal actions that, because of our long delay in calling a council, have been sprouting through evil habit in our dioceses will be rooted up and more constructive behavior implanted.” They had then threatened with anathema anyone who engaged in three very specific activities: taking ecclesiastical property by force; plundering agricultural resources from peasants; and attacking unarmed clerics. (shrink)

Wolf Haas' Detective Brenner series has become wildly popular around the world for a reason: They're timely, edgy stories told in a wry, quirky voice that's often hilarious, and with a protagonist it's hard not to love. In this episode, Brenner-forced out of the police force-tries to get away from detective work by taking a job as the personal chauffeur for two-year-old Helena, the daughter of a Munich construction giant and a Viennese abortion doctor. One day, while Brenner's attention is (...) turned to picking out a chocolate bar for Helena at a gas station, Helena gets snatched from the car. Abruptly out of a job, Brenner decides to investigate her disappearance on his own. With both parents in the public eye, there's no scarcity of leads-the father's latest development project has spurred public protest, and the mother's clinic has been targeted by the zealous leader of an anti-abortion group. Brenner and God is told with a dark humor that leaves no character, including Brenner, unscathed. Haas tells the story of a fallible hero who can be indecisive and world-weary, baffled and disillusioned by what he finds, but who presses forward nonetheless out of a stubborn sense of decency-a two-year-old is kidnapped, so you find her, because that's just what you do. (shrink)

From, at least, the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth-century AD a controversy concerning a seemingly trivial fact engaged Christian scholars: when did Methuselah die? Although most of the major Latin fathers were drawn into the fray — and echoes of the debate continued in Latin exegesis for another five centuries — this controversy has escaped historians and is today unknown. So this paper has a double task. First, uncover from its remnants what we can know of this problem that elicited (...) much exertion on the part of Jerome and Augustine at its height, and was discussed urgently before them by Hilary of Poitiers , and after them by Eucherius of Lyons . Second, to examine some of the effects of this controversy on the Latin theology, and, in particular, the Latin church’s understanding of scripture. While any conscious awareness of the controversy itself has disappeared, many of the ideas which underwent development in the controversy, such as the notion of inerrancy and of the fundamental role of the Hebrew text, became part of the life-blood of Latin theology. (shrink)

Issues of identity and reduction have monopolized much of the philosopher of mind’s time over the past several decades. Interestingly, while investigations of these topics have proceeded at a steady rate, the motivations for doing so have shifted. When the early identity theorists, e.g. U. T. Place ( 1956 ), Herbert Feigl ( 1958 ), and J. J. C. Smart ( 1959 , 1961 ), fi rst gave voice to the idea that mental events might be identical to brain processes, (...) they had as their intended foil the view that minds are immaterial substances. But very few philosophers of mind today take this proposal seriously. Why, then, the continued interest in identity and reduction? Th e concern, as philosophers like Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor have expressed it, is that a victory for identity or reduction is a defeat for psychology. For if minds are physical, or if mental events are physical events, then psychologists might as well disassemble their laboratories, making room for the neuroscientists and molecular biologists who are in a better position to explain those phenomena once misdescribed as “psychological.” Th e worry nowadays is not that locating thought in immaterial souls will make psychology intractable, but that locating thoughts in material brains will make it otiose. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES RECONSIDERED: ON THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE DE TRINITATE OF HILARY OF POITIERS JOSEPH WAWRYKOW University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 0 NE OF THE most difficult and puzzling of Aquinas's works, the Summa contra Gentiles, has occasioned much controversy among scholars.1 Who are the gentiles against whom Thomas is writing? Is the work principally philosophical or theological in character? Why has (...) class='Hi'>Thomas delayed discussion of the central Christian truths of Trinity and Incarnation to the fourth and final book of the contra Gentiles? How much credence should be given to the slightly later story (that is, post-Thomas) that Thomas composed the Summa contra Gentiles for "missionary purposes"?-these, and other such questions, have exercised the imagination of numerous students of Aquinas. In the recent literature, Mark Jordan's " The Protreptic Structure of the Summa contra Gentiles,, without doubt offers the most 1 Thomas Aquinas, Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium seu 'Summa contra Geiitiles' Vols. II-III. Edited by C. Pera, P. Marc and P. Caramello (Turin: Marietti, 1961). References to the ScG list the book, chapter, and section numbers according to the Marietti edition. P. Marc in Volume I of this edition (Turin: Marietti, 1967), provides an indispensable introduction to the principal issues in the scholarship, with a strong emphasis on the problem of dating; see especially chapter I, article 3. For an English translation, see A. Pegis et al., Summa contra Gentiles, Vols. IIV (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). I would like to express my gratitude to the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, University of Notre Dame, for a summer stipend that has supported the writing of this atricle. 617 618 JOSEPH WAWRYKOW innovative and promising approach to this controversial work.2 Jordan has raised the study of the contra Gentiles to a new level by identifying its genre through careful analysis. As his title indicates, for Jordan Thomas's Summa contra Gentiles is a protreptic work, an invitation to wisdom, to be precise, an invitation to Christian wisdom. Issued by one Christian to other Christians, the contra Gentiles in this view is a recommendation of the more serious and sustained pursuit of the Christian form of life, a recommendation that includes in its survey of the different layers of Christian wisdom the depiction of the failings of alternative, non-Christian, versions of truth.3 In the hands of Aquinas, this protreptic, moreover, itself becomes a schooling in wisdom (Jordan, p. 209) : in following Thomas in the numerous discrete arguments that constitute the contra Gentiles, the Christian reader will in fact become imbued in Christian wisdom, thus anticipating in the present life the completion of this pursuit of wisdom that will be provided in the beatific vision in the next. Jordan's is a powerful study and, on the basis of its structural observations about the contra Gentiles, both large and local, would seem in its core insight to be fundamentally correct. His recognition of the protreptic structure permits a balanced assessment of the traditional questions addressed to the contra Gentiles (for details, see the article), while highlighting the positive, Christian-theological intentions of Aquinas in composing this work. Yet, by observing two points at which his analysis flags, it will be possible to add to Jordan's genuine contribution. The first of these observations concerns Jordan's treatment of 2 Mark D. Jordan, "The Protreptic Structure of the Summa contra Gentiles," The Thomist 50 (1986) : 173-209. I have benefitted greatly from extended conversations with Professor Jordan about his work on the contra Gentiles. 3 Jordan specifies the term "protreptic" as follows (p. 192): "A protreptic was originally a persuasion to the study and practice of some art or skill; for philosophic writers, it became an exhortation to the practice of the philosophic art, which required virtues of inquiry and contemplation." Later (p. 194), Jordan indicates the ways in which Thomas has transformed ancient protreptic in offering this Christian protreptic. HILARY'S DE TRINITATE AND AQUINAS 619 Aquinas's approach to scripture in the fourth book of the Summa contra Gentiles. That the analysis of Thomas's approach here to scripture needs... (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn with his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential and widely read philosophers of the 20th century. Kuhn's claim that the meanings of scientific terms change is often taken to be refuted by recent advances in the philosophy of language. Meaning Changes challenges this interpretation showing that meaning change in Kuhn has multiple aspects: Semantic, mental and historical. The author describes the traditional view with clarity, but demonstrates that Kuhn's idea stems from (...) his studies of history. The book explains how Kuhn's philosophy is supported by cognitive science and why meaning change is relevant to the history of ideas. It argues that Kuhn's case against Hilary Putnam's causal theory of reference constitutes serious criticism of the account. The book concludes by analysing Kuhn's 'historical perspective' in the coherentist epistemological framework, which regards the question of scientific progress ultimately as empirical. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science. It also is valuable reading to anybody interested in philosophy or scientific change. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER I WANT TO ADDRESS the metaphysical status of concepts in Thomas Aquinas. The need to do so is raised by contemporary criticism of Aristotelian reflections upon how language “hooks up with the world.” Many contemporary philosophers, following upon the later Wittgenstein think that in the opening passages of the De interpretatione Aristotle provides a very bad “theory” of semantic relations, when he sketches how words are related to things via the mind. It is a bad “theory” (...) inasmuch as it seems to involve “mental representationalism” as a constitutive element. Amidst all their disagreements, it is fair to say that the many authors anthologized in Richard Rorty’s The Linguistic Turn come together in a common disdain for any hint of mental representationalism in philosophical discussions of the semantic of language. This is not the place to rehearse in detail all the difficulties posed for mental representationalism within contemporary philosophy, in particular because they are very familiar. Yet it would be good to characterize briefly what I have in mind. Hilary Putnam, one of the most forceful critics, and with the De interpretatione text explicitly in mind, describes the relationship between meaning and mental representationalism in this way. (shrink)

This article explores the explanation of incommensurable theories as alternative conceptual schemes based on different categorical or taxonomic structures. The concept of incommensurability, which is a cornerstone of the late philosophy of Thomas Kuhn, is elucidated, reflecting his approach to avoid assessing the history of science in terms of the truth and falsity of scientific paradigms. It is shown how Kuhn has combined Frege – Russell’s descriptivist semantics and the causal theory of reference by Hilary Putnam and Saul (...) Kripke. His version of semantics consists in redefinition of natural kinds in terms of neuropsychology, in substantiating mentalist and internalist perspective on language. Kuhn’s philosophical position is identified as post-Darwinian Kantianism. It is expressed not in a priori nature of knowledge, but in its determination by conceptual schemes and sociocultural relativity. Despite the fact that the incommensurable terms seem to occur in the history of knowledge, incommensurability remains not the clearest and most consistent way of thinking on the history of science. Kuhn repeatedly refined his views on incommensurability, ultimately aligning it more closely with alternative classifications of objects serving as a framework for subsequent theories. Natural kind concepts, like taxonomic units, distribute the perceived objects into hierarchies reflecting structures of external world. On the one hand, kinds differentiate objectively existing objects into groups. On the other hand, kind terms are both mental modules and cultural constructs that are used to organize the experience of language speakers, identify objects, and provide the basis for group beliefs. Kuhn posits that the development of scientific theories constitutes an evolution of conceptual schemes characterized by disparities and incommensurability. (shrink)

This article discusses three recent philosophers who speak in different ways about the retroactive construction of reality by human knowledge. Bruno Latour unapologetically claims that the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II could not have died of tuberculosis, as determined by a team of French doctors in 1976, since this disease was not discovered until three thousand years after his death. Slavoj Žižek often makes comparable arguments, though his version of retroactivity draws on both psychoanalysis and dialectics in a way that is (...) never the case for Latour. Yet in his 2012 book Less Than Nothing, Žižek takes the more prudent, realist-sounding line that changes in scientific theories do not change nature itself. The real novelty in retroactive theories is provided by Thomas Kuhn, who draws our attention to a grey temporal zone in scientific discovery in which it is impossible to pinpoint the exact date of any breakthrough. For Kuhn, this stems from a dualism found in reality itself: one between the fact “that” a thing exists and the determination of “what” its properties are. The tension between these two moments is responsible for much of the vagueness and drama surrounding any paradigm shift in the sciences and is closely related to at least one plausible theory of metaphor. In closing, three Hollywood films are cited as helpful examples for understanding the different ways in which a paradigm shift works its retroactive magic. (shrink)

RESUMO: Hilary Putnam procurou solapar o relativismo cognitivo, mediante acusações de incoerência autodestrutiva. A concepção de Thomas Kuhn de desenvolvimento do conhecimento científico ocupa um lugar de destaque nesse empreendimento crítico, e a incomensurabilidade entre paradigmas rivais constitui o núcleo da disputa. Putnam afirmou que a incomensurabilidade é autorrefutante, levando em conta apenas sua dimensão semântica. Este artigo examina essa investida antirrelativista. Considero dois sentidos de autorrefutação, o material e o formal, e defendo que essa acusação não atinge (...) a referida formulação semântica. Adicionalmente, mostro que a dimensão epistemológica da incomensurabilidade também não é afetada. ABSTRACT: Hilary Putnam sought to undermine cognitive relativism by charging it with self- destructive incoherence. Thomas Kuhn's conception of the development of scientific knowledge occupies a prominent place in that critical endeavor, and the incommensurability between rival paradigms constitutes the core of the dispute. Putnam claimed that incommensurability is self- refuting, taking into account only its semantic dimension. This article examines this anti-relativist attack. I consider two senses of self-refutation, the material and the formal, and argue that they do not affect the semantic formulation of incommensurability. Additionally, I show that the epistemological dimension of incommensurability is also unaffected. (shrink)

En 1983 Thomas Kuhn introdujo la distinción entre interpretación y traducción, con el propósito de fortalecer la tesis de la inconmensurabilidad y responder a objeciones formuladas por Donald Davidson y Hilary Putnam. A partir de este contexto de debate, este trabajo revisa la distinción kuhniana con el objetivo de explorar las conexiones que pueden establecerse entre las teorías rivales y las comunidades científicas que las defienden. Para ello examino el papel de la traducción, la interpretación y la comunicación (...) en el cambio teórico, con el propósito de ampliar la distinción de Kuhn y ahondar en algunas consecuencias no contempladas en su planteo original. Concluyo que la distinción entre estos planos lingüísticos resulta fundamental para comprender y evaluar el alcance de las divergencias suscitadas en casos de inconmensurabilidad. (shrink)

Boethius identifies God both with esse ipsum and esse suum. This paper explains Boethius's general semantic use of "esse" and the application of this use to God. It questions the helpfulness of attributing to Boethius "existence" words and argues for a more robust role in Boethius’s thought for Hilary of Poitiers’s and Augustine’s exegeses of Exodus 3:14-15 than has been acknowledged in recent scholarship.

Surveys philosophy from the neo-Platonists to St. Anselm, showing how Greek philosophy took the form in which it was known to its cultural inheritors and how ...

From the philosophy of mind and language, through physics and mathematics, to the philosophy of the human sciences, morality and religion, there is almost no area of philosophy to which Hilary Putnam has not made highly original and influential contributions. This wide-ranging collection of papers provides a critical assessment and exploration of Putnam's Seminal Work. Written by Philosophers themselves well known for their work in the field, each essay bears witness to the continuing influence and importance of Putnam's thought. (...) Putnam's reply constitutes an extensive new essay which clarifies, and develops further, central themes in his philosophy. This volume includes papers by Simon Blackburn, George Boolos, Michael Hallett, Michael Redhead, Thomas Ricketts, David Wiggins and Crispin Wright. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature in MindH. G. Wells and the Evolution of the Mad ScientistAnne StilesIn 1893, H. G. Wells's article "Man of the Year Million" dramatically predicted the distant evolutionary future of mankind:The descendents of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths (...) will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like the evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shriveled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.2The editors at Punch evidently found this prediction hilarious, publishing a poem and accompanying sketch ridiculing Wells's lopsided future humans (Figure 1, p. 318). But not everyone was laughing.As ridiculous as Wells's bodiless, large-headed "human tadpoles" may seem, they were based on the most rigorous evolutionary science of their day. Wells, a lower-middle-class academic prodigy, received a prestigious [End Page 317] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1."1,000,000 A.D.," Punch, or the London Charivari, 25 November 1893, 250.[End Page 318]government scholarship to attend the Normal School of Science in South Kensington (later absorbed into the University of London). Though Wells left South Kensington in 1887 without earning his degree, he was greatly inspired by his biology teacher, famed physiologist Thomas Huxley. Wells absorbed Huxley's pessimistic take on late-Victorian evolutionary theory, particularly his emphasis on the inherent brutality of natural selection.Huxley's pessimism surfaces in Wells's dystopian scientific romances, which imaginatively probe the consequences of evolutionary theory run amok.3 Beginning with the eponymous mad-scientist villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and continuing with alien invasion narratives like The War of the Worlds (1897–98) and The First Men in the Moon (1901), Wells depicts brains becoming steadily larger and more powerful as bodies grow smaller and more useless, emotions increasingly muted, and conscience all but silenced. Wells's nightmarish vision of the massively over-evolved brain unites these three works, as the ruthlessly intellectual biologist Moreau morphs into the amoral, top-heavy Martians and lunar inhabitants.Wells's malevolent mad scientists and extraterrestrials owe an intellectual debt not only to Huxley, but also to discussions of genius and insanity in late-Victorian issues of Mind (1876–present).4 The now-familiar trope of the mad scientist in fact traces its roots to the clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in the mid-nineteenth century. Authors like Scottish journalist and materialist philosopher John Ferguson Nisbet, English eugenicist Francis Galton, and Austrian Jewish physician Max Nordau—all of whose works were reviewed in Mind—argued that mankind had evolved larger brains at the expense of muscular strength, reproductive capacity, and moral sensibility.5 Wells drew upon these arguments in his fiction and even contributed his own article to Mind, a philosophical reflection on science entitled "Scepticism of the Instrument" (1904).In its unique role as "the first English journal devoted to Psychology and Philosophy." Mind was an ideal venue for an inherently interdisciplinary [End Page 319] subject like the clinical study of genius.6 The journal's first editor, George Croom Robertson, was particularly concerned that articles in Mind rise "above the narrowing influences of modern specialism."7 This disciplinary breadth attracted contributors from all fields, including fiction writers and literary critics like George Henry Lewes, Grant Allen, Andrew Lang, and, of course, H.G. Wells. During the same period, literary works probed ideas discussed in Mind, such as the nature of the soul, the possibility of free will, and the ramifications of biological determinism. In the four decades following its auspicious start, Mind provided a venue where scientists, philosophers and literary authors could find intellectual common ground.In this essay, the early fiction of H.G. Wells will serve as a case study of cross-fertilization between literature and scientific ideas discussed in Mind. The goals of this exploration are threefold: to gain a better understanding of the journal's history and influence; to investigate why Victorians associated genius with insanity; and to illuminate the shared... (shrink)

Thomas Erne entfaltet im Anschluss an Schleiermachers Ästhetik das Verhältnis von Kunst und Religion. Dabei nimmt er über Schleiermacher hinaus auch die moderne, autonome Kunst in Blick. Im Dialog mit exemplarischen Kunstwerken der Gegenwart fragt er nach Transzendenzerfahrungen in der Gegenwartskunst, in der die Kunstwerke selbst zu,,autonomen Sinndomänen" werden. Der Band dokumentiert die Schleiermacher-Lecture 2019 an der Theologischen Fakultät der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Im Rahmen dieser Reihe sollen ausgewählte Aspekte von Schleiermachers Werk mit Fragen und Problemkonstellationen der Gegenwart in (...) Beziehung gesetzt werden. (shrink)

This reissue, first published in 1980, is based on the experiences of the International Extension College in developing distance teaching. The volume begins by reviewing the world problems of educational quality and quantity, and then examines the ways in which print, broadcasts and group study have been used to train teachers, to improve classroom education, to teach by correspondence out of school, and to support rural development. It then considers how that experience can be used, perhaps by creating a network (...) of radio colleges, to supplement and extend existing schools and colleges. Finally, the book includes a descriptive and annotated bibliography of over 100 distance teaching projects in 65 third world countries. (shrink)

Can a good man do evil things? This paper offers a moral philosophical reading of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the bodies, focusing on Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell as a good person, in spite of his growing involvement in the dirty work of Henry VIII. The narrative resists interpretations of Cromwell as someone corrupted by power. It also thwarts attempts to read his deeds as results of a deficient capacity for sympathetic imagination, which (...) has been a focalized moral flaw in contemporary moral philosophical discussions of literature. By thus resisting moralized readings of his character, the novels invite intensified attention to the complex dynamics of character and circumstance. (shrink)