In his short story “The Library of Babel” (1941), Argentinean writer Jorge LuisBorges (1899–1986) examines the nature of reality, in particular epistemologicalboundaries to knowing in the world and universe. In this tale Borges is concerned withepistemic certainty, whether the universe is decipherable by use of reason, philosophy,or scientific investigation. I examine Borges’ tale as an allegory of the dilemma modernsfind themselves in, in an age when the moorings which have anchored us, belief inGod, religious faith, moral absolutes, the idea of (...) progress, that language can mirrorreality, have all been subject to radical critique. In this regard, Borges stands at the cuspof postmodernism and can be seen as a precursor of this movement. Borges finds thesearch for meaning a noble yet frustrating human endeavor, underlain with a fear weare denied contact with the reality of things. The Library offers hope of revelation ofthe universe’s secrets, yet presents formidable barriers to understanding. In his visionBorges presents thought-provoking images of society, the search for knowledge, and ofhuman-imposed order on a chaotic reality. Keywords: Epistemology, knowledge, certainty, postmodernism, mathematics, North Carolina,USA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thus Spake Howard Roark:Nietzschean Ideas in The FountainheadLester H. HuntIThe position I will be taking here will seem very peculiar to many people. I will be treating a novel as a discussion of the work of a philosopher—namely, Friedrich Nietzsche. Worse yet, I will be treating it as a discussion that is philosophically penetrating and deserves to be taken seriously. Still worse, the novel is Ayn Rand's early (...) novel The Fountainhead. I think it is safe to say that her reputation, among academics who discuss the works of philosophers, is very low. If the reader will only bear with me, though, I think I can make a case that Rand opens a line of inquiry about Nietzsche's ideas and values that is not only quite interesting in itself but one that ought to be pursued further by others.There has always been ample reason to associate Nietzsche with The Fountainhead.1 He is after all, the only philosopher who is more or less directly quoted in the book.2 Beyond that, Rand's novel has many other passages that students of Nietzsche instantly recognize as conscious references to him or deliberate echoes of his style. In addition, she revealed, in an introduction written for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, that the following quotation from Beyond Good and Evil had originally stood at the head of the book when it was still in manuscript:It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank to—employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not [End Page 79] to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—3She said, in the same introduction, that she removed the quotation (evidently, immediately before publication) for philosophical reasons, because of her "profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author." Nietzsche, she says, was fundamentally "a mystic and irrationalist," and even in this quotation, chosen for its content, insinuates a philosophical position that she regards as erroneous (namely, determinism). Even her statement of what she likes about this passage is rather constrained: "as a poet [ie., not as a philosopher], he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man's greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms."4It is of course true enough that Rand does disagree with Nietzsche, and for more or less the reasons that she suggests here, but it is also true that the passage she has quoted expresses some ethical themes—nobility, order of rank, the "pathos of distance," and (most obviously) the idea of self-reverence as a characteristic of the ethically good—which are at least as important in The Fountainhead as they are in Nietzsche's writings. Though Rand's spirited disclaimer serves to remind us of her deep differences with Nietzsche, the quotation itself suggests that there might be an interesting philosophical, not merely literary or emotional, connection between The Fountainhead and Nietzsche's ideas. What I would like to show here is that this connection merits a much closer look than it has ever been given heretofore. Not only is the presence of Nietzschean themes in Rand's novel deep and pervasive, but the book actually contains a very interesting and powerful internal critique of one of Nietzsche's most characteristic ideas, a criticism based in large part on values and assumptions that he shares. Before I can set out this critique, I will need to explore some of the positive thematic and philosophical connections.IIOne evening, rather late in the novel, Gail Wynand, the corrupt newspaper publisher and financier, surprises his wife, Dominique, with a present: he has had an architect design a house for them. The architect, she realizes with shock as she sees the drawings for the house, is her former lover, Howard Roark, a man with whom she is still in love. None of this is known to her husband, who innocently tells her that [End Page 80] Roark... (shrink)

This book attempts to synthesize two apparently contradictory views of psychology: as the science of internal mental mechanisms and as the science of complex external behavior. Most books in the psychology and philosophy of mind reject one approach while championing the other, but Rachlin argues that the two approaches are complementary rather than contradictory. Rejection of either involves disregarding vast sources of information vital to solving pressing human problems--in the areas of addiction, mental illness, education, crime, and decision-making, to name (...) but a few. Where previous books have focused either on psychology as an abstract science of the mind or as a strictly empirical approach to behavioral problems, this is the only book that attempts to show how the best modern theoretical work on mental mechanisms relates to the best modern empirical work on complex behavioral problems. It will be of considerable interest to psychologists and philosophers across many disciplines and perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an analysis of Plotinus’ argument for the existence of a quasi-psychic entity, the so-called ‘trace of soul’, that functions as an immanent cause of life for an organism’s body. I argue that Plotinus posits this entity primarily in order to account for the body’s possession of certain quasi-psychic states that are instrumental in his account of soul-body interaction. Since these quasi-psychic states imply that an organism’s body has vitality of its own , and Platonic souls (...) are no part or aspect of any body, Plotinus draws the conclusion that the soul must be a cause of the body’s life by imparting a quasi-psychic qualification to it. In so doing, Plotinus introduces elements of hylomorphism into Platonist psychology, and addresses a problem for the animation of the body that Platonic soul-body dualism may plausibly be thought to face. (shrink)

A philosophical exploration of the origin and limits of the modern world.

The recent production of major treatises devoted to elaborating normative ethical theories and the eruption of lively debates concerning the merits of opposed normative systems have been greeted with applause. This reaction is an historical about-face, since for forty or fifty years “ethical” treatises had been attacking the pretensions of traditional moral philosophy, calling for its demise or at the least severely limiting its claims. These skeptical attacks had succeeded in seriously undermining the academic status of moral philosophy and consequently (...) moral philosophy was transformed into “metaethics,” a highly abstract and technical discipline considered much less necessary to the general education of students than what it replaced and with a diminished role in the curriculum. The recent resurgence of interest in normative ethics has generally been lauded as a sign that philosophy has rededicated itself to its proper and time-honored tasks. There is a widespread feeling that the overblown claims of twentieth century skepticism have been whittled down to innocuous proportions and thus that nothing stands in the way of proceeding to construct ethical theories. The study of normative ethical theory now enjoys such respectability and popularity that it is difficult to raise once more the uncomfortable ideas that the ideal of normative ethical theory is a false one, that vanquishing the spectre of noncognitivism is not sufficient for legitimizing it, and that the popular new justifications for the enterprise fail in mischievous ways. (shrink)

This article examines the issues that are at stake in the current resurgence of interest in the subject of habit. We focus on the role that habit has played in conceptions of the relations between body and society, and the respects in which such conceptions have been implicated in processes of governance. We argue that habit has typically constituted a point of leverage for regulatory practices that seek to effect some realignment of the relations between different components of personhood – (...) will, character, memory and instinct, for example – in order to bring about a specific end. In reviewing its functioning in this regard across a range of modern disciplines – philosophy, psychology, sociology – we explore the tensions between its use and interpretation in different lineages: in particular, the Cartesian–Kantian/ravaisson–bergson–deleuze lineages. The article then identifies how these questions are addressed across the contributions collected in this special issue. (shrink)

We are probably alone in the universe—a conclusion based on observations of over 4,000 exoplanets and fundamental physical constraints. This article updates earlier arguments with the latest astrophysical results. Since the discovery of exoplanets, theologians have asked with renewed urgency what the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence says about salvation and human purpose, but this is the wrong question. The more urgent question is what their absence says. The “Misanthropic Principle” is the observation that, in a universe fine-tuned for life, the (...) circumstances necessary for intelligence are rare. Rabbis for 2,000 years discussed the existence of ETI using scriptural passages. We examine the traditional Jewish approaches to ETI, including insights on how ETI affects our perception of God, self, free-will, and responsibility. We explore the implications of our probable solitude, and offer a Jewish response to the ethical lessons to be drawn from the absence of ETI. (shrink)

Among those who criticize the concept of a common refrain is that we really have no idea what futility means. For example, physicians seem to disagree on whether a treatment being futile means that it has a less than 5% chance of working or a 20% chance of working. If the concept is so unclear, then it seems a thin reed upon which to base a momentous ethical decision—namely, that the physician's judgment should be allowed to override the wishes of (...) the competent patient or the patient's duly appointed surrogate. (shrink)

Many situations in human life present choices between (a) narrowly preferred particular alternatives and (b) narrowly less preferred (or aversive) particular alternatives that nevertheless form part of highly preferred abstract behavioral patterns. Such alternatives characterize problems of self-control. For example, at any given moment, a person may accept alcoholic drinks yet also prefer being sober to being drunk over the next few days. Other situations present choices between (a) alternatives beneficial to an individual and (b) alternatives that are less beneficial (...) (or harmful) to the individual that would nevertheless be beneficial if chosen by many individuals. Such alternatives characterize problems of social cooperation; choices of the latter alternative are generally considered to be altruistic. Altruism, like self-control, is a valuable temporally-extended pattern of behavior. Like self-control, altruism may be learned and maintained over an individual's lifetime. It needs no special inherited mechanism. Individual acts of altruism, each of which may be of no benefit (or of possible harm) to the actor, may nevertheless be beneficial when repeated over time. However, because each selfish decision is individually preferred to each altruistic decision, people can benefit from altruistic behavior only when they are committed to an altruistic pattern of acts and refuse to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

Maximization theory, which is borrowed from economics, provides techniques for predicing the behavior of animals - including humans. A theoretical behavioral space is constructed in which each point represents a given combination of various behavioral alternatives. With two alternatives - behavior A and behavior B - each point within the space represents a certain amount of time spent performing behavior A and a certain amount of time spent performing behavior B. A particular environmental situation can be described as a constraint (...) on available points (a circumscribed area) within the space. Maximization theory assumes that animals always choose the available point with the highest numerical value. The task of maximization theory is to assign to points in the behavioral space values that remain constant across various environmental situations; as those situations change, the point actually chosen is always the one with the highest assigned value. (shrink)

For the mature Leibniz, a living being is a created substance composed of an infinitely complex organic body and a simple, immaterial soul. Soul and body do not interact directly, but rather their states correspond according to a harmony preestablished by God. I show that Leibniz’s theory faces challenges with respect to the question of whether substances need to possess knowledge of how they bring about their effects, and I argue that, to address these challenges, Leibniz turns to a concept (...) of “divine preformation” that he attributes to both soul and body. Insofar as divine preformation provides Leibniz with an explanation for how soul and body can both act without possessing explicit knowledge of what they are doing, it serves as a key tool for justifying the theory of preestablished harmony. (shrink)