: The discussion of whether people understand themselves and others by using theories of behaviour or by simulating mental states lacks conclusive empirical evidence. Nichols et al. have proposed the Langer effect as a critical test. From people's inability accurately to predict the difference in the subjective value of lottery tickets in choice and no‐choice conditions, they argued that people do not simulate behaviour in such situations.In a series of four experiments, we consistently failed to replicate the original difference between (...) choice and no‐choice under the conditions used by Nichols et al. We conclude that the replicability of the effect depends on an unknown combination of factors. As long as the target effect is not better understood and under better experimental control, it is difficult to use it as a yardstick against which the accuracy of simulation can be assessed. (shrink)

Pain was one of the issues debated between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine of Hippo. For Augustine pain was an evil caused by original sin. Julian argued that, in the context of creation as a whole, pain can be treated as a good, since its moderate forms are creational. Only in excess are they evil. This article aims at presenting Julian's position in detail, not only in the context of the debate with Augustine, but in the wider context of late (...) ancient philosophy and early Christian doctrine. Julian is well acquainted with philosophical and medical texts and with the biblical and patristic tradition. He rejects Augustine's attempt to work all these into a universal theological theory of pain and thereby deny, in Julian's view, philosophy and medicine their relative autonomy. Julian's plea—as a theologian—for a rational and empirical approach to pain draws as much upon ancient sources as it anticipates an attitude towards natural science and philosophy usually associated with much later periods in history. (shrink)

“This is a book about politics.” (XV) Bereits der erste Satz des Vorwortes gibt die Zielrichtung vor. Der an der University of California in Santa Barbara lehrende Althistoriker Harold A. Drake (D.) hat es sich auf mehr als 600 Seiten – der Verfasser spricht bescheiden von “a sketch” (XVII) – zum Ziel gesetzt, die facettenreiche Gestalt des spätantiken römischen Kaisers Konstantin (306–337) und seine Religionspolitik primär aus der Perspektive des begabten, auf einen umfassenden gesellschaftlichen Konsens hinarbeitenden Politikers zu beschreiben.

Hildebrand oftentimes said that his disciples—even when they believed they were deeply indebted to him for knowledge, wisdom, and truth—had a duty to criticize and overcome any error they would find in his philosophy, because the sole purpose of his writings was to state the truth. He himself gave some extraordinary examples of self-critique. In the following, I wish to treat such an example: a significant error about the nature of the free volitional response, which Stephen Schwarz was the first (...) to note and which Hildebrand himself later explicitly revoked. Furthermore, I wish to show that Hildebrand’s rejecting this error makes his ethics as a whole much more consistent, and opens the way to bringing his philosophy of love closer to our experience. (shrink)

1. Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume.

It is well known that Maimonides rejects the Kalam argument for the existence of God because it assumes the temporal creation of the world, a premise for which he says there is no “cogent demonstration (burhan qat'i) except among those who do not know the difference between demonstration, dialectics, and sophistic argument.”Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I:71:180. All references are to this translation; parenthetic in-text references are to part, chapter, (...) and page. By contrast, he claims to establish belief in the existence of God “through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect” (I:71:182). Taken at his word, Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of the deity, like Aquinas’s five ways, have traditionally been read as models of medieval natural theology: of the power of human reason to independently establish revealed truth. In recent years, however, the same demonstrations have assumed a second kind of significance. For scholars, like myself, who argue that Maimonides holds severe views about the limitations of human knowledge of divine science and metaphysics, these demonstrations are the strongest conceivable counterevidence.The locus classicus for this view is Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I Twersky, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), I:82–109. See also his “Les Limites de la Métaphysique selon Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja et Maimonide; Sources et Antitheses de ces Doctrines chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et Chez Themistius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981): 211–25; “Dieu et L’Etre Selon Maimonide: Exégese d’Exode 3,14 et doctrine connexe,” in Celui qui est: Interprétations juives et chrétiennes d’Exode 3, 14, ed. A. de Libera et E. Zum Brunn (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf [Collection “Patrimoines”], 1986), 15–24; and “The Relation between Maimonides’ Halakhic and non-Halakhic Works,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed., S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987). Pines concludes, on the basis of the limitations of the intellect with respect to knowledge of metaphysics, that Maimonides, like Kant, gives priority to the practical over the theoretical. For arguments drawing different ‘skeptical’ conclusions, see my “Maimonides in the Skeptical Tradition,” ms.; “Maimonides on the Growth of Knowledge and the Limitations of the Intellect,” to appear in Tony Levy, ed., Maimonide: Traditions philosophiques et scientifiques médievales arabe, hébraique, latine; “Logical Syntax as a Key to a Secret of the Guide of the Perplexed,” (in Heb.), Iyyun 38 (1989): 137–66; “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed., H. Levine and R. Cohen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), pp. 173–226; and The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (forthcoming). If Maimonides really held that humans cannot apprehend metaphysical truths about the deity, how could he have demonstrated (or even thought he could demonstrate) the existence of God? If he does demonstrate it, then humans evidently do have knowledge of metaphysics. As one distinguished scholar has recently protested, it is nothing less than “perverse” to interpret Maimonides as “meaning that the existence of God is unknowable when he in fact prides himself on having demonstrated the existence of God in four different ways.”Herbert A. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–1993): 49–103, 86. See also Alfred L. Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Allan Arkush (Amsterdam: Harwood Publishers, 1998), pp. 63–97, 70. (shrink)