Originally published in 1973. This book presents a valid mode of reasoning that is different to mathematical probability. This inductive logic is investigated in terms of scientific investigation. The author presents his criteria of adequacy for analysing inductive support for hypotheses and discusses each of these criteria in depth. The chapters cover philosophical problems and paradoxes about experimental support, probability and justifiability, ending with a system of logical syntax of induction. Each section begins with a summary of its contents and (...) there is a glossary of technical terms to aid the reader. (shrink)

This volume reprints in a scholar's edition the first English-language texts on bioethics, John Gregory's (1724-1773) Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (London, 1770) and Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London, 1772). Five previously unpublished manuscripts of Gregory's lectures are also included. An introduction places Gregory's medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in their eighteenth-century contexts of Scottish Enlightenment history and culture, Baconian science and (...) philosophy of medicine, medical practice, the feminine and feminist philosophy of the Bluestocking Circle, and moral sense philosophy, particularly David Hume's concept of sympathy, and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources as an aid to teaching and future scholarship. The book's index provides access to Gregory's texts, by using both historical terms and current terminology of bioethics. A volume in the subseries Classics of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

This dissertation advances a solution to a problem intrinsic to understanding the dialogues of Plato. How are we to understand Plato's thought when he never speaks in his own name in any of his dialogues? Many writers assume that Plato's characters speak for him. With this assumption, they study the thought articulated by Plato's characters as if it were his own, and elaborate a so-called "doctrinal" interpretation. A variety of subjective readings follows, since what Socrates and other characters say in (...) the dialogues is often inconsistent or contradictory. To resolve these problems the dissertation constructs a method for interpreting Socratic dialogue which is true to the genre. Extending the work of Bakhtin, Clay, and Kahn, it develops a metalanguage for specifying the structure, plot, aim , and effect of a dialogue as well as the thought , character , and pathos of its participants, by applying concepts in Plato's dialogues and in Aristotle's Poetics, Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Physics, and other works. The dissertation shows that the Republic represents Glaucon as subject to erotic desire and desires for luxury and honor, and that the aim of Socrates' discourse is to induce a catharsis in Glaucon in order to change these states of character. ;To support this interpretation, the dissertation shows: Aristotle does not apply a doctrinal reading to Plato's dialogues; he does not attribute the remarks of the character Socrates to Plato. Irwin's claims in "Plato's Ethics" are not supported by the texts of Aristotle which he cites. Aristotle's treatment of the Republic in Politics II is consistent with a mimetic interpretation of the dialogue. His treatment of the Republic is peirastic: he refutes Socrates' proposals with premisses and arguments that Socrates himself expresses in the dialogue. The dissertation discusses Aristotle's treatment of Socrates' proposals for unity in the city of the guardians, the sharing of women and children, gender, sacrilegious acts and incest, property, and the minimum necessary elements for a city. Aristotle's concept of catharsis can be derived from Sophist 230 and Republic X. (shrink)

Members of a National Health Service, or other recognised Research Ethics Committee (REC), in deciding whether or not to withhold their assent for a clinical trial, must obey the law. If they do not do so, then they may become liable to pay personally negligence claims made by injured trials subjects. It could be no defence to say that members had consulted their own lower ethical standards; or merely that they had acted in good faith; or that they had followed (...) Department of Health (DH) guidelines, which do not have the force of law. The law requires that the rights, safety, and well-being of clinical trial subjects shall prevail over other interests. REC favourable opinion is a powerful endorsement of a trial, and prospective subjects are invited to rely upon it. REC members are legally bound to exercise their power to withhold assent to any clinical trial which does not give subjects the protection the law requires. (shrink)

Descartes a entrepris de détruire la pratique aristotélicienne de la philosophie : à son savoir seulement probable, les Regulae, puis les Essais opposent une science certaine d'objets clairs et distincts. Mais cette instauration concerne aussi, peut-être même d'abord, l'idéal pratique qu'Aristote ne cesse de viser dans les sciences théorétiques : le sage parvient à la félicité par l'exercice même d'une connaissance si parfaite qu'elle imite celle du dieu, qui pense sa pensée en acte et éternellement. Descartes met décidément en crise (...) la félicité par la contemplation, dont la pensée médiévale avait hérité d'Aristote. Pourtant, une autre figure de la félicité se dégage tout aussi indiscutablement de l'entreprise cartésienne : la méthode, la certitude scientifique qu'elle permet et les principes métaphysiques qui assurent l'une et l'autre restent, à chaque moment, solidaires d'une attitude et d'une ambition proprement morales - la volonté infinie aboutit à la générosité, où la considération du bon usage de notre libre-arbitre permet le - contentement de soi-même -. Ainsi la philosophie atteint-elle, pour Descartes aussi, à une félicité. Mais à une félicité volontaire et non plus contemplative. On tentera donc d'abord de mesurer, dans différents champs de la philosophie cartésienne, l'impact de la certitude jusque sur les questions d'éthique ; ensuite, de souligner la référence constante, quoique souvent implicite, de Descartes à la félicité telle qu'Aristote la visait ; enfin, de suivre leur dialogue au fil conducteur de leurs versions divergentes, mais complices, de l'admiratio et du thaumazein. (shrink)

Cet article examine les choix de traduction, exposés dans deux préfaces se répondant, de deux traducteurs vers le latin de l’Ethique à Nicomaque, Joachim Périon, dont la traduction paraît en 1540, et Denis Lambin, dont le texte paraît en 1572. L’un et l’autre de ces traducteurs, à travers leur polémique, semblent en fait continuer les thèses d’un autre traducteur d’Aristote, théoricien du style de la traduction, Leonardo Bruni, dont le De interpretatione recta date de 1424-1426. Si Périon pense que le (...) seul style possible pour traduire Aristote en latin est celui des ouvrages philosophiques de Cicéron, qui a créé le seul latin philosophique, Lambin, après avoir remis en cause le principe même d’une traduction du grec vers le latin, finit par en accepter la validité, le latin restant la langue la plus riche stylistiquement, et la plus à même de rendre la richesse du grec. (shrink)

À partir des résultats d’une recherche qualitative et participative ayant impliqué des personnes qui vivent avec un problème de santé mentale, des intervenants et des gestionnaires de milieux de pratique en santé mentale et visant à explorer les représentations d’une intégration sociale jugée réussie, cet article propose une analyse et une réflexion sur les conditions de possibilité d’une société suffisamment bonne et inclusive pour les personnes vivant avec un problème de santé mentale. L’élargissement du prisme de la reconnaissance sociale s’est (...) dégagé comme une condition essentielle à cet égard qui, elle-même, implique certaines conditions, avec en particulier un travail de reconnaissance de la différence en tant que telle et la mise à distance d’une logique d’utilité. (shrink)

À la fois omniprésent et incernable, le temps est une dimension omniprésente de nos existences, indissociable de notre rapport au cosmos, à la vie biologique, à la conscience mais aussi à l’histoire, à la culture et à la société. Parce qu’elle est au confluent de plusieurs champs d’expérience et de réflexion, la question du temps offre une passerelle privilégiée pour croiser des approches rarement invitées à se rencontrer : celles des sciences d’un côté (physique, biologie, médecine, cosmologie), celles des arts (...) de l’autre (littérature, cinéma, arts plastiques, musique, théâtre). Au-delà des questions qui touchent à la réorganisation des partages cognitifs et disciplinaires (entre sciences et arts), l’objectif de cet ouvrage est de montrer la fécondité des transferts épistémologiques entre ces deux domaines. D’un côté, les sciences constituent un réservoir inépuisable pour les arts, auxquels elles proposent une multiplicité de modèles du temps opérant à différentes échelles : temporalités non linéaires, réversibles, cycliques ou emboîtées, qui peuvent être dynamisées par des bifurcations, des catastrophes ou des phénomènes d’émergence imprévisibles. De l’autre, les arts sont un lieu privilégié de modélisation, d’exposition et de mise à l’épreuve de modèles temporels, qui tantôt croisent la rationalité dominante (sciences, historiographie), tantôt en réactivent des dimensions occultées (mythe, rite, etc.). Frayant à la fois dans l’imaginaire et le rationnel, ces représentations du temps permettent d’exhiber la complexité d’un phénomène qui ne peut être appréhendé que dans l’entre-deux des savoirs et des arts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Physics VIII, 5, 256b8-13, Aristotle maintains that it is impossible that there is no motion, because he proved earlier on that it is necessary that there is always motion. In Physics VIII, 1, 251b23-28, Aristotle said that it is necessary that if time is eternal, then motion is also eternal. In Physics VIII, 5, 256b8-13, Aristotle speaks on the contrary about the necessity of eternal motion. In this paper, we show that the argument expounded in Physics VIII, 1, 251b23-28 (...) entails that eternal motion is also necessary de sensu diviso. (shrink)

In this dissertation I argue for a broadly Chomskian account of all natural language linguistic properties, including semantic properties. But the dissertation is as much concerned with methodological issues as with this substantive question. ;In chapter one, I argue that the standard motivation for Naturalistic accounts of language and mind is misguided. Rather such accounts should be motivated by the potential explanatory gains afforded by successful Naturalistic accounts. Accordingly, we should seek accounts that increase the science's evidentiary basis and explain (...) the central explanatory roles of its kinds. My account of linguistic kinds is based on and illustrates this account of Naturalism. ;Following a brief introduction to current syntactic theory , I argue that, in the less philosophically loaded domain of syntactic properties, a broadly Chomskian account is superior, on empirical and methodological grounds, to a number of alternative accounts . I then extend the Chomskian view to cover semantic properties, treating semantic properties of natural language utterances as inherited from semantic properties of mental representations tokened in language processing . I argue for this extended account over the standard, Convention-based account of natural language semantic properties. ;Like Convention-based accounts in the Gricean tradition, the Chomskian account proceeds via a two step reduction. Natural language properties are first reduced to properties of psychological states or mental representations; then an account of the nature of these mental representations fills out the account. In my view there is quite a strong case for the Chomskian account of the first step in this reduction. I don't think there is an similarly powerful case for any particular theory of mental representation at this point. The various theoretical pressures on such theories and their ranking are not yet sufficiently clear. In chapter six I discuss Fodor's asymmetric dependence theory, arguing that a variety of cases suggest that asymmetric dependence theory puts too much emphasis on recognition. I suggest a way of amending the theory by introducing a further counterfactual component to it. (shrink)

A passing remark may at times be a clearer indication of basic conceptions or misconceptions than a well-pondered dissertation, and the present article had its inception in a passing remark of Professor Dewey's, to the effect that no man has as yet seen an atom, although it is quite possible that atoms might be observed in the future.

This article is primarily a defense of the Paradigm Case Argument (PCA). It is secondarily a comment on a recent controversy over the validity of its use in philosophy. I argue that the controversy rests on a misinterpretation. By extending the analysis of the objections (and here I invoke Descartes' famous method of possible doubt) I show that the occurrence of a paradigm and the fact that a concept is normally used to describe that paradigm logically entails not that the (...) paradigm is instantiated, but only that it is correct to apply that concept to that paradigm. In this manner the ontological fallacy is avoided, and further, this enforces the important separation between saying something about the correct application of a concept and saying something about its meaning. (shrink)

The article argues that the growth of religious service provision directed at the Muslim diaspora in Europe has led to greater professionalization and pluralism within the Islam state in Muslim countries. Contemporary Muslim governments have claimed a monopoly over public prayer and religious education and have heavily invested in a network of infrastructure and services – the Islam state. The recent breakthrough of Islamist parties into governments in Turkey and across North Africa poses a challenge to the continued ‘civilian control’ (...) over religion. What will become of the enormous Islamic Affairs ministries that Islamist parties have inherited – the hundreds of thousands of public servants of state Islam across the region, the tens of thousands of mosques and thousands of religious schools? Liberals demand the abolition of the Islam state because it violates the separation of religion and state; Islamists detest it for its repressive qualities. Despite progressive liberalization, governments in the past decade have not sought disestablishment, and have instead increased the resources and policing of state-run religion. I draw on the experience of Muslim governments in the competitive field of state–Islam relations in European countries to explain the modest beginnings of reform of the official religion apparatus in Muslim-majority countries. (shrink)

Inhabitants of a land that their ancient myths proclaimed to be the creation of divinities, the Japanese have peopled their archipelago with numerous earth gods: giants trees, simple pebbles concealed either in an oratory, a corner of a garden or deep inside a thicket; crossroads stoneposts, steles in the middle of a plot or next to a rice field, tombstones, and rocks that are worshipped on home altars. The imposing presence of these divine proprietors of the provinces and of sites (...) that were once urban settlements, villages, or private residences is still visible in the tall buildings of Tokyo and Osaka. These protean spirits, found on roof tops in the form of stone foxes or redwood porticos, bear witness, even in the heart of the city, to a latent belief: the forces of the earth are still at work in the world, keeping watch over human activities. Although there are very few people left who believe, as the ancients stories tell, that the citizens of Japan are descendants of the gods of the earth and sky, there nevertheless remain many who accept the notion that a single telluric energy inhabits the world of the living, the dead, things, and the gods. (shrink)