While Spelke provides powerful support for concept nativism, her focus on understanding concept nativism through six innate core knowledge systems is too confining. There is also no reason to suppose that thecurse of a compositional mindconstitutes a principled reason for positing less innate structure in explaining the origins of concepts. Any solution to such problems must take into account poverty of the stimulus considerations, which argue for postulating more innate structure, not less.

Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against a variety (...) of philosophical criticisms, new and old, and argue that the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument continues to deserve its guiding role in the study of language and the mind. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...) primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

Two new philosophical problems surrounding the gradation of certainty began to emerge in the 17th century and are still very much alive today. One is concerned with the evaluation of inductive reasoning, whether in science, jurisprudence, or elsewhere; the other with the interpretation of the mathematical calculus of change. This book, aimed at non-specialists, investigates both problems and the extent to which they are connected. Cohen demonstrates the diversity of logical structures that are available for judgements of probability, and explores (...) the rationale for their appropriateness in different contexts of application. Thus his study deals with the complexity of the underlying philosophical issues without simply cataloging alternative conceptions or espousing a particular "favorite" theory. (shrink)

This is the first of three volumes on the subject of innateness. The extent to which the mind is innate is one of the central questions in the human sciences, with important implications for many surrounding debates. This book along with the following two volumes provide assess of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. This book is concerned with the fundamental architecture of the mind, addressing such question as: what capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections (...) are innate? How do these innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal kingdom? The book includes an introduction giving some of the background to debates about innateness and introducing each of the subsequent chapters, as well as a consolidated bibliography. (shrink)

One of the most important abilities we have as humans is the ability to think about number. In this chapter, we examine the question of whether there is an essential connection between language and number. We provide a careful examination of two prominent theories according to which concepts of the positive integers are dependent on language. The first of these claims that language creates the positive integers on the basis of an innate capacity to represent real numbers. The second claims (...) that language’s function is to integrate contents from modules that humans share with other animals. We argue that neither model is successful. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Moral Character and Moral Theories Social interaction is the thread from which the fabric of moral character is woven.1 For it is social ...

Written in 1932, just before the fall of the Weimar Republic and on the eve of the Nazi accession to power, Ernst Jünger’s The Worker: Dominion and Form articulates a trenchant critique of bourgeois liberalism and seeks to identify the form characteristic of the modern age. Jünger’s analyses, written in critical dialogue with Marx, are inspired by a profound intuition of the movement of history and an insightful interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy. -/- Martin Heidegger considered Jünger “the only genuine follower (...) of Nietzsche,” singularly providing “an interpretation which took shape in the domain of that metaphysics which already determines our epoch, even against our knowledge; this metaphysics is Nietzsche's doctrine of the ‘will to power.’” In The Worker, Jünger examines some of the defining questions of that epoch: the nature of individuality, society, and the state; morality, justice, and law; and the relationships between freedom and power and between technology and nature. -/- This work, appearing in its entirety in English translation for the first time, is an important contribution to debates on work, technology, and politics by one of the most controversial German intellectuals of the twentieth century. Not merely of historical interest, The Worker carries a vital message for contemporary debates about world economy, political stability, and equality in our own age, one marked by unsettling parallels to the 1930s. (shrink)

This book is the second of a three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The book is highly interdisciplinary, and addresses such question as: to what extent are mature cognitive capacities a reflection of particular cultures and to what extent are they a product of innate elements? How do innate elements interact with culture to achieve mature cognitive capacities? How do minds generate and shape cultures? How are cultures processed by minds?

Managed care employs two business tools of managed practice that raise important ethical issues: paying physicians in ways that impose conflicts of interest on them; and regulating physicians' clinical judgment, decision making, and behavior. The literature on the clinical ethics of managed care has begun to develop rapidly in the past several years. Professional organizations of physicians have made important contributions to this literature. The statements on ethical issues in managed care of four such organizations are considered here, the American (...) Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Three themes common to these statements are identified and critically assessed: the primacy of meeting the medical needs of each individual patient; disclosure of conflicts of interest in how physicians are paid; and opposition to gag orders. The paper concludes with an argument for a basic concept in the clinical ethics of managed care: physicians and institutions as economically disciplined moral co-fiduciaries of populations of patients. (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)

in Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2007.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus is widely regarded as a masterpiece, a brilliant, if flawed attempt to achieve an ‘unassailable and definitive … final solution’ to a wide range of philosophical problems. Yet, in a 1931 notebook, Wittgenstein confesses: ‘I think there is some truth in my idea that I am really only reproductive in my thinking. I think I have never invented a line of thinking but that it was always provided for me by someone else’. This disarming self-assessment is, I believe (...) accurate. The Tractatus, despite making significant advances on the logical doctrines of Frege and Russell, is essentially a derivative work—Wittgenstein, as he elsewhere acknowledges, provided a fertile soil in which the original seeds of other peoples' thought grew in a unique way. In a play of mine, published in Philosophy (1999), Wittgenstein fails a tough viva on the Tractatus because he fails to properly support some of the weak arguments in the work and because of his inadequate acknowledgment of sources. The present paper further explores some of the antecedents of Wittgenstein's early views and answers some criticisms of the play. (shrink)

This book is the third of a three-volume set on the innate mind. It provides an assessment of nativist thought and definitive reference point for future inquiry. Nativists have long been interested in a variety of foundational topics relating to the study of cognitive development and the historical opposition between nativism and empiricism. Among the issues here are questions about what it is for something to be innate in the first place; how innateness is related to such things as heritability, (...) genetic information, and theories of cognitive development; the status of arguments both for and against nativism; and how best to understand the role of genes in development and inheritance. These issues are all explored in one way or another in this book. But the book also looks to the future. Alongside state-of-the-art discussions of such established nativist concerns as language, number, spatial cognition, and social cognition, this book examines nativist work in a variety of areas where detailed nativist exploration is relatively new, including cultural learning, creativity, economic choice, culture, and morality. The expansion of nativist theorizing into all these new areas shows both the power and the promise of nativist approaches, and points the way to the future. (shrink)

Fluid-phase endocytosis (pinocytosis) kinetics were studied inDictyostelium discoideum amoebae from the axenic strain Ax-2 that exhibits high rates of fluid-phase endocytosis when cultured in liquid nutrient media. Fluorescein-labelled dextran (FITC-dextran) was used as a marker in continuous uptake- and in pulse-chase exocytosis experiments. In the latter case, efflux of the marker was monitored on cells loaded for short periods of time and resuspended in marker-free medium. A multicompartmental model was developed which describes satisfactorily fluid-phase endocytosis kinetics. In particular, it accounts (...) correctly for the extended latency period before exocytosis in pulse-chase experiments and it suggests the existence of some sorts of maturation stages in the pathway. (shrink)

This paper examines today's received scientific medical model with respect to its ability to satisfy two conditions: (1) its explanatory adequacy relative to the full range of findings in the medical literature, including those indicating a correlation between psychosocial variables and disease susceptibility; and (2) the fit between its physicalist patient and disease concepts and what today's basic sciences, so-called sciences of complexity, tell us about the way matter, notably complex systems (e.g. patients), behave and the nature of scientific explanation. (...) I conclude that the received (biomedical) model falls short on both counts and to satisfy these conditions is to articulate a formal successor model. This successor must be guided by premises consistent with the findings and methods of today's basic sciences on which an applied science like medicine depends for its validity. Additionally, the successor model must be able to explain (and predict) the full range of clinical findings, both those that its predecessors explains and at least some of those that it does not. The aim of the paper is to identify such a model. (shrink)

An examination of the early history of Nobel Committee deliberations, coupled with a survey of discoveries for which prizes have been awarded to date – and, equally revealing, discoveries for which prizes have not been awarded – reveals a pattern. This pattern suggests that Committee members may have internalized the received, biomedical model and conferred awards in accord with the physicalistic premises that ground this model. I consider the prospect of a paradigm change in medical science and the possible repercussions (...) of such a change on the distribution of Nobel prizes within the domain of physiology or medicine. For expository purposes, I contrast a model based on a science of pathophysiology with one based on a science of pathopsychophysiology. I propose a means whereby members might minimize the potentially blinding effects of model-dependence and come to evaluate medical discoveries from an inter-model rather than an exclusively intra-model perspective. By bringing to light questions rarely asked and proposing answers, I seek to open a dialogue and furnish a vehicle by which the putative delimiting effects of model-dependence might be overcome. (shrink)

Book Information Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range and Resolution. Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range and Resolution Nicholas Rescher , Chicago and La Salle : Open Court , 2001 , xxiii + 293 , US$24.95 ( paper ). By Nicholas Rescher. Open Court. Chicago and La Salle. Pp. xxiii + 293. US$24.95 (paper:).

The paper begins by tracing the development of the understanding of truth as adjunct to the self in postmodernity. It then proceeds to ask what history is in postmodernity in the light of the reconfiguration of truth, and what kinds of response Christianity, and especially Catholic Christianity might develop to the postmodern situation. Using a critique of Habermas’ speech “Modernity – an incomplete project” it develops a notion of postmodernity as an extreme interpretation of modernity, solely through reference to the (...) self. By analysing the concept of the universal horizon in Habermas and in Hegel it shows how postmodernity both produces and deflects the notion of modernity, so that prior to the postmodern, neither modernity nor postmodernity can really be said to be thought at all.The paper suggests that postmodernity is not really ‘thought’ at all, but rather thinks for us, so that we take it for granted. It then takes a sketch of Nietzsche’s critique of the death of God as a springboard to ask what arenas a thoughtless theological response might be tempted into – especially that of conceiving the world purely and baldly as “sacramental” in structure. Finally it concludes by asking what possibilities postmodernity opens up through a thoughtful discernment of how it constitutes us at all. (shrink)

The author contends that none of the rationales for not allowing ignorance of the law as an excuse in criminal law cases is persuasive. The paper begins by analyzing the condition under which "reasonable" ignorance of the law ought to be allowed as an excuse. Second, the author indicates in greater detail the sense in which 'justice' requires that we recognize these conditions. Third, the author critically examines the arguments used by legal theorists for disregarding the claims of justice to (...) the individual defendant in cases where reasonable ignorance of law is alleged. Finally, the author wants to show that philosophy matters. A philosophical reading of ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law does not excuse) can expose conceptual errors that are not seen in legal readings. (shrink)

The R-Being is, by definition, that entity which possesses all qualities which, expressed in English adjectives, begin with the letter R. It is of course unknown, at the commencement of our inquiry, whether any such entity exists, but it is nevertheless possible to determine the characteristics which such a being, whether existent or not, must possess.

Making finely crafted distinctions and deploying them in intellectually rigorous and clinically applicable judgments define, to a considerable degree, the art of clinical ethics. The papers in this Clinical Ethics number of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy demonstrate the art of clinical ethics in their consideration of respect for autonomy vs. respect for persons, the role of risk in triggering assessment of decisional capacity vs. the role of risk in the concept and assessment of decisional capacity, intention vs. foresight (...) in the clinical management of ectopic pregnancy, preserving life vs. relieving suffering in physician-assisted suicide, and what is essential vs. non-essential in defining the core areas of ethics education for members of hospital ethics committees. (shrink)

The nature and limits of the physician's professional responsibilities constitute core topics in clinical ethics. These responsibilities originate in the physician's professional role, which was first examined in the modern English-language literature of medical ethics by two eighteenth-century British physician-ethicists, John Gregory and Thomas Percival. The papers in this annual clinical ethics number of the Journal explore the physician's professional responsibilities in the areas of surgical ethics, matters of conscience, and managed care.

Face à sa finitude, l'homme est désemparé. Il aborde l'existence par la question du " pourquoi ". " Pourquoi m'a-t-on donné la vie si c'est pour la reprendre? " Il est envahi par la colère, la révolte... puis, il cherche un sens à sa mort et pose un au-delà salvateur, un lieu où tout peut continuer autrement... ou encore il envisage une réincarnation; bref, quelque chose qui n'est plus " la fin de la fin ". Mais quand l'homme se fait (...) philosophe, comment appréhende-t-il cette idée qui sera aussi sa réalité ultime? (shrink)

outrageous remarks about contradictions. Perhaps the most striking remark he makes is that they are not false. This claim first appears in his early notebooks (Wittgenstein 1960, p.108). In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein argued that contradictions (like tautologies) are not statements (Sätze) and hence are not false (or true). This is a consequence of his theory that genuine statements are pictures.

Née des craintes, voire des frayeurs, générées par le développement de la science, la bioéthique a conduit les chercheurs, spécialisés dans l'étude du vivant, à s'interroger sur les dangers que leur discipline peut engendrer : le progrès scientifique est-il toujours souhaitable? Ne risque-t-il pas de mener à des innovations et à des avancées, intellectuellement stimulantes certes, mais éthiquement inacceptables? Tel est le sujet de cet ouvrage collectif.

I am very grateful to my critics for the time and effort that they have devoted to my work.

The reception of child immunization in Iran today can be explained by the conjunction of several factors. Firstly, the Pasteur Institute of Teheran (established in 1921) initiated the vaccine transfer, while the successive public health policies developed and systematised it. Since the Islamic Revolution, the application of the Expanded Program of Immunization has allowed the Islamic Republic of Iran to reach the fourth world-wide rank for immunisation of child populations. The socio-cultural appropriation of the technique can also be explained by (...) its integration into the popular preventive practices (such as magic and religious rituals) as well as a specific treatment of the collective/individual question. This paper describes some results of a qualitative anthropological research conducted in Teheran and the rural district of Hassanâbâd (near Isfahân) between 1991 and 1992. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif est le fruit d'un colloque sur les philosophies du plaisir qui a réuni philologues et philosophes, spécialistes de l'Antiquité et de la Renaissance, en juin 2004, à l'Université de Lille 3.