La récente découverte de l'inscription dévoilant l'existence d'un traité d'alliance entre Rome et Maronée confirme les textes de Polybe et de Tite-Live au sujet de la déclaration d'Amphipolis de Paul-Émile, sans doute le Leukios de l'inscription. Les peuples de Maronée, d'Aenos et d'Abdère, le nom de ce dernier étant restitué à partir d'un A bien lisible sur la pierre, se voient concéder le droit à la liberté et à l'auto-gouvernement en dehors des quatre républiques macédoniennes. Négociée probablement peu après Pydna (...) par l'ambassade de Maronée mentionnée au début du document, cette alliance avait pour but de mettre fin aux luttes pour la possession des cités thraces, sanctionnant ainsi l'état de disgrâce d'Eumène II auprès du Sénat, et d'assurer Rome du contrôle de la route vers l'Hellespont. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to use the epistemological framework of a specific version of Cognitive Constructivism to address Piaget’s central problem of knowledge construction, namely, the re-equilibration of cognitive structures. The distinctive objective character of this constructivist framework is supported by formal inference methods of Bayesian statistics, and is based on Heinz von Foerster’s fundamental metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. This epistemological perspective is illustrated using some episodes in the history of chemistry concerning the definition (...) or identification of chemical elements. Some of von Foerster’s epistemological imperatives provide general guidelines of development and argumentation. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss some issues concerning magical thinking—forms of thought and association mechanisms characteristic of early stages of mental development. We also examine good reasons for having an ambivalent attitude concerning the later permanence in life of these archaic forms of association, and the coexistence of such intuitive but informal thinking with logical and rigorous reasoning. At the one hand, magical thinking seems to serve the creative mind, working as a natural vehicle for new ideas and innovative insights, (...) and giving form to heuristic arguments. At the other hand, it is inherently difficult to control, lacking effective mechanisms needed for rigorous manipulation. Our discussion is illustrated with many examples from the Hebrew Bible, and some final examples from modern science. (shrink)

Possible worlds, concrete or abstract as you like, are irrelevant to the truthmakers for modality—or so I shall argue in this paper. First, I present the neo-Humean picture of modality, and explain why those who accept it deny a common sense view of modality. Second, I present what I take to be the most pressing objection to the neo-Humean account, one that, I argue, applies equally well to any theory that grounds modality in possible worlds. Third, I present an alternative, (...) properties-based theory of modality and explore several specific ways to flesh the general proposal out, including my favored version, the powers theory. And, fourth, I offer a powers semantics for counterfactuals that each version of the properties-based theory of modality can accept, mutatis mutandis. Together with a definition of possibility and necessity in terms of counterfactuals, the powers semantics of counterfactuals generates a semantics for modality that appeals to causal powers and not possible worlds. (shrink)

I explore two accounts of properties within a dispositional essentialist (or causal powers) framework, the pure powers view and the powerful qualities view. I first attempt to clarify precisely what the pure powers view is, and then raise objections to it. I then present the powerful qualities view and, in order to avoid a common misconception, offer a restatement of it that I shall call the truthmaker view. I end by briefly defending the truthmaker view against objections.

Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs integrate and interpret the work of leading Kant scholars to come to a new and deeper understanding of Kant's difficult book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In this text, Kant's vocabulary and language are especially tortured and convoluted. Readers have often lost sight of the thinker's deep ties to Christianity and questioned the viability of the work as serious philosophy of religion. Firestone and Jacobs provide strong and cogent grounds for (...) taking Kant's religion seriously and defend him against the charges of incoherence. In their reading, Christian essentials are incorporated into the confines of reason, and they argue that Kant establishes a rational religious faith in accord with religious conviction as it is elaborated in his mature philosophy. For readers at all levels, this book articulates a way to ground religion and theology in a fully fledged defense of Religion which is linked to the larger corpus of Kant's philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Normative pragmatics can bridge the differences between dialectical and rhetorical theories in a way that saves the central insights of both. Normative pragmatics calls attention to how the manifest strategic design of a message produces interpretive effects and interactional consequences. Argumentative analysis of messages should begin with the manifest persuasive rationale they communicate. But not all persuasive inducements should be treated as arguments. Arguments express with a special pragmatic force propositions where those propositions stand in particular inferential relations to one (...) another. Normative pragmatics provides a framework within which varieties of propositional inference and pragmatic force may be kept straight. Normative pragmatics conceptualizes argumentative effectiveness in a way that integrates notions of rhetorical strategy and rhetorical situation with dialectical norms and procedures for reasonable deliberation. Strategic effectiveness should be seen in terms of maximizing the chances that claims and arguments will be reasonably evaluated, whether or not they are accepted. Procedural rationality should be seen in terms of adjustment to the demands of concrete circumstances. Two types of adjustment are illustrated: rhetorical strategies for framing the conditions for dialectical deliberation and rhetorical strategies for making do with limitations to dialectical deliberation. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong famously claims that deterministic laws of nature are contingent relations between universals and that his account can also be straightforwardly extended to irreducibly probabilistic laws of nature. For the most part, philosophers have neglected to scrutinize Armstrong’s account of probabilistic laws. This is surprising precisely because his own claims about probabilistic laws make it unclear just what he takes them to be. We offer three interpretations of what Armstrong-style probabilistic laws are, and argue that all three interpretations (...) are incompatible either with some feature of Armstrong’s broader metaphysics or with essential features of his account of laws (or both). (shrink)

The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.

A detailed study of the moral philosophy of medieval Jewish thinkers Saadia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Moses Maimonides. Jon Jacobs emphasizes their distinctive contributions, emphasises the shared rational emphasis of their approach to Torah, and draws out resonances with contemporary moral philosophy.

A study of the development of Mill's thought through successive editions of _A System of Logic. His view of the genesis of most scientific laws, it is argued, progressively shifted from inductivism to hypothetico-deductivism. Mill's analysis of hypotheses and of methods for their assessment is considered in detail. New light is shed on relations between Mill's metascience and that of William Whewell.

In this book Lesley Jacobs challenges the view, now prevalent in North America and Western Europe, that the primary function of a nation's social policy should be to provide support only for the poorest people instead of social services accessible to all its citizens. In an interesting and distinctive argument he develops and defends the idea that access to basic rights such as education, health care, adequate housing, and income support can provide a solid moral foundation for redistributive state (...) welfare programmes, maintaining that any nation which purports to take rights to basic liberties seriously must also be fully committed to the principles of the welfare state. Dr Jacob's thesis addresses a pressing political and philosophical problem at the heart of the policies and structure of the modern state. His justification of the redistribution of resources will be of particular interest to political philosophers, lawyers, and social policy analysts. (shrink)

A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world (...) in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011 ). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives. (shrink)

The paper maps out and responds to some of the main areas of disagreement over the nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: (1) Between defenders of a “two Wittgensteins” reading (which draws a sharp distinction between early and late Wittgenstein) and the opposing “one Wittgenstein” interpretation. (2) Among “two-Wittgensteins” interpreters as to when the later philosophy emerged, and over the central difference between early and late Wittgenstein. (3) Between those who hold that Wittgenstein opposes only past philosophy in order to do philosophy (...) better and those who hold that Wittgenstein aimed to bring an end to philosophy and teach us to get by without a replacement. It is shown that each of these debates depends on some deeply un-Wittgensteinian, and quite mistaken, assumptions. It is concluded that Wittgenstein’s most polished writing, most notably in Philosophical Investigations I §§ 1–425, is best understood as a kind of Pyrrhonism which aims to subvert philosophical theorizing, by means of a polyphonic dialogue. Because this delicate balance between philosophical questions and their dissolution is not achieved in most of his other published and unpublished writings, we should be very cautious when using the theories and methods we find in those other writings as a guide to reading the Philosophical Investigations. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's treatment of private language has received more attention than any other aspect of his philosophy. Yet, for more than fifty years, a remarkably self-contained exegetical tradition has defined the terms of debate and the principal positions that are discussed. Orthodox interpreters hold that the proof that a private language is impossible turns on showing it is ruled out by some set of systematic philosophical commitments about logic, meaning, and knowledge. Leading candidates for this ground on which the argument (...) depends have included the analysis of concepts, the grammar of our everyday language, the logic of criteria, or the nature of our rule-following, practical activity, or form of life. This article introduces an alternative interpretive tradition, which not only rejects the orthodox methodology, but also rejects the presupposition that Wittgenstein's principal aim is to provide a deductive proof that the idea of a private language leads to contradiction. Finally, it examines some of the leading readings of Philosophical Investigations §258, the passage most frequently discussed by orthodox interpreters. -/- . (shrink)

Polanyi’s theory of spontaneous order is set in historical context, analyzed, and compared to Friedrich Hayek’s version.

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it is argued that while the principle of ‘ought implies can’ is certainly plausible in some form, it is tempting to misconstrue it, and that this has happened in the way it has been taken up in some of the current literature. Second, Kant's understanding of the principle is considered. Here it is argued that these problematic conceptions put the principle to work in a way that Kant does not, so that there (...) is an important divergence here which can easily be overlooked. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of sterility as idealized in the Biblical text and exemplified in the stories of Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and Jacob. My analysis of these stories leads to the hypothesis that sterility is one of the foundational themes of Israel’s ancient past, by condensing some of the main obstacles inherent to the emergency of a people who believe to be guided by God. This new perspective on sterility was achieved by focusing on (...) the spectrum of meanings of the Hebrew root ‘qr, which includes infertility and uprooting; these, added to famine in the land, are experiences that will shape the religious conscience of Israel. This approach amplifies the perception of sterility in the Hebrew Bible, as it emerges from the text as a liminal state of deprivation , in opposition to the contents of the divine oath to the patriarchs (progeny and land). But even while enclosing lack of productivity, weakness and death, which have a negative value, Biblical sterility is not a closed circle, but a space open to potentiality, where divine revelation occurs. God reveals himself through sterility and in sterility. The originality and the notion of specificity in the biblical idea of sterility lie in this cyclical trait, which breaks the circumscription and negative orientation of sterility. The Bible presents sterility as a transitory state, an area for individual and corporate transformation of status. In an ideological system, such as ancient Israel’s, where contractual relations replace natural relations, sterility functions as a powerful symbol of the relationship among men and between men and God. And this may be the reason why sterile matriarch’s traditions were continually re-interpreted, from the 10th century BCE. until the 1st century CE, and could be adapted to new contexts and make sense to distinct communities, particularly in times of crisis and transition. (shrink)

Can an action cease to be required of a moral agent solely because it comes too costly ? Can self-sacrifice or risk of self-sacrifice serve as a limit on our moral obligations? Two recent articles in Philosophy , concerned primarily with the possibility of supererogatory action, suggest very different answers to these questions.

We present an original emergent individuals view of human persons, on which persons are substantial biological unities that exemplify metaphysically emergent mental states. We argue that this view allows for a coherent model of identity-preserving resurrection from the dead consistent with orthodox Christian doctrine, one that improves upon alternatives accounts recently proposed by a number of authors. Our model is a variant of the “falling elevator” model advanced by Dean Zimmerman that, unlike Zimmerman’s, does not require a closest continuer account (...) of personal identity. We end by raising some remaining theological concerns. (shrink)

Early in the 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to what was said to be an epidemic of prejudice-motivated violence, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of 'hate crime' laws that required the collection of statistics and enhanced the punishment of crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places in socio-legal perspective both the hate crime problem and society's response to it. From the outset, Jacobs and Potter adopt a (...) skeptical if not critical stance. They argue that hate crime is a hopelessly muddled concept and that legal definitions of the term are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. Moreover, no matter how hate crime is defined, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the US is experiencing a hate crime epidemic—nor that the number or rate of hate crimes is at an historic zenith. (shrink)

This paper considers whether Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit should be considered as a refutation of solipsism. It focuses on a recent and detailed attempt to argue for this sort of reading that has been proposed by Frederick Beiser ? but it argues that this reading is unconvincing, both in the historical motivations given for it in the work of Jacobi and Fichte, and as an interpretation of the text itself. An alternative reading of the dialectic is (...) proposed, where it is argued that the central problem Hegel is concerned with is not solipsism, but the sociality of freedom. (shrink)

Celebrated as a theorist of science, and a source of stimulating ideas for theologians and philosophers of religion, Michael Polanyi explicitly denied cognitive relativism. Yet cognitive relativism, this paper suggests, is implied by Polanyi's account of conceptual frameworks and intellectual controversies.In ‘The Stability of Beliefs’ Polanyi understands conceptual frameworks as embedded in, and as expressed in the use of, their own languages. The language‐with‐theory limits the range of discussable subjects, interprets relevant facts in its own terms, permits only certain questions (...) to be asked, with answers to these questions serving to confirm the framework.In Polanyi's masterwork, Personal Knowledge , these ideas inform his discussion of controversies over scientific frameworks and frameworks vying to become part of science. In each controversy, frameworks are logically disconnected, Polanyi foreshadowing the incommensurability thesisI argue that Polanyi's ideas satisfy recognised criteria of cognitive relativism. Perception is undetermined by objects and conditioned by language. Empirical propositions, in Polanyi's view, are accepted as true only within a conceptual framework. Polanyi regards supporters of logically disconnected frameworks as thinking differently, living in different worlds, speaking different languages and as experiencing communication failure. There is no framework‐independent argument or evidence to distinguish any framework as the best available approximation to the truth. Frameworks are logically disconnected and incommensurable. (shrink)

A modest transcendental argument is one that sets out merely to establish how things need to appear to us or how we need to believe them to be, rather than how things are. Stroud's claim to have established that all transcendental arguments must be modest in this way is criticised and rejected. However, a different case for why we should abandon ambitious transcendental arguments is presented: namely, that when it comes to establishing claims about how things are, there is no (...) reason to prefer transcendental arguments to arguments that rely on the evidence of the senses, making the former redundant in a way that modest transcendental arguments, which have a different kind of sceptical target, are not. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity is known to be the starting point for moral competence and even is a core concept in the curricula for bachelor’s-level nursing students in the Netherlands. While the development of moral sensitivity in nursing is commonly agreed to be important, there is no clear understanding of how to develop moral sensitivity through nursing education and what components of nursing education contribute to moral sensitivity. Studies on educational interventions could build knowledge about what works in developing moral sensitivity and (...) how to achieve this outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore if and how educational interventions contribute to the development of moral sensitivity in nursing students. A scoping review was conducted. Four electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE and SpringerLink. Articles that were not about formal or initial nursing education and that had no link to moral development or moral sensitivity were excluded. After the final selection on educational interventions, 10 articles out of the initial 964 resources were included in the review. Three different but related dimensions of moral sensitivity emerged from the literature: (1) raising moral awareness, (2) providing the ability to frame and name ethical issues and (3) improving moral reasoning ability. Half of the studies used quantitative measures to evaluate the educational intervention, in particular the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire; the other half used diverse qualitative evaluation methods. None of the studies presented teaching methods that included all three dimensions of moral sensitivity. Moral awareness of self appears to be more loosely connected to the other two dimensions, which raises the question of whether it can be seen as a prerequisite for them. To encompass all dimensions of moral sensitivity, a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures seems most appropriate to study that topic. (shrink)

Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

Opponents of male circumcision have increasingly used human rights positions to articulate their viewpoint. We characterize the meaning of the term “human rights.” We discuss these human rights arguments with special attention to the claims of rights to an open future and to bodily integrity. We offer a three-part test under which a parental decision might be considered an unacceptable violation of a child's right. The test considers the impact of the practice on society, the impact of the practice on (...) the individual, and the likelihood of adverse impact. Infant circumcision is permissible under this test. We conclude that infant circumcision may be proscribed as violating local norms, even though it does not violate human rights. (shrink)

Locke scholars continue to disagree over how he analyzed natural laws, real essence-power relations in physical substances. Some say he regarded them as emanations, necessitated by the corpuscular structure of real essences; for others his laws are adventitious, imposed on substances by God and contingent on divine alterable will. The second view has been increasingly favored in recent years, assisted no doubt by Edwin McCann's potent case for it in "Lockean Mechanism" (1985). The present article, whose authors are sympathetic to (...) the necessitarian reading of Locke, argues against McCann's exegesis. (shrink)

It is a testimony to the enduring importance of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that, 30 years on, its doctrines of normal science and paradigm, incommensurability and revolution continue to challenge metascien tists and stimulate vigorous debate. Critique has mainly come from philosophers and historians; by and large, interested sociologists have embraced Kuhn. Un justifiably so, this article argues, bringing to light a serious difficulty or "anom aly" in his account of the social side of science. Contrary to (...) what he claims, scientific knowledge is not the achievement of organic communities. It is con structed in "trans-epistemic arenas" by diverse participants, laypeople, and specialists. Accepting "community" is a flawed concept in the sociology of science, and in appreciating the major role Kuhn assigned it, the Kuhnian system looks less robust than it did before. (shrink)

Martin-Löf's constructive type theory forms the basis of this paper. His central notions of category and set, and their relations with Russell's type theories, are discussed. It is shown that addition of an axiom - treating the category of propositions as a set and thereby enabling higher order quantification - leads to inconsistency. This theorem is a variant of Girard's paradox, which is a translation into type theory of Mirimanoff's paradox (concerning the set of all well-founded sets). The occurrence of (...) the contradiction is explained in set theoretical terms. Crucial here is the way a proof-object of an existential proposition is understood. It is shown that also Russell's paradox can be translated into type theory. The type theory extended with the axiom mentioned above contains constructive higher order logic, but even if one only adds constructive second order logic to type theory the contradictions arise. (shrink)