This is a collection of articles on two central topics in epistemology: certainty and surfaces. Of the ten articles, four discuss Avrum Stroll's Surfaces. The topics explored have been the subject of intense philosophical debate since ancient times.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 605-606 [Access article in PDF] Ben Rogers. A. J. Ayer: A Life. New York: Grove Press, 1999. Pp. ix + 402. Cloth, $30.00. A. J. Ayer (1910-89) had the misfortune, for a philosopher, to write his most influential book, Language, Truth, and Logic, when he was in his twenties, even though he continued to publish into his seventies, and to have (...) his nonphilosophical life overwhelm his philosophical one. Almost everyone now knows the story of how he saved Naomi Campbell by going a round with Mike Tyson. Ben Rogers nicely intertwines the facts of Ayer's day-to-day life—which is not to say "quotidian," given Ayer's ego and libido—with his philosophical peregrinations.Although Ayer picked up logical positivism in Vienna when attending sessions of the Vienna Circle, he had accepted the main lines of an empiricism and positivism earlier and on his own. For twentieth-century British philosophy, Language, Truth, and Logic was both a philosophical Declaration of Independence (from metaphysics) and the Constitution for a new philosophy. Unfortunately, its founding principle, the principle of verifiability, was irremediably flawed, notwithstanding Ayer's best efforts, notably in the Preface to the second edition of 1946. Logical positivism in Britain lasted for only about a decade (1935-46). In fact, it may have been less. Language, Truth, and Logic was published in 1936, and Ayer "went off to war" in 1940, to speak loosely. (He spent a significant part of it in a Mediterranean villa, a Park Avenue apartment, "a palatial home" in Paris lent him by Guy de Rothschild, and in the best restaurants with friendly women.) No major British philosopher was championing Logical Positivism between 1940 and 1945. When Ayer returned to Oxford in 1945, he discovered that "the [philosophical] climate had changed; before the conflict he had been the leader of the avant-garde; now the brighter students and the young dons looked on logical positivism as old hat. He had mysteriously passed "from being a young Turk to being, at the age of thirty-five, to almost an elder statesman, without ever having known the plenitude of office'" (198). During the late 1940's, Ayer wrote mostly for London literary and arts magazines. The profession of philosophy disappointed him, and later, he found it difficult to keep up "in logic and the philosophy of maths and sciences" (262).Logical positivism had a longer life in North America, to which several of its members emigrated. But its influence was felt much longer in both places, primarily for its emphasis on three things: empiricism, empiricism, empiricism.Ayer continued to publish philosophy until the mid-1980s. Given the demise of logical positivism, he was something of a dinosaur, albeit a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There was no one else quite like him, and yet he could not be ignored. He was a formidable critic of whatever most other British philosophers were doing. In addition to his obvious intellectual brilliance, he was an excellent writer and expositor. After 1970, most of his books are potboilers, skillful in execution, but of no lasting merit, for example, Russell and Moore (1971), Russell (1972), Hume (1980), and Wittgenstein (1985). Ayer told Stephen Spender that "Russell's History of Western Philosophy... had made its author a fortune and he hoped his [Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1981)] would do the same" (326). [End Page 605] He accepted a L 30,000. advance for a book about Thomas Paine, about whom he knew virtually nothing, and then did his research: "I mugged up just enough information from some American scholar, whose name I forget, an essay of Michael Foot and, principally, Moncure Conway" (342).As prominent as Ayer was in British culture—writing for the Spectator and Horizon, giving commentary on soccer, appearing on television, and championing liberal causes—he was something of a philosophical outsider. He had more affinity for the Cambridge philosophers, Moore, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein, than for his Oxford colleagues; the heart of his career was spent at the University of London, before... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth CenturyA. P. MartinichScott Soames. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1, The Dawn of Analysis. Pp. xix + 411. Vol. 2, The Age of Meaning. Pp. xxii + 479. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Cloth, $35.00, each volume.This two-volume work treats Anglo-American analytic philosophy from 1900 to roughly 1970. This means that the views of Michael Dummett, John Rawls and others (...) are not treated. Soames explains the omission in an epilogue to the second volume. Too much good philosophy on too many topics has been done recently—much of it using technical devices—to allow him or anyone else, to master more than a few parts. That seems right to me.The first volume consists of five parts: One: G. E. Moore on Ethics, Epistemology, and Philosophical Analysis; Two: Bertrand Russell on Logical and Linguistic Analysis; Three: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus; and Four: Logical Positivism, Emotivism, and Ethics; and Five: The Post-Positivist Perspective of the Early W. V. Quine. The great figure associated with twentieth-century analytic philosophy who is missing from Volume 1, Gottlob Frege, Soames omits, because Frege's "concerns were, on the whole, more specialized and technical than the others, and for many years this limited his influence" (1:xiii n. 1). The second volume consists of seven parts: One: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations; Two: Classics of Ordinary Language Philosophy: Truth, Goodness, the Mind, and Analysis; Three: More Classics of Ordinary Language Philosophy: The Response to Radical Skepticism; Four: Paul Grice and the End of Ordinary Language Philosophy; Five: The Philosophical Naturalism of Willard Van Orman Quine; Six: Donald Davidson on Truth and Meaning; Seven: Saul Kripke on Naming and Necessity.What does twentieth-century analytic philosophy come to? Soames thinks its "two most important achievements" are (i) the recognition that philosophical speculation must be grounded in pre-philosophical thought, and (ii) the success achieved in understanding, and separating one from another, the fundamental methodological notions of logical consequence, logical truth, necessary truth, and apriori truth" (1:xi; see also 1:298-99 and 2:252). He admirably succeeds in making the case for these judgments, although many philosophers will think that these two together do not amount to a great deal, considering all the effort expended by analytic philosophers. I think that analytic philosophy has done more; it has given philosophers many techniques for attacking conceptual problems, a great deal of information about the structure and nature of language, and has decisively refuted various theses that were once thought attractive and even obviously true. In any case, those who think that analytic philosophy, especially conceptual analysis, accomplished nothing are, I think, refuted by these volumes. In his discussion of G. E. Moore's article, "A Defense of Common Sense," Soames explains what he takes to be the first great result of analytic philosophy. Moore showed that the beliefs of common sense should often be accepted "with more confidence" than any philosophical beliefs or propositions that conflict with them, and in these cases cannot be overthrown by philosophical beliefs. For example, "The skeptic assumes that we can be certain about what knowledge is before we decide whether what we all ordinarily take to be paradigmatic cases of knowledge really are genuine" [End Page 125] (23, entire sentence is bold in the original). (Soames uses boldface type to mark all of the significant propositions discussed in the book, a nice pedagogical device.)In his discussion of Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions, Soames gives the impression that linguistic interests primarily motivated Russell. I think the motivation was primarily ontological. Russell wanted to justify ridding philosophy of nonexistent entities. The doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Logical Positivism were two ways in which philosophical analysis developed. For Soames, what is most important in the Tractatus is the theory of names, and he holds, I believe, the minority belief (which I share) that properties are reducible to configurations of objects (1:206-6). What is most important in Logical Positivism is the verification theory of meaning. Strongly verifiable sentences "were supposed to be those the truth of which could, in principle, be completely established... (shrink)

Contents, We are the Church, New Congregationalism / Harold D. Hunter; Faustino Teixeira; Miroslav Volf. -- Healing and deliverance / Cheryl Bridges Johns; Vergil Elizondo; Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel. -- Tongues and prophecy / Frank D. Macchia; Hermann Ha ring; Michael Welker. --Praying in the spirit / Steven J. Land; Constantine Fouskas; David Power. -- Born again, baptism and the spirit / Juan Sepu lveda; James D. G. Dunn; Michel Quesnel.

New brain-computer interface and neuroimaging techniques are making differentiation less ambiguous and more accurate between unresponsive wakefulness syndrome patients and patients with higher cognitive function and awareness. As research into these areas continues to progress, new ethical issues will face physicians of patients suffering from total locked-in syndrome, characterized by complete loss of voluntary muscle control, with retention of cognitive function and awareness detectable only with neuroimaging and brain-computer interfaces. Physicians, researchers, ethicists and hospital ethics committees should be aware of (...) and prepared to handle ethical issues unique to these totally locked-in patients. Several thought experiments are discussed, to highlight potential ethical dilemmas surrounding surrogate decision-making, autonomy, end-of-life care, and pediatric care, which will be unique to total LIS patients. These, along with other ethical problems especially relevant to total LIS patients, merit further discussion among physicians, researchers, ethicists and hospital ethics committees, to facilitate consensus regarding these issues, and improve patient care. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Madary examines visual experience, drawing on both phenomenological and empirical methods of investigation. He finds that these two approaches—careful, philosophical description of experience and the science of vision—independently converge on the same result: Visual perception is an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. Madary first makes the case for the descriptive premise, arguing that the phenomenology of vision is best described as on ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. He discusses visual experience as being perspectival, (...) temporal, and indeterminate; considers the possibility of surprise when appearances do not change as we expect; and considers the content of visual anticipation. Madary then makes the case for the empirical premise, showing that there are strong empirical reasons to model vision using the general form of anticipation and fulfillment. He presents a range of evidence from perceptual psychology and neuroscience, and reinterprets evidence for the two-visual-systems hypothesis. Finally, he considers the relationship between visual perception and social cognition. An appendix discusses Husserlian phenomenology as it relates to the argument of the book. Madary argues that the fact that there is a convergence of historically distinct methodologies itself is an argument that supports his findings. With Visual Phenomenology, he creates an exchange between the humanities and the sciences that takes both methods of investigation seriously. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued against internalism by means of a dilemma intended to force all internalists to accept one of two undesirable options: either their internalism is unmotivated or it is saddled with vicious regress problems. Recently it has been argued that Phenomenal Conservatism—a theory of justification according to which justification depends on seemings—is a kind of internalism that can escape this dilemma. In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism cannot escape my dilemma for internalism. In order (...) to do this, it is helpful to get clear on what Phenomenal Conservatism is saying, and for that reason I begin, in section I, by examining in some detail what seemings are. I then argue, in the remainder of the paper, that, whichever horn of the dilemma for internalism they take, Phenomenal Conservatives are in trouble. (shrink)

Because of the difficulty posed by the contrast between the search for truth and truth itself, Michael Polanyi believes that we must alter the foundation of epistemology to include as essential to the very nature of mind, the kind of groping that constitutes the recognition of a problem. This collection of essays, assembled by Marjorie Grene, exemplifies the development of Polanyi's theory of knowledge which was first presented in Science, Faith, and Society and later systematized in Personal Knowledge. Polanyi (...) believes that the dilemma of the modern mind arises from the peculiar relation between the positivist claim for total objectivity in scientific knowledge and the unprecedented moral dynamism characterizing the social and political aspirations of the last century. The first part of Knowing and Being deals with this theme. Part two develops Polanyi's idea that centralization is incompatible with the life of science as well as his views on the role of tradition and authority in science. The essays on tacit knowing in Part Three proceed directly from his preoccupation with the nature of scientific discovery and reveal a pervasive substructure of all intelligent behavior. Polanyi believes that all knowing involves movement from internal clues to external evidence. Therefore, to explain the process of knowing, we must develop a theory of the nature of living things in general, including an account of that aspect of living things we call "mind." Part Four elaborates upon this theme. (shrink)

A detailed account of human language and evolution, reconciling the apparent dichotomy between humans and all other animals. Focuses on the speculative presence of a Generative Assembly Device, unique to Homo sapiens.

The paper explains why an ontology of permanent point particles that are individuated by their relative positions and that move on continuous trajectories as given by a deterministic law of motion constitutes the best solution to the measurement problem in both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. This case is made by comparing the Bohmian theory to collapse theories such as the GRW matter density and the GRW flash theory. It is argued that the Bohmian theory makes the minimal changes, (...) concerning only the dynamics and neither the ontology nor the account of probabilities, that are necessary to get from classical mechanics to quantum physics. There is no cogent reason to go beyond these minimal changes. (shrink)

Since heaven is the most perfect state or position possible – namely of loving God perfectly – and sinning is failing to love God, it will not be possible to sin in heaven. However, if freedom is a mark of perfection, and loving God is only possible when one freely loves God, will we be loving God at all if we are not free not to love him? Three cumulative arguments for an affirmative answer are developed. The first is to (...) distinguish the ability to love or sin from the opportunity to do so. In heaven we are loving God in an infinite variety of ways, so we are freely exercising our ability to love, even when God has taken away any opportunities for sinning. However, one might reply that our freedom will only be the freedom to love God in various ways, not the freedom to love God or not. Hence the second argument is that in heaven are only people who have freely chosen to love God while on earth, where there was a real opportunity not to love God. Since the free choice to love God was made before entering heaven, loving God in heaven remains a free choice. Moreover, since in heaven God takes away the opportunity to sin, and stopping to love God would be a sin, you will remain steadfast in that free choice. However, one might reply that also having the opportunity to sin would add an extra possibility for willing something, so one would be 'more free' in heaven, and heaven would be more perfect, if one would also have the opportunity to sin. Hence the third argument is that freedom is a perfection shared by both God and humans, and the freedom of God is in an important respect a freedom to create. Hence, our human freedom is also greater if our creative power is greater. We have no creative power but by participating in God’s creative power, which is necessarily directed towards the good. So by willing what is good we extend and perfect creation and thereby extend and perfect our possibilities for willing, hence we become more free. On the contrary, by sinning we destroy creation and possibilities for willing and we become less free, so an opportunity to sin is not a possibility that increases our freedom. (shrink)

Martin O'Shaughnessy _Jean Renoir_ Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000 ISBN 0719050626 hb; 0719050634 pb 251 pp.

At a time in medicine where the cost of human clinical labor continues to rise, with an overall shortage of providers at all levels, improved AI performance raises critical, pressing questions with...

This book provides a systematic defense of moral contractarianism as a distinct approach to the social contract. It elucidates, in comparison to moral conventionalism and moral contractualism, the distinct features of moral contractarianism, its scope, and conceptual and practical challenges that concern the relationship between morality and self-interest, the problems of assurance and compliance, rule-following, counterfactualism, and the nexus between morals and politics. It argues that, if appropriately conceived, moral contractarianism is conceptually coherent, empirically sound, and practically relevant, and has (...) much to offer to contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction : from victims and perpetrators to implicated subjects -- The transmission belt of domination : theorizing the implicated subject -- On (not) being a descendant : implicated subjects and the legacies of slavery -- Progress, progression, procession : William Kentridge's implicated aesthetic -- From Gaza to Warsaw : multidirectional memory and the perpetuator -- Under the sign of suitcases : the Holocaust internationalism of Marceline Loridan-Ivens -- "Germany is in Kurdistan" : Hito Steyerl's images of implication -- Conclusion : (...) transfiguring implication : eleven theses. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas conceives of our lives as fundamentally interpersonal and ethical, claiming that our responsibilities to one another should shape all of our actions. While many scholars believe that Levinas failed to develop a robust view of political ethics, Michael L. Morgan argues against understandings of Levinas’s thought that find him politically wanting or even antipolitical. Morgan examines Levinas’s ethical critique of the political as well as his Jewish writings—including those on Zionism and the founding of the Jewish state—which (...) are controversial reflections of Levinas’s political expression. Unlike others who dismiss Levinas as irrelevant or anarchical, Morgan is the first to give extensive treatment to Levinas as a serious social political thinker whose ethics must be understood in terms of its political implications. Morgan reveals Levinas’s political commitments to liberalism and democracy as well as his revolutionary conception of human life as deeply interconnected on philosophical, political, and religious grounds. (shrink)

Throughout this compelling work, Jackson demonstrates that existentialism, far from being a philosophy of individual being, enables us to explore issues of ...

This collection is the first book devoted to Paulo Freire's ongoing global legacy to provide an analysis of the continuing relevance and significance of Freire's work and the impact of his global legacy. The book contains essays by some of the world's foremost Freire scholars - McLaren, Darder, Roberts, and others - as well as chapters by scholars and activists, including the Maori scholars Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Russell Bishop, who detail their work with the indigenous people of Aotearoa-New Zealand. (...) The book contains a foreword by Nita Freire as well as chapters from scholars around the world including Latin America, Asia, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. With a challenging introduction from the editors, Michael A. Peters and Tina Besley, this much-awaited addition to the Freire archive is highly recommended reading for all students and scholars interested in Freire, global emancipatory politics, and the question of social justice in education. (shrink)

One of the most foundational and continually contested questions in the cognitive sciences is the degree to which the functional organization of the brain can be understood as modular. In its classic formulation, a module was defined as a cognitive sub-system with nine specific properties; the classic module is, among other things, domain specific, encapsulated, and implemented in dedicated neural substrates. Most of the examinations—and especially the criticisms—of the modularity thesis have focused on these properties individually, for instance by finding (...) counterexamples in which otherwise good candidates for cognitive modules are shown to lack domain specificity or encapsulation. The current paper goes beyond the usual approach by asking what some of the broad architectural implications of the modularity thesis might be, and attempting to test for these. The evidence does not favor a modular architecture for the cortex. Moreover, the evidence suggests that best way to approach the understanding of cognition is not by analyzing and modelling different functional domains in isolation from the others, but rather by looking for points of overlap in their neural implementations, and exploiting these to guide the analysis and decomposition of the functions in question. This has significant implications for the question of how to approach the design and implementation of intelligent artifacts in general, and language-using robots in particular. (shrink)

Intuitionism can be seen as a verificationism restricted to mathematical discourse. An attempt to generalize intuitionism to empirical discourse presents various challenges. One of those concerns the logical and semantical behavior of what has been called ' empirical negation'. An extension of intuitionistic logic with empirical negation was given by Michael De and a labelled tableaux system was there shown sound and complete. However, a Hilbert-style axiom system that is sound and complete was missing. In this paper we provide (...) the missing axiom system which is shown sound and complete with respect to its intended semantics. Along the way we consider some further applications of empirical negation. (shrink)

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the (...) best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair is also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it is." He sorts through the apparently chaotic text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the "self," how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their "mission." In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of the unity of Transcendental Idealism at the end of Eighteenth Century German philosophy, given that it circulated in different versions, Kant’s Critique [of humans’ rational powers] and Fichte’ System of Science [Wissenschaftslehre]. Both thinkers take the transcendental turn. They base conceptual investigations not on facts or empirical evidence, but on the possibility of a situation; they are idealists since they look inward to the spontaneity of the agent/knower for explanation, not the environment, stimulus, or (...) sensory given. Reason can fathom only what it has constructed. (shrink)

Written by well-known professor and author Michael Boylan, Morality and Global Justice is an accessible examination of the moral and normative underpinnings of ...

Kuyumcuoglu argues that defenders of sweatshop regulations should reject consequentialism and accept an ex ante interpretation of contractualism instead. In this Commentary I show that Kuyumcuoglu’s argument doesn’t succeed. Defenders of sweatshops shouldn’t become ex ante contractualists because its advantages on this issue are more apparent than real.