Written in the 12th century in Arabic by a faithful Jewish man, "The Guide" is a work that explores the contradiction a very intelligent mind clearly saw between the tradition he was raised to believe inherently and the growing philosophy of Arabian and Western culture. In Maimonides' time, there was an emerging disparity between the Law and a new level of philosophical sophistication, which he attempts to bridge in this work, primarily through the use of metaphor, though also acknowledging this (...) method's limitations. "The Guide" follows the form of a three-volume letter to a student, which was quickly translated to Hebrew and spread throughout the known world and carefully read by Jews and non-Jewish philosophers alike well through the Middle Ages. This work was so successful in its organization and arguments that it has long been a classic of the Jewish religion and of the secular world of philosophy. (shrink)

"In the gorgeous and rugged terrain of Jewish thought, there is no higher mountain to climb than Maimonides, and no more slippery or exhilarating ascent. Halbertal has made it all the way to the top, and his survey of the whole of the Maimonidean landscape is trustworthy and masterful. This is the richest and most intellectually sophisticated book on Maimonides I have ever read."--Leon Wieseltier "In this learned and penetrating work, Halbertal offers us a Maimonides who draws on the dominant (...) Greco-Islamic thought of his time while creating a system of thought that is fully Jewish. He shows us how the early "Commentary on the Mishnah" links up with the "Mishneh Torah" and with the "Guide of the Perplexed," written at the end of his life, to form an unexpected and radical intellectual unity. Beautifully written, "Maimonides" brings out both Maimonides's intellectual success and the paradoxical critical approaches to him after his death."--David J. Wasserstein, Vanderbilt University "Insightful and learned. Halbertal is perhaps the leading philosopher of Jewish law today. His book on Maimonides, like his other writings, reflects wide erudition and is written clearly and sharply."--Warren Zev Harvey, professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Displaying the marvelous depth and clarity that mark all his work, Halbertal explains in abundant detail the transformations that Maimonides sought to effect in the Jewish world. He provides incisive interpretations of both legal and philosophical writings, yet he is also a biographer, binding together Maimonides's life, self-perception, and intellectual agenda. This is an exceptionally rich book, one that offers fresh perspectives for experts and a highly accessible introduction for general readers."--David Shatz, Yeshiva University "An outstanding and thrilling portrait of Maimonides. Halbertal's analytic lucidity and psychological depth are singular, and his talents are abundantly apparent on every page. This is an extraordinary book."--Menachem Lorberbaum, Tel Aviv University. (shrink)

This paper presents a procedure designed to aid physicians and patients in the process of making medical decisions, and illustrates its implementation to aid pregnant women, who decided to undergo prenatal diagnostic test choose a physician to administer it. The procedure is based on a medical decision-making model of Karni (J Risk Uncertain 39: 1–16, 2009). This model accommodates the possibility that the decision maker’s risk attitudes may vary with her state of health and incorporates other costs, such as pain (...) and inconvenience, associated with alternative treatments. The medical decision problem was chosen for its relative simplicity and the transparency it affords. (shrink)

J. Hillis Miller (1928–2021) was one of the most prominent figures in literary criticism and theory. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he taught at Johns Hopkins University, Yale University and the University of California at Irvine. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2002. Miller was president of the Modern Language Association of America in 1986 and contributed significantly to professional academic institutions and organizations throughout his career. As an important representative of the Yale School, he had close relationships (...) with Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom. Dr. Ning Yizhong did postdoctoral research under his supervision at UCI from 1997 to 1998. This is part of his interviews with Professor Miller during that time. In this interview, Miller talks about the Yale School in general, and Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and Harold Bloom in particular. 1. (shrink)

Research questions in mainstream epistemology often take for granted a cognitive internalist picture of the mind. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the seemingly safe presumptions that knowledge entails belief and that the kind of belief that knowledge entails supervenes exclusively on brainbound cognition. It will be argued here that the most plausible version of the entailment thesis holds just that knowledge entails dispositional belief. However, regardless of whether occurrent belief supervenes only as the cognitive internalist permits, we should reject the (...) idea that dispositional belief supervenes only in cognitive internalist-friendly ways. These observations, taken together, reveal two things: first, that a cognitive internalist picture of the mind is much more dispensable in epistemology than has been assumed and, second, that pursuing questions in extended epistemology need not involve any radical departure from the commitments of more traditional epistemological projects. (shrink)

In 1960, E. P. Wigner, a joint winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics, published a paper titled On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences [61]. This paper can be construed as an examination and affirmation of Galileo's tenet that “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”. To this effect, Wigner presented a large number of examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of mathematics in accurately describing physical phenomena. Wigner viewed these examples as (...) illustrations of what he called the empirical law of epistemology, which asserts that the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature is both appropriate and accurate, and that mathematics is actually the correct language for formulating the laws of nature. At the same time, Wigner pointed out that the reasons for the success of mathematics in the natural sciences are not completely understood; in fact, he went as far as asserting that “… the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”. (shrink)

Even the simplest known living organisms are complex chemical processing systems. But how sophisticated is the behaviour that arises from this? We present a framework in which even bacteria can be identified as capable of representing information in arbitrary signal molecules, to facilitate altering their behaviour to optimise their food supplies, for example. Known asion/Representation theory, this framework makes precise the relationship between physical systems and abstract concepts. Originally developed to answer the question of when a physical system is computing, (...) AR theory naturally extends to the realm of biological systems to bring clarity to questions of computation at the cellular level. (shrink)

A collection of critical studies on Maimonidean thought for students of medieval Jewish thinking. It contains contributions from: Gerald J. Blidstein, Ben-Gurion University; Jacob Levinger, Tel-Aviv University; Aviezer Ravitzky, Moshe Idel and Shlomo Pines, all from the Hebrew University, Israel.

O objetivo deste ensaio é examinar a proposta de Sandy Goldberg, segundo a qual há divisão de trabalho epistêmico em certos processos de aquisição de conhecimento – ao menos em se tratando de conhecimento testemunhal. Goldberg propõe mostrar a veracidade desta alegação salientando a nossa dependência epistêmica em relação a outros indivíduos, ou mesmo comunidades inteiras. Nós, então, vamos propor o tratamento de um famoso caso tipo-Gettier que, segundo Gilbert Harman, revelaria algumas dimensões sociais do conhecimento. Por fim, nós esperamos (...) tirar algumas lições da explicação oferecida por Goldberg, dentre as quais a mais importante a ser tomada é que, havendo tal divisão de trabalho epistêmico em processos de aquisição de conhecimento, muitas vezes, não são apenas as propriedades epistêmicas do sujeito que determinam a sua posse de conhecimento ou ignorância, de modo que o conhecimento é mais social do que individual em se tratando de uma ampla gama de casos. (shrink)

Aristotle and the sea battle, by G. E. M. Anscombe.--Aristotle's different possibilities, by K. J. J. Hintikka.--On Aristotle's square of opposition, by M. Thompson.--Categories in Aristotle and in Kant, by J. C. Wilson.--Aristotle's Categories, chapters I-V: translation and notes, by J. L. Ackrill--Aristotle's theory of categories, by J. M. E. Moravcsik.--Essence and accident, by I. M. Copi.--Tithenai ta phainomena, by G. E. L. Owen.--Matter and predication in Aristotle, by J. Owens.--Problems in Metaphysics Z, chapter 13, by M. J. Woods.--The meaning (...) of agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, by H. A. Prichard.--Agathon and eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle, by J. L. Austin.--The final good in Aristotle's Ethics, by W. F. R. Hardie.--Aristotle on pleasure, by J. O. Urmson.--Bibliography (p. 335-41). (shrink)

Why is there a 'hard problem' of consciousness? Why do we seem unable to grasp intuitively that physical brain processes can be identical to experiences? Here I comment on the 'meta-problem' (Chalmers, 2018), based on previous ideas (Storm, 2014; 2018). In short: humans may be 'inborn dualists' ('neuroscepticism'), because evolution gave us two (types of) brain systems (or functional modes): one (Sp) for understanding relatively simple physical phenomena, and another (Sm) specialized for mental phenomena. Because Sp cannot deal with the (...) immense complexity of the brain processes underlying consciousness, it represents them as fundamentally different from nonmental physical phenomena (dualist intuition), using 'simulations' to produce 'Sm-type understanding'/predictions that seems radically different from 'Sp-type understanding'. (By analogy, different sensory modalities, handled by distinct brain systems, evoke qualitatively different experiences.) Brain systems for Sp representations of our brain processes never evolved, because they would be useless. When lacking a single 'template' matching different aspects of reality (objective vs. subjective = simulated), complementary 'models' are needed ('neuro-complementarity'), like the wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. Thus, it seems plausible that Sp and Sm evolved because they were needed to cope with different challenges, and that 'problem intuitions' are side effects of these useful but different brain systems. (shrink)

We isolate two abstract determinacy theorems for games of length $\omega_1$ from work of Neeman and use them to conclude, from large-cardinal assumptions and an iterability hypothesis in the region of measurable Woodin cardinals thatif the Continuum Hypothesis holds, then all games of length $\omega_1$ which are provably $\Delta_1$ -definable from a universally Baire parameter are determined;all games of length $\omega_1$ with payoff constructible relative to the play are determined; andif the Continuum Hypothesis holds, then there is a model of (...) ${\mathsf{ZFC}}$ containing all reals in which all games of length $\omega_1$ definable from real and ordinal parameters are determined. (shrink)

J C Forge; A Role for Philosophy of Science in the Teaching of Science, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 109–117, http.

El objetivo de este artículo es definir la concepción del acto involuntario de Francisco Suárez y mostrarla como un medio que permite comprender y profundizar en su teoría de la acción humana. En esta cuestión, el Doctor Eximio parte de presupuestos elaborados por Tomás de Aquino que amplía y adapta siguiendo sus propias tesis metafísicas y teológicas sobre la relación entre Dios y las creaturas. Mostraremos cómo Suárez vincula el verdadero involuntario con el _simpliciter_, lo forzado, necesario e indeseado, dejando (...) al _secundum quid_ como un acto mixto en el que la libertad y la voluntad, pese a las injerencias externas, no quedan anuladas. Por último, subrayaremos las consecuencias de la definición suareciana de lo involuntario sobre la noción de libertad, haciendo patente que tanto una como otra serían imposibles fuera del marco teórico que él sustenta, caracterizado por la eficiencia humana (y su dependencia de la divinidad) y no por la premoción física. (shrink)

Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today. -/- In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his (...) legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher. -/- . (shrink)

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George Berkeley’s (...) Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

Research on human beings has significantly increased in ethical and scientific complexity. Ethics review is at a fork in the road. Either we significantly increase the resources we provide to support institutional research ethics committees. Or we abandon the institutional base of human research ethics review and move to model of expert suprainstitutional ethics committees.

In this paper, we describe Blackboard’s Online Journal program and explain how we use the online journal in a variety of philosophy courses. We outline our pedagogical motivation for using online journals and analyze how online journals help to improve our students’ ability to read, write and think philosophically. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of online journals in comparison to online discussion boards. Finally, we address several concerns that philosophy teachers may have about using online journals.