The four essays by Jeremy Bentham assembled in this volume date from the spring and summer of 1822 and are based exclusively on manuscripts, many of which have never before been published. In the essays `Economy as Applied to Office', `Identification of Interests', `Supreme Operative', and `Constitutional Code Rationale', Bentham develops the general principles of constitutional law and government which underpin the detailed administrative provisions set out in Constitutional Code. In addition, original and penetrating discussions of such topics as sovereignty, (...) constitutional rule, democratic and monarchical government, public finance, the aptitude and powers of officials, corruption, the influence of public opinion, and the delusive effect of religion and titles of honour, affirm Bentham's status as a political theorist of the first rank. As an important application of utilitarian principles to the structure and organization of government, and a major contribution to the theory of representative democracy, this volume will be of interest to students of philosophy, law, politics, economics, and history. (shrink)

Jack Kerouac's On the Road occupies an unusual status in American letters. It is an American classic but also a contested text. An early reviewer's assessment of On the Road as an American masterpiece has been consistently reiterated, but so have initial dismissals that the work is an incoherent, naïve, and narcissistic travel narrative. This ambivalence is heightened by Kerouac's own idiosyncratic political and social views. These confl icting assessments can be reconciled, however, if On the Road is evaluated as (...) a work of political thought, especially as an iteration of the social contract tradition exploring relationships in a "state of nature.". (shrink)

Use left and right arrow keys to move the gun left and right. You reduce a number by shooting it with its prime factors. Each time a prime factor hits a number, the number is divided by that factor. If the number is a prime number you can shoot it with a special "P" ("P" for "prime") missile which reduces it directly to 1. To fire a 2, 3, 5 or 7, just type the corresponding key on the keyboard. To (...) fire 11, 13, 17 or 19, type the first letter of the number (in lower case), i.e. "e" for 11, "t" for 13, "s" for 17 and "n" for 19. Type "p" (lower case) to fire the "P" missile. In all cases a number is "dead" when it is reduced to 1. If a number hits you, then you're dead. (shrink)

Here we give a semantical account of propositional quantification that is intended to formally represent Russell’s view that one cannot express a proposition about "all" propositions. According to the account the authors give, Russell’s view bears an interesting relation to the view that there are no sets which are members of themselves.

This essay describes and compares three attempts to provide accounts of the nature of historical consciousness, along with accompanying explanations of how one comes to have historical knowledge. It explores, compares, and contrasts the views of the late Qing dynasty Chinese philosopher Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 and two Western philosophers – R.G. Collingwood and Louis O. Mink . These three thinkers all present historical understanding as a distinctive type of knowledge and share the aim of defending the discipline of history as (...) a special, independent field of intellectual endeavor. Aside from analyzing these aspects of their respective theories, this essay aims to stimulate extensive and nuanced comparisons between Chinese and more recent Western forms of historical consciousness. While the comparison presented here is but one way forward, it not only seeks to offer specific insights generated by the comparative project but also to set forth a range of themes worthy of future study. For example, the analysis presented here shows that Zhang’s reflections on how historians relate to the past can contribute to current discussions of epistemic virtues. (shrink)

For Peirce, logic is essentially illative, a relation of inferential growth. It follows that inference and argumentation are essentially ecstatic, an asymmetrical, ampliative movement from antecedent to consequent. It also follows that logic is inherently inductive. While deduction remains an essential and irreplaceable aspect of logic, it should be seen as a more abstract expression of the illative, semiological essence of inference as such.

This thesis is concerned with Immanuel Kant's mature philosophy as a whole. My aim is to show the systematic relationship among Kant's three Critiques, and the continuity of these with the Inaugral Dissertation. I use recent interpretations of Kant's projects in the Critique of Pure Reason and I offer my own interpretation of the Critique of Judgment, in which I highlight the importance of the final Appendix in that work, to argue that the goal of these three works taken together (...) is to replace traditional metaphysics with a new approach entirely. In place of the traditional approach in which the principles of metaphysics are supposed to be principles of the objective order of things quite apart from the way they appear to us, Kant argues in favour of a system of subjective principles that he believes will nevertheless allow us to achieve the goals of metaphysics. The new metaphysics will not be knowledge-based, as traditional metaphysics had been. Rather Kant's system is primarily ethics-based. That is, the primary principles of Kant's metaphysical system are those of his rational ethics, which have the function of regulating our activity in, and organization of, the world. Instead of knowledge, ethics, and theology being uneasily coordinated parts of philosophy, as they are in traditional metaphysical systems, all three become integrated within an ethical, and essentially teleological, framework in Kant's system. Showing the role of the Critique of Judgment in bringing about this change, as well as showing the importance of teleology for Kant's philosophy, are both important goals of the thesis. (shrink)

Anthony Brueckner and Jon Altschul suggest a version of skepticism according to which the skeptic posits a distinct skeptical hypothesis for each external world proposition that a person claims to know. In a recent issue of this journal, Eric Yang argues against this piecemeal approach. In this note, I show that Yang’s argument against piecemeal skepticism is fallacious.

Immanuel Kant’s major book on his legal and political philosophy, the Doctrine of Right, appears in 1797. Therefore, many scholars have argued that Kant’s entire legal philosophy has only been developed in the late 1790s and that it is for the most part independent from his critical writings on moral philosophy dating in the 1780s. This article, however, tries to proof the contrary by analyzing the1784 lecture notes Moral-Mrongovius II given by Christoph Coelestin Mrongovius, who attended Kant’s lecture on moral (...) philosophy at that time. Those lecture notes not only proof that Kant’s concept of right has already been worked out in 1784. Even more: Moral-Mrongovius II indicates that Kant considered his legal philosophy as an integral part of his overall critical moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that any museum's collecting policy must face up to the problem of vulnerability. Taking as a starting point an item in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I argue that the basic responsibility of museums to collect ‘things’, and to communicate information about them in a truthful way brings their collecting practice into the epistemological domain of testimony and into the normative domain of ethics. Museums are public spaces of memory, testimony, representation and interpretation (...) that at once enable humanity to hold to account those who transgress while at the same time holding to account those who witness these transgressions. By virtue of this, museums can be considered spaces of ethics wherein testimonial and hermeneutic injustice can be confronted and challenged. (shrink)

Using a classical conditioning technique, this study investigated whether nonconscious associative learning could be indexed by event-related brain activity . There were three phases. In a preconditioning baseline phase, pleasant and unpleasant facial schematics were presented in awareness . A conditioning phase followed, in which stimuli were presented outside awareness , with an unpleasant face linked to an aversive shock and a pleasant face not linked to a shock. The third, postconditioning phase, involved stimulus presentations in awareness . Evidence for (...) acquisition of a conditional response was sought by comparing suprathreshold pre- and postconditioning phases, as well as in the subthreshold conditioning phase itself. For the pre-postconditioning phase analyses, significant ERP component differences differentiating CS+ and CS− were observed for N1, P2, and especially P3. For the conditioning phase, significant differences were observed in the 100–400 ms. post-stimulus region reflecting a CS+ processing negativity. Brain activity does indeed index the acquisition of a conditional response to subthreshold stimuli. Associative learning can occur outside awareness. (shrink)

In his Discourses, Rousseau argues that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process. If inequality is intolerable - and Rousseau shows with unparalleled eloquence how it robs us not only of our material but also of our psychological independence - then how can we recover the peaceful self-sufficiency of life in the state of nature? We cannot return to a simpler time, but measuring the costs of progress may help us to imagine alternatives (...) to the corruption and oppressive conformity of modern society. Rousseau's sweeping account of humanity's social and political development epitomizes the innovative boldness of the Enlightenment, and it is one of the most provocative and influential works of the eighteenth century. This new translation includes all Rousseau's own notes, and Patrick Coleman's Introduction builds on recent key scholarship, considering particularly the relationship between political and aesthetic thought. (shrink)