The ArgumentJohann von Justi, the foremost literary cameralist of his generation, served as chief police commissioner in Göttingen between 1755 and 1757. While in Göttingen, Justi offered lectures at the university on the “œconomic, police and cameral sciences.” He also arrested vagrants, wrote on chemistry, disciplined unruly students, conducted chemical experiments, supervised the pricing of Göttingen's staple goods, engaged in a public controversy with a prominent Berlin chemist, edited and published a bi-weekly periodical (Göttingische Policey-Amts Nachrichien), and worked with the (...) university's curator to refashion the academic structure of the sciences. Taken together, these various activities reflected his broad vision for social and academic change, a vision with important implications for the form and content of the sciences. Drawing on archival material in Göttingen, on articles from thePolicey-Amts Nachrichten, and on Justi's other cameralist and chemical writings, I use his everyday experiences as a local police official to explore the meaning of his chemical work. I argue that Justi's chemistry was suffused with the cameralist dreams and ambitions of a small-town police commissioner. It is what I call police chemistry. (shrink)

The typical kind of color realism is reductive: the color properties are identified with properties specified in other terms (as ways of altering light, for instance). If no reductive analysis is available — if the colors are primitive sui generis properties — this is often taken to be a convincing argument for eliminativism. That is, realist primitivism is usually thought to be untenable. The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking in light (...) of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind—body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-reductive physicalism are staples, realist primitivism is by and large a recent addition to the color literature. And it remains a minority position, although one that is perhaps gaining support. In this paper, we investigate whether it should be accepted, and conclude it should not be. (shrink)

This book demonstrates the importance of a duty-based approach to morality. The dominance of what has been labeled “rights talk” leads to the neglect of duties without corresponding rights and stimulates the proliferation of questionable human rights. Therefore, this book argues for a duty-based perspective on morality in order to, first, salvage duties of virtue, and, second, counter the trend of rights-proliferation by providing some conceptual clarity concerning rights and duties that will enable us to differentiate between genuine and spurious (...) rights-claims. The argument for this duty-based perspective is made by examining two particularly contentious duties: duties to aid the global poor and civic duties. These two duties serve as case studies and are explored from the perspectives of political theory, jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The argument is made that both these duties can only be adequately defined and allocated if we adopt the perspective of duties, as the predominant perspective of rights either does not recognize them to be duties at all or else leaves their content and allocation indefinite. This renewed focus on duties does not wish to diminish the importance of rights. Rather, the duty-based perspective on morality will strengthen human rights discourse by distinguishing more strictly between genuine and inauthentic rights. Furthermore, a duty-based approach enriches our moral landscape by recognizing both duties of justice and duties of virtue. The latter duties are not less important or supererogatory, but function as indispensable complements to the duties prescribed by justice. In this perceptive and exceptionally lucid book, Eric Boot argues that a duty-focused approach to morality will remedy the shortcomings he finds in the standard accounts of human rights. The study tackles staple philosophical topics such as the contrasts between duties of virtue and duties of justice and imperfect and perfect obligations. But more importantly perhaps, it also confronts the practical question of what our human rights duties are and how we ought to act on them. Boot's book is a splendid example of how philosophy can engage and clarify real world problems. Kok-Chor Tan, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania A lively and enjoyable defence of the importance of our having duties to fellow human beings in severe poverty. At a time when global justice has never been more urgent, this new book sheds much needed light. Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government and Head of Durham Law School, Durham University. (shrink)

The virtue of this book is that it is about as exhaustive of the contemporary analytical sources as could be reasonably demanded. Selections from Strawson, Ayer, Austin, Russell, Chisholm, and Malcolm abound. Many staples in the literature show up here: "On Referring," "On Denoting, "On Sense and Nominatum," "On What There Is," "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning," to mention only a few. Their inclusion in one volume is tarnished a bit, however, by the fact that (...) most of them are edited. The ten topics covered are the conventional ones and include "Meaning," "Truth," "Universals," "Induction," and "Knowledge of Other Minds." Adequate bibliographies are provided at the end of each section. The undergraduate student should be exposed to more perspectives on epistemological issues than are contained in this volume; but for the philosophical approach it emphasizes, it is admirable for its structure and comprehensiveness.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Interest is growing in the relocalization of staple crops, including wheat, in western Washington (WWA), a nontraditional wheat-growing area. Commercial bakers are potentially important food chain intermediaries in the case of relocalized wheat production. We conducted a mail survey of commercial bakers in WWA to assess their interest in sourcing wheat/flour from WWA, identify the characteristics of bakeries most likely to purchase wheat/flour from WWA, understand the factors important to bakers in purchasing regionally produced wheat/flour, and identify perceived barriers to (...) making such purchases. Sixty-one percent of survey respondents were interested in purchasing WWA wheat/flour. Bakers who used retail strategies to market their products were more likely to be interested in WWA wheat/flour compared to those not using retail methods. Bakers’ current purchases of Washington wheat/flour were not related to their interest in purchasing WWA flour. The most important factors bakers would consider in purchasing regionally produced wheat/flour were consistency of flour quality, quality of flour, and reliability of supply. Cost was the most frequently mentioned barrier to the purchase of regionally produced wheat/flour. Our results are relevant for other areas attempting to reconnect grain producers, commercial bakers, and consumers in mutually beneficial ways. (shrink)

Cleve Staples Lewis w książce Cuda sformułował argument antynaturalistyczny, który nazwał kardynalną trudnością naturalizmu. Trudność ta ma polegać na tym, że jeśli przyjmiemy naturalizm z zasadą domknięcia kauzalnego, to wszystkie przekonania są faktami, których istnienie można w pełni wyjaśnić poprzez przeszły stan wszechświata oraz jego przemiany rządzone prawami fizyki. Naturalizm jest stanowiskiem, które składa się z przekonań i jeśli aspiruje do oceny bycia racjonalnym stanowiskiem, to powinien być przyjęty ze względu na rozumowanie. To jednak wydaje się być wykluczone ze (...) względu na naturalizm. Peter Van Inwagen w 2011 r. przedstawił krytykę argumentu Lewisa, sugerując, że opiera się on na nieuzasadnionym przekonaniu, że wyjaśnienia kauzalne jako takie oraz wyjaśnienia poprzez rozumowanie wykluczają się. Badam argumentacje obu autorów, dokładnie analizując argument Van Inwagena. Twierdzę, że: po pierwsze, nie uzasadnił on twierdzenia, że powyższe przekonanie przypisane Lewisowi jest faktycznie przesłanką jego rozumowania. Po drugie, przedstawiam na czym polega wytworzenie pewnego przekonania zarazem kauzalnie jak i poprzez rozumowanie. Po trzecie, analizuję tekst Lewisa, wykazując, że wspiera on możliwość spójności dwóch odmiennych rodzajów poprawnych wyjaśnień, ale argumentuję, że zasadniczą dla Lewisa jest teza, iż naturalizm nie pozostawia miejsca na wglądy będące elementem rozumowania i dlatego naturalizm wyklucza ową spójność. Po czwarte, badam przykład Phoebe podany przez Van Inwagena i konkluduję, że nie wystarcza on do stwierdzenia spójności obu typów wyjaśnień. Konkluduję, że artykuł Van Inwagena nie zawiera argumentu podważającego stanowisko Lewisa. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 267-296 [Access article in PDF] Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era Robert Hariman The man lies on the hotel bed, clad only in his underwear, as he watches the TV screen just beyond his feet. His right hand holds the remote control, which he uses to scan through the cable channels. To his left sits Abraham Lincoln, clothed in long-sleeved white (...) shirt and black pants and reading a book. Lincoln's long, angular frame is just a bit stooped, and his brow is slightly furrowed, as if long accustomed to thinking on the edge of melancholy. Lincoln is mulling over a statement by Walter Benjamin: "Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things" (Benjamin 1977, 178). 1Seated to the man's right is a woman wearing the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. She leans slightly forward, legs crossed, as she reads the New York Times Magazine cover story about President Clinton. "Listen to this," she says with a bemused smile. "In the clutter around his desk in the Oval Office stands not a single bust of a favorite predecessor, but five: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman and two of F.D.R., plus a statuette of Will Rogers for good measure. If governing is choosing, this collection is a metaphor for this President's trouble with choices, and he himself allows, 'That's the story of my Presidency, that desk'" (Purdum 1996, 36).The man says nothing as he continues to watch the succession of images on the screen: a lizard flicks its tongue in the desert heat; a child in a stroller laughs as she holds a strawberry ice cream cone; a congressman in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie jabs his finger into the air as he talks earnestly; cars plastered with automotive product logos curl around a race track; Fred and Ginger swirl around the dance floor; soldiers wade ashore at Omaha Beach; the Space Shuttle lifts off; Groucho lifts his eyebrows; Regis smiles; mushrooms and peppers simmer in a pan.The succession of images could go on indefinitely. The tableau remains static. The composition is an allegory: a figural presentation that organizes multiple interpretations regarding collective experience. It also contains and comments on other forms of itself: Clinton's desk is an example [End Page 267] of the figural anecdote that has been a staple of American public address. The manifold of televisual images exemplifies the allegorical encoding that operates within postmodern art forms, including fragmentary appropriation, paratactic association, encyclopedic range, and non-linear temporality. The statement by Benjamin illuminates the nature of allegory in a specific genre and historical period, and as it is a general mode of representation, and perhaps as it is a model for all textual interpretation.The composition also evokes a set of dialectical tensions that are characteristic of both allegory in general and fundamental anxieties in the contemporary period. Past and present sit side by side, but incongruously, as if by artifice alone. So it is also with the print and visual media, which are held together by mutual competencies but otherwise in figural isolation that perhaps represents different destinies. Likewise, one might wonder about the peculiar relationship between public affairs and private life: the succession of images on the screen adhere to no hierarchy of values, no principle of loyalty or sacrifice, no basis for discerning obligations or maintaining rights, yet they are replete with the paraphernalia of these concerns, and the arrangement of figures in the room likewise is at once suggestive yet inconclusive. If this tableau contains familiar features of the mass-mediated experience that now saturates American politics, one might wonder: Is the democratic tradition in ruins?Allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame. This principle of composition seems particularly suited to periods of cultural change. To the extent that the genre of allegory has a history, it is one of eternal recurrence at periods of loss and fragmentation produced by the expansion of a new, somewhat... (shrink)

A conference celebrating the tercentenary of the publication of Leibniz’s Nouveau système will be held at the University of York, England, under the auspices of the Leibniz Gesellschaft of Hannover, and in collaboration with the British Society for the History of Philosophy, the Leibniz Society of North America, and the Lessico Intellettuale Europeo in Rome. Speakers will include R. M. Adams, S. Brown, G. Hartz, A. Lamarra, G. M. Ross, M. Mugnai, R. Palaia, G.H.R. Parkinson, P. Phemister, H. Poser, D. (...) Rutherford, C. Wilson. For further details contact Roger Woolhouse, Department of Philosophy, University of York, England Y01 5DD. (shrink)

Among Plato's later dialogues, the _Parmenides_ is one of the most significant. Not only a document of profound philosophical importance in its own right, it also contributes to the understanding of Platonic dialogues that followed it, and it exhibits the foundations of the physics and ontology that Aristotle offered in his _Physics_ and _Metaphysics _VII. In this book, R.E. Allen provides a superb translation of the _Parmenides_ along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical (...) and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the _Parmenides_ is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities. Allen's original translation of and commentary on the _Parmenides_ were published in 1983 to great acclaim and have now been revised by the author. (shrink)

In Europe a process of harmonisation of standards and regulations on genetic testing has started. Public discussion and consultation are recommended, but it is not clear in every European country how the decision making process as regards the further introduction of genetic testing services should be formed. In this paper the usefulness and importance of an overseeing body for genetic screening and testing is founded on four lines of reasoning: analysis of the role of value judgments in the use of (...) the concept of abnormality; a balancing of potential benefits for all parties involved; a balancing of potential disadvantages, and the greater availability of commercial genetic tests in the future. It is further argued that such an overseeing body has advantages for all the interested parties. (shrink)

For more than thirty years the writings and influence of one man in particular have dominated and directed the field of modern business ethics. We are indebted to two of his fellow‐Americans for this portrait of Richard T. De George. R. Edward Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Olsson Center for Ethics at The Darden School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22906‐6550; and Martin Calkins, SJ, is a Research Assistant in the (...) Olsson Center and a doctoral student in business ethics at the Darden School. (shrink)

Richard Martin's thoroughly philosophical as well as thoroughly tech nical investigations deserve continued and appreciative study. His sympathy and good cheer do not obscure his rigorous standard, nor do his contemporary sophistication and intellectual independence obscure his critical congeniality toward classical and medieval philosophers. So he deals with old and new; his papers, in his neat self-descriptions, consist of reminders, criticisms, and constructions. They might also be seen as studies in the understanding of truth, ramifying as widely in mathematics, logic, (...) and epistemology as well as metaphysics, as such understanding has required. For us it is a pleasant occasion to welcome Richard Martin's new Boston Studies, and to note his continuously con collection to the structive and critical interventions at the Boston Colloquium for the of Science. Philosophy Boston University Center for the R. S. COHEN Philosophy and History of Science M. W. WARTOFSKY July 1979 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE vii PREFACE xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv I. Truth and Its Illicit Surrogates II. Some Reminders concerning Truth, Satisfaction, and Reference 17 III. On Disquotation and Intensionality 30 IV. On Truth, Belief, and Modes of Description 42 V. The Pragmatics of Self-Reference 55 VI. On Suppositio and Denotation 72 VII. Of Time and the Null Individual 82 VIII. Existence and Logical Form 95 IX. Tense, Aspect, and Modality 110 X. Of 'Of' 130 XI. Events and Actions: Brand and Kim 144 XII. Why I Am Not a Montague Grammarian 160 XIII. (shrink)

Background: Increasing interest in empirical ethics has enhanced understanding of healthcare professionals’ ethical problems and attendant decision-making. A four-stage decision-making model involving ethical attention, reasoning, intention and action offers further insights into how more than reasoning alone may contribute to decision-making.Aims: To explore how the four-stage model can increase understanding of decision-making in healthcare and describe the decision-making of an under-researched professional group.Methods: 23 purposively sampled UK community pharmacists were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe ethical problems in their work (...) and how they were resolved. Framework analysis of transcribed interviews utilised the four decision-making stages, together with constant comparative methods and deviant-case analysis.Results: Pharmacists were often inattentive and constructed problems in legal terms. Ethical reasoning was limited, but examples of appeals to consequences, the golden rule, religious faith and common-sense experience emerged. Ethical intention was compromised by frequent concern about legal prosecution. Ethical inaction was common, typified by pharmacists’ failure to report healthcare professionals’ bad practices, and ethical passivity emerged to describe these negative examples of the four decision-making stages. Pharmacists occasionally described more ethically active decision-making, but this often involved ethical uncertainty.Discussion: The four decision-making stages are a useful tool in considering how healthcare professionals try to resolve ethical problems in practice. They reveal processes often ignored in normative theories, and their recognition and the emergence of ethical passivity indicates the complexity of decision-making in practice. Ethical passivity may be deleterious to patients’ welfare, and concerns emerge about improving pharmacists’ ethical training and promoting ethical awareness and responsibility. (shrink)

İslâm coğrafyasının genişlemesi neticesinde Arap olmayan toplulukların İslâm dini ile tanışmaları beraberinde bir takım problemleri de getirmiştir. Bu problemler arasında, Kur’ân’ın yanlış anlaşılma endişesi en başı çekmektedir. Arapçaya hâkim olmamaktan kaynaklanan dil hatalarının âyetlere kadar sirayet ettiğini gösteren birçok rivayetin varlığı da bunu teyit etmektedir. Bundan dolayı hicrî birinci yüzyılın ikinci yarısından itibaren dil ile ilgili faaliyetler aralıksız bir şekilde devam etmiştir. Bu faaliyetler arasında, Kur’ân’ın üslûbunu, âyetlerde yer alan kelimelerin delâleti ve sesletimini, cümlelerin iç bütünlüğü ile filolojik tahlillerini ele (...) alan çalışmalar bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmalar, Arap gramerinin oluşturulması ve bazı gramer ekollerinin ortaya çıkmasıyla birlikte genellikle “Ma‘âni’l-Ḳur’ân” ve “İ‘râbü’l-Ḳur’ân” başlıkları kullanılarak daha sistemli bir şekilde hicri dördüncü yüzyılın sonlarına kadar devam etmiştir. “Ma‘âni’l-Ḳur’ân” başlığını kullanarak eser yazan âlimler arasında gramer ilmiyle birlikte tefsir alanında da önemli bir konuma sahip olan Yahyâ b. Ziyâd el-Ferrâ da bulunmaktadır. Sözü edilen eserde Ferrâ’nın, lügavî tahlilleri esnasında özellikle sözcüklerin siygası ve çok anlamlılığı doğrultusunda dil-kültür ilişkisine örnek olabilecek birçok bireysel değerlendirmesine rastlanılmaktadır. Onun bazı ayetler etrafında sergilenen çeşitli görüşlere yer verdikten sonra Arap toplumu nezdinde bir yönüyle de bile olsa kabul gören semantik tahlillere ayrıca yer vermesi, müfessirlerin, çoğu zaman anlaşılması güç ayetlerle birlikte murad edilenin dışında bir yorumun önlenmesi için dönemin kültüründen yararlanmaları gerektiği şeklinde de değerlendirilebilir. Bu bakımdan Kur’ân-ı Kerîm’in insanlığa sunduğu mesajların en doğru şekilde anlaşılabilmesi adına bazı âyetlerin tefsiri ve değerlendirmesi yapılırken başvurulacak ilmî merci ve disiplinlerin geniş tutulması önem arz etmektedir. Binâenaleyh makalede Ferrâ’nın kendisine özgü tahlilleriyle beraber, görüşlerine yer verdiği başka âlimlerin analizlerinden sadece dil-kültür ilişkisine örnek olabilecek tespitler üzerinde durularak kültür ve dil etkileşiminin âyet yorumundaki rolüne işaret edilecektir. (shrink)

PLATONISM or platonic realism in logic and mathematics is probably the most widespread contemporary view in the philosophy of mathematics. It has become popularly identified with the acceptance of an ontology of sets and/or classes as fundamental among the building materials of the cosmos and of all that is therein. Usually, also, these entities are regarded as "abstract" rather than "concrete," but no one has given us a sufficiently detailed and acceptable theory as to how this dichotomy is to be (...) drawn. Sets and classes are taken somehow as the paradigm of abstract entities, as over and against something called 'individuals', which are then the paradigm of concrete entities. This is all very unsatisfactory and in need of much analysis and clarification. (shrink)

Stanislav Orikhovsky - one of the most prominent Latin-speaking Ukrainian-Polish humanists of the first half of the 16th century. For a long time he was known almost exclusively as a Polish figure. We now have every reason to include him in our culture, above all because he was a conscious Ukrainian - he invariably added the term "Ukrainian" to his last name. this is frankly stated ". In Western Europe it was called "Ukrainian Demosthenes" and "modern Cicero." His teachers were (...) famous figures of the time: the German humanist Melanchthon and the reformer Martin Luther - in the latter's house he even lived during his studies. Many prominent people of that time in Italy and Poland also had the honor of communicating with him. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.4 (2005) 301-305 [Access article in PDF] The Beauty of Psychotherapy R. D. Hinshelwood Keywords awe, psychotherapy, representation, self-esteem The Enlightenment was devoted to clear uncontaminated reason; its success has given us the terrific achievements of science and technology. However, it has bequeathed problems too. Untrammeled reason has led to the devaluing and exclusion of emotions. Emotions are irrational—self-deception, akrasia, and so on. They were (...) a problem for the eighteenth-century philosopher Kant and right through to the modern therapist Aaron Beck. Callender rightly looks around the edges of rationalist thought to see what can be said about the emotional and subjective side of mankind. He argues that there is more to the human mind than cognition. Something has been left out. What can be found to fill the gap?Callender has searched for the missing link that might complete our view of human nature. And he came back with aesthetics. Meaning The Enlightenment failing is writ large for therapists who are confronted with people who feel things. So we need to ask what place the emotions have in understanding the nature of man? It is not a hypothetical question, but a very practical one for a therapist. Emotions, Callender says, and most people would agree with him, are what gives meaning to life, a sense of purpose in living, even an ill-defined or delusional purpose.He presents Kant's description of aesthetics. Aesthetic judgements have a number of features, the most enigmatic and perhaps profound is a "purposiveness without purpose." A work of art, say a portrait, may have a purpose insofar as it represents a person for his aggrandizement or for his descendents through many generations, but the aesthetic quality does not come from that purpose. The aesthetic purpose involves a different set of judgements. They are about the painting as a piece of art in itself. If it is possible to compare this kind of aesthetic judgement with a judgement of a person's life, then I find myself reminded of Wollheim's definition of a person: The simplest way of putting the matter, which is not to be taken as a metaphysical claim, is this: There are persons, they exist; persons lead lives; and as a result, in consequence—in consequence that is, of the way they do it—there are lives, of which those who lead them may, for instance, be proud, or feel ashamed. So there is a thing, and there is a process, and there is a product. (Wollheim 1984, 2) Although many things do not lead lives, we do. And our lives have a process and a product. Like an aesthetic product, our lives have a sense of emotional meaning, without it having a clear purpose.Aesthetic judgements are therefore of a particular and somewhat peculiar kind. They judges talent for producing "that for which no determinate [End Page 301] rules can be given," as the paper quotes Kant. Other kinds of judgements do have determinate rules. First are empirical judgements for getting practical things done; and moral judgements for assessing ethical good from bad. Aesthetic beauty does not have clear rules, although many systems of rules have been proposed starting with the rules of perspective as they were laid out by renaissance painters, through to systems of color, such as that proposed by Paul Klee, once color was correlated with electromagnetic wavelengths. However, artists have always kept one jump ahead and evaded imprisonment in codified rules. So too it is with leading a life, perhaps. The really creative life is not lead according to rules. The art of life is to live meaningfully without simply running along tramlines. Although moral conduct and the practicalities of life remain significant, perhaps leading a life implies simply a "flare for living." Representation Of these three kinds of judgements that a mind makes, two do have sets of rules. Only one based on rationality, empirical evidence, and reason. Reason judges what can be done and achieved in the real physical world. It is about pragmatics and the usefulness of action. Moral judgements, about what... (shrink)

The supervenience thesis about value customarily expresses two intuitions: (i) that there is some kind of dependence between the value and the natural properties of the value bearer; (ii) that if you assert that x is valuable and if you agree that y is relevantly similar to x, with regard to natural properties, you must be prepared to assert that y too is valuable. R M Hare’s account of supervenience is problematic since it only expresses (ii) but not (i). A (...) solution to this problem is outlined, which ought to be endorsable by a prescriptivist such as Hare. (shrink)

R. S. Downie; IX—Can there be a Private Morality?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 167–186, https://doi.org/10.1.