Volume 25, Issue 3, May 2020, Page 367-369.

I argue that alternative-denoting expressions interact with their semantic context by taking scope. With an empirical focus on indefinites in English, I show how this approach improves on standard alternative-semantic architectures that use point-wise composition to subvert islands, as well as on in situ approaches to indefinites more generally. Unlike grammars based on point-wise composition, scope-based alternative management is thoroughly categorematic, doesn’t under-generate readings when multiple sources of alternatives occur on an island, and is compatible with standard treatments of binding. (...) Unlike all in situ treatments of indefinites, relying on a true scope mechanism prevents over-generation when an operator binds into an indefinite. My account relies only on function application, some mechanism for scope-taking, and two freely-applying type-shifters: the first is Karttunen’s :3–44, 1977. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00351935) proto-question operator, aka Partee’s Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalized quantifiers, Foris, Dordrecht, 1986) IDENT, and the second can be factored out of extant approaches to the semantics of questions in the tradition of Karttunen. These type-shifters form a decomposition of LIFT, the familiar function mapping values into scope-takers. Exceptional scope of alternative-generating expressions arises via scopal pied-piping: indefinites take scope over their island, which then itself takes scope. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

It is often supposed that valuable organisms are more valuable if they are rare. Likewise if they belong to endangered species. I consider what kinds of value rarity and endangerment can add in such cases. I argue that individual organisms of a valuable species typically have instrumental value as means to the end of preserving their species. This progenitive value, I suggest, tends to increase exponentially with rarity. Endlings, for their part, typically have little progenitive value; however, I argue that (...) they may nonetheless have persistence value because, merely by existing, they postpone the numerical extinction of their species. Finally, I propose that a sentient endling can have higher lifeworld value than it would have had were it not the last of its kind. This, I argue, is because when a sentient endling dies, very little of its lifeworld is preserved – and this, I suggest, can be a bad thing. (shrink)

Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist. However, in the course of the meal, some kind of observance was put in train, and it turned out I was expected to play along—put on a hat, or some such. I demurred, saying that I felt (...) uncomfortable doing something that might be the expression of some belief that I do not hold, or of joining a “fellowship” with which I felt no special community, and with which I would not have any particular fellow-feeling beyond whatever I feel for human beings in general. I was assured that what it would signify, if I went through with the observance, was not that I shared the world views or beliefs of my host, or wished myself to identify uniquely with some particular small subset of humanity, but only that I respected his beliefs, or perhaps his stance. I replied that in that case, equally, I could not in conscience do what was required. (shrink)

Du grand ingénieur et mathématicien Simon Stevin (Bruges 1548 - La Haye ? 1620), l'histoire a retenu avant tout l'œuvre scientifique, marquante par sa diversité et sa vocation à constituer des manuels pratiques.

This is a book review of A. Aktipis' 2020 book on cancer and the application of a social evolution framework understand what cancer is, why and how it emerges, and why it is sometimes difficult to cure.

This work, which questions the medical model of psychiatry as the basis of psychotherapy, seeks to help professionals return their field to an activity that is ...

Two major interpretations have been advanced for the sum res cogitans passage in Descartes’s Second Meditation. According to the first interpretation, he argues in this passage that only thinking belongs to his essence. According to the second interpretation, due to Anthony Kenny, Harry Frankfurt and others, no such claim is defended by Descartes. Rather, it is his aim to argue that only thinking can be ascribed to him with certainty. In this essay, it will be shown that the “naive”, essentialist (...) reading of the sum res cogitans reasoning is closer to the text than the perhaps more sophisticated, purely epistemic reading. Although the interpretation defended here is not new, it will be arrived at by way of new arguments. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Metaphysik einst und jetzt" verfügbar.

Kant's account of subjectivity is ambiguous: there is an implicit critique of Descartes in Kaaat, but this is in conflict with more Cartesian aspects of his approach to subjectivity. Fichte develops the critical elements of Kant and turns them against Kant's residual Cartesianism. Fichte, in the various versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, is the first to be aware of the limitations of the reflective model of consciousness. In those texts he presents his alternative model for subjectivity by trying to conceive of (...) selfconsciousness such that the self-relation makes no separation between thinker and thought. While Fichte's insight into the limitations of the reflective model of consciousness is generally accepted, his own account of the character of the immediate self-relation, which he presents as the alternative to the reflective model, was never satisfactorily resolved. The exposition of Fichte will examine his theory of subjectivity in relation to the central notion of striving; it will be argued that the notion of a striving subject tries to reconcile the dichotomy of idealism and realism. (shrink)

The chapters in is collection examine various aspects of JJ Rousseau's work as it relates to the concept of desire.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 42-43, November 2011.