Community-based interventions (CBIs) show promise as effective and cost-effective obesity prevention initiatives. CBIs are typically complex interventions, including multiple settings, strategies and stakeholders. Cost-effectiveness evidence, however, generally only considers a narrow range of costs and benefits associated with anthropometric outcomes. While it is recognised that the complexity of CBIs may result in broader non-health societal and community benefits, the identification, measurement, and quantification of these outcomes is limited. This study aimed to understand the perspectives of stakeholders on the broader benefits (...) of CBIs and their measurement, as well as perceptions of CBI cost-effectiveness. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from three stakeholder groups (lead researchers, funders, and community stakeholders of CBIs). Online semi-structured interviews were conducted, taking a constructivist approach. Coding, theme development and analysis were based on published guidance for thematic analysis. Twenty-six stakeholders participated in the interviews (12 lead researchers; 7 funders; 6 community stakeholders). Six key themes emerged; (1) Impacts of CBIs (health impacts and broader impacts); (2) Broader benefits were important to stakeholders; (3) Measurement of benefits are challenging; (4) CBIs were considered cost-effective; (5) Framing CBIs for community engagement (6) Making equitable impacts and sustaining changes—successes and challenges. Across all stakeholders, broader benefits, particularly the establishment of networks and partnerships within communities, were seen as important outcomes of CBIs. Participants viewed the CBI approach to obesity prevention as cost-effective, however, there were challenges in measuring, quantifying and valuing broader benefits. Development of tools to measure and quantify broader benefits would allow for more comprehensive evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of CBIs for obesity prevention. (shrink)

The importance of the gesture and the glance in oral communication face-to-face are undeniable, however, the communication skills of children with Specific Language Impairment has been measured, primarily preferring a description of its language orally or has been considered the verbal and non-verbal in an isolated manner. Given this, the objective of this study was to describe and interpret the use of the word, gesture and glances in narrative discourse in children SLI from a multimodal perspective, that allows to observe (...) not only the use of these resources, but also their integration. With a retelling task with support of visual images, oral productions of six Chilean children between 5 years and 5 years 11 months were analyzed. The findings indicate that children construct narratives from a combination of verbal and non-verbal resources and their number increases when the character’s actions are described. Also, it was possible to account for two instances of multisemiotic meaning construction through an assembly between different elements, in coordination or integration. These results corroborate previous findings that show that these children replace some of their problems with oral language through gestures and looks, which allow them to increase the communicability of their stories. (shrink)

In the context of an ever-growing interest in post-humanist animal and environmental ethics, Calarco’s Beyond the Anthropological Difference is both topical and necessary. Unlike other contemporary...

Dans ce livre fort documenté – et avec de belles photographies à l’appui –, l’historien australien Tim Allender analyse l’enseignement féminin dans l’Inde coloniale entre 1820 et 1932. Les termes du titre indiquent l’ambition : il ne s’agit pas seulement d’étudier l’essor d’établissements pour les filles, mais aussi de s’interroger sur les apprentissages sexués et leur évolution dans le temps. Les filles et les femmes qui apprennent dans ce livre sont aussi bien des Indiennes que des Eurasien...

The article argues that the prohibition of abortion in Chile, other than when the mother's life is in danger, is a form of human rights violation targeting women specifically. The Pro-Birth Policy was established in Pinochet's Chile as a response to the previous government's attempts, under Allende, to encourage family planning and to educate and inform women about their choices. This had been done to put an end to the increase in back-street abortions with the inevitable toll on women's lives. (...) Pinochet's regime reversed these women-oriented family planning policies, and criminalized abortion, on the basis of costs to the state and, more importantly, the need to increase the birth rate for reasons of national security. Women's bodies were used by the Pinochet regime, both by sexual violence and torture, and by the denial of women's reproductive and sexual rights, as a means to impose discipline and order on society. The fact that this is still not acknowledged in the construction of a collective memory indicates that the issue has not yet been resolved in democratic Chile. (shrink)

Throughout, Latin America retained its primacy in global planning. As Washington was considering the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1971, Nixon's National Security Council observed that if the US cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world." That policy problem has become more severe with recent South American moves towards integration, a prerequisite for independence, and establishment of more varied international ties, while also beginning to address severe internal disorders, (...) most importantly, the traditional rule of a rich Europeanized minority over a sea of misery and suffering. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the years preceding Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity in Chile (1970-1973) and, more precisely, on the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Since 1969, this Marxist revolutionary group had actively participated in the class struggle in Chile. However its political and social activism was not oriented towards the working class, but instead towards marginalized social sectors (inhabitants of informal settlements and landless rural workers). The paper thus seeks to elucidate the process which led the MIR to invest social (...) sectors that should have been considered as “unorthodox,” from a Marxist organization’s point of view. More generally, the analysis of a political experience taking place in a country where the working class was not as coherent or as massive as it was in 20th Century Western Europe and the United States aims at “deprovincializing” history and at using the concepts of “class” and “class struggle” in a manner which distances them from their potentially economicist and sociologizing implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the (...) insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

The use of Lacanian psychoanalysis in political study has expanded in recent years, however, existing scholarly work focuses on contemporary political issues. Little attempt has been made to apply elements of Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories to moments in political history. This paper is the first to address this. As the popularisation of Lacan in this discipline has largely emerged on the back of the work of Slavoj Žižek, this paper utilises Lacanian theory as interpreted by Žižek. This study selects three aspects (...) of the so-called ‘Chilean Miracle’ and applies elements of Lacanian theory to them to provide fresh insights and understandings. These are: the 1973 coup that replaced Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet as head of state, which is reimagined through Lacan’s ‘Symbolic’; the transition to democracy of 1988-1990, which is submitted to a reinterpretation through Lacan’s ‘transference’; and the reconstruction of the Chilean Socialist Party between 1973 and 1990, which is reinterpreted through Lacanian conceptualisations of ‘desire’. In providing fresh interpretations of these constituent processes of the ‘Chilean Miracle’, this paper demonstrates the validity of ‘taking Lacan back in time’ while simultaneously offering new theoretical approaches to understanding the foundations of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

From its origins, cybernetics has based its desire on the concept of transverse nature, today transdisciplinary. Within its history, the breaking point is unquestionably Stafford Beer and the VMS applied in Salvador Allende's government. Chile's historical conditions and context undoubtedly allowed a series of conceptual emergencies that were not necessarily developed after the 1973 coup d'état. Beer's design, as he claims, could serve both a socialist vision and a fascist command. This tells us that the tool depends on the hand (...) of the administrator. On the other hand, good but insufficient attempts have been made in the field of biologies, such as the theory of autopoiesis and epistemological positions concerning the observer, which have not been able to add value to the VMS. The errors in the design of the VMS can be summarized as follows: confusion of interactions with relationships, confusing co-autonomy with self-organization, confusion of centrism and centralities necessarily as central and establish isomorphisms in a mathematical system aiming at conceptual homologation. As is the case with Information and Entropy. This work shows that the VMS must obligatorily migrate to a Relational Viable system, whose bases are the relations of cooperation and reciprocity based on heterarchical structures for limited or scarce material energy resources. This is the basis of the socialist design which forces the economy to reduce the production of Non-Required Variety. (shrink)

Les temporalités journalistiques connaissent-elles des ordres et des crises? Le cas de l’Unité populaire au Chili montre que les routines pratiques et les habitudes discursives du journalisme sont historiquement situées et connaissent des métamorphoses. Ces transformations s’appuient sur les normes en vigueur, mais font émerger une autre logique temporelle qui prend peu à peu le dessus. Dans le cas chilien, la temporalité de la mise à l’agenda et la figure du gatekeeper sont de plus en plus contestées par l’événementialisation politique (...) et l’urgence médiatique. La sélection et la hiérarchisation des nouvelles ne disparaissent pas, mais elles s’opèrent dans un autre but. Elles laissent la place à la temporalité de la fluidité, par laquelle les journalistes doivent nourrir un flux de nouvelles plus étendu et accéléré. La réactivité se redéfinit alors. L’Unité populaire, ce sont donc les temps agités où se métamorphose, au Chili, la temporalité de la mise à l’agenda. Et tout l’intérêt de ce cas réside dans le décalage historique entre ces métamorphoses journalistiques et la succession des régimes politiques puisque la temporalité de la fluidité émerge durant le gouvernement démocratique d’Allende et se consolide sous le régime autoritaire de Pinochet. (shrink)

Con la finalidad de contribuir a los estudios de recepción de la obra de Søren Kierkegaard en México, este artículo presenta un análisis de su presencia en la obra escrita de Alfonso Reyes y Juan José Arreola. Para ello se abordan de manera sucinta los parámetros de recepción mundial y nacional del danés, para proseguir con el análisis puntual de las menciones explícitas de Reyes y Arreola, con esto se brindan herramientas de comprensión de Kierkegaard en la obra de los (...) mexicanos y se atiende a subsanar un faltante en los estudios de recepción kierkegaardiana allende el ámbito filosófico académico. (shrink)

Cinema has long played a crucial role in the way that societies remember and represent themselves. In the last quarter century, film has been an important medium in the public debate around the memory of the Holocaust and of Hiroshima; of the Algerian war for independence and of the Spanish Civil War; of the Allende legacy in Chile, the utopian dreams of 1968, and the aborted project of the German Democratic Republic; in identity formation in Palestine and in the African (...) diaspora. Hedges discusses the role of cinema within a global perspective that spans five continents, and proposes an original typology of cultural memory. In the process, she re-evaluates the contributions of major directors and uncovers hitherto neglected yet important works. The author develops her arguments in an approachable style that will encourage readers to rethink their own memories of films and to reflect on the way that cinema contributes to collective and cultural memory. The book's innovative approach should transform the way that we think of film and its social effects. (shrink)

This issue of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy's 2020 Proceedings includes papers given at the annual meeting in 2020 at the Hacienda Santa Clara in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. This was the first time that SAAP had ever held its annual meeting in Mexico, and it represents an important milestone for the Society. As immediate past president Gregory Pappas explains in his Address, "thanks to the efforts of many scholars and presidents, SAAP has come to (...) recognize the important philosophical contributions of female, African American, Indigenous, and Latinx philosophers … [and, also] a certain way of doing inter-American philosophy … contrapunteo." This contrapunteo... (shrink)

An inspiring collection of the personal philosophies of a fascinating group of individuals Based on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty essays penned by the famous and the unknown—completing the thought that the book’s title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a star-studded list of contributors—including Isabel Allende, John Updike, William (...) F. Buckley, Warren Christopher, Penn Jillette, Colin Powell, Rick Moody, and Kay Redfield Jameson—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk in Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island’s parole board. The result is a stirring, funny, and always provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of Americans whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best. (shrink)

An exceptional chain of events in science, technology, art and planning took place in Latin America in the 1970s. Does this wonder shed light upon our view of the basic roots of cultural, social and political blooming? This paper intends to adduce evidence on second-order cybernetics processes underlying five outstanding cases in real societies and to disclose the links between democracy and unfettering momentum for freedom and creativity. Namely, Oscar Varsavsky, national projects, styles of development, scientific and technological autonomy; Stefano (...) Varese, cultural and political autonomy of indigenous people; Mario Pedrosa, creation of the Museum of Solidarity in Chile; Stafford Beer, Cybersyn project for cybernetics and self-management in Chile; and Humberto Maturana, concepts of autopoiesis, cognition, language and multiverse. The reasoning counts with the author's direct participation in all cases. The paper sets a similarity worthy of being noticed between Allende’s Unidad Popular in Chile and Pericles’ Golden Age in Greece and outlines why these historic realms albeit far apart have lasting importance and similar historical impetus. Highlights the essential and seminal features of each stream and comes to the conclusion that effective democracy is the necessary condition for participation and creativity. Upsurges in social participation and creativity are neither frequent nor cyclical. Still, such sudden and usually large increase in ingenuity, flair and aim to improve living conditions, although limited in time, remain in our mind as a joy forever. Nowadays, the world witnesses a contrary motion towards sterile art patterns and restrained behaviour. Hence, it becomes even more important to better understand the basic roots of cultural, social and political blooming. (shrink)

In 1972, in Chile, the German designer Gui Bonsiepe was in charge of the Industrial Design Department of Technological Institute of the National Corporation for the Promotion of Production INTEC Corfo, during the government of socialist President Salvador Allende in Chile. In this article from the INTEC magazine n.2, published this time for the first time in English, Bonsiepe develops a theoretical formulation, applied to the field of design, through which he proposes a concept that will be fundamental in the (...) field of interactive development, both analog and digital: the Interface. Thus, it also includes concepts of cybernetics such as variability and predictive study of behavior in the field of projecting disciplines. Bonsiepe is an exceptional representative during the formation of the iconic Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm. And among other elements, one very outstanding was his time as a student of Professor Max Bense and Horst Rittel, who would have introduced the concepts of first-order Cybernetics in the teaching of communication, and the design of information, in a pioneering way. The challenge posed in 1972, in Chile, focused on the possibility of calculating elements of criticism of political economy, in the field of knowledge generated by sensitive experiences, "calculating the use value" of the field of esthetics. As a renowned disciple of Max Bense and Tomas Maldonado, Bonsiepe represents the meeting of two Cybernetic traditions, collaborating with the emblematic Cybersyn Corfo project, in which the formulation of interaction mechanisms was strategic in combination with Stafford Beer's approaches to a second-order Cybernetics, according to the Viable System Model, for a project of decentralized state production, and transmission of information in real time. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

It is Frege's third contribution that makes the point of departure for the present paper. Not merely did Frege show how to manipulate symbols more exactly; he also gave a searching account of what these symbols mean. Consider a philosophical problem that arises out of the simplest arithmetic. When we say that 5 = 2 + 3, what do we mean? Do we mean that 5 is identical with 2 + 3? But in some ways 5 and 2 + 3 (...) are obviously different. Or do we mean that 5 and 2 + 3 are equal but not identical, equality being a relation that falls short of complete identity? But in that case, some ordinary ways of speaking in mathematics must be false. Suppose a pupil is asked for the positive square root of 25. The phrasing of the question implies that there is one and only one. No doubt he may answer, '5'. But then it follows that the answer '2 + 3' is not allowable, since ex hypothesi 5 and 2 + 3, though equal, are not identical. Yet ordinarily the answer '2 + 3' would be regarded as strange but not as wrong. (shrink)

In Prajñā and Reason Nishitani presents a powerful vision of philosophy as Absolute knowing. Nishitani’s conclusions are striking: Absolute knowing can only fulill its potential by beginning without any presuppositions and affirming the truth of contradiction. Because Hegel’s philosophy also purports to be a science of Absolute knowing, in Prajñā and Reason Nishitani develops his own account of the Absolute in conversation with Hegel’s philosophy. We reconstruct Nishitani’s reading and various critiques of Hegel, and thereafter evaluate its merits. Our inquiry (...) shows that Hegel too begins without presuppositions and affirms the truth of contradiction. As a result, we argue that Nishitani’s profound reflections on Absolute knowing draw him into close proximity with Hegel’s thinking and call us to re-think the very being of philosophy and philosophical practice today. (shrink)

When the NCAA adopted new rules allowing athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL), few people took more interest than Reggie Bush who famously relinquished the Heisman trophy after being ruled retroactively ineligible for receiving "impermissible benefits." Bush has argued for his reinstatement and the "return" of his Heisman. In this paper, I argue that, while the NCAA never should have required players to be amateurs in the first place, Bush should not be reinstated or have the (...) Heisman "returned." Properly understood, Reggie Bush never won the Heisman Trophy in the first place, so "returning" it would be to rewrite history — almost literally, to move the goalposts. -/- Forthcoming in "College Sports and Ethics" by Lexington Books. (shrink)

Работа предназначена для ученых и специалистов, преподавателей, аспирантов, слушателей, студентов, а также всех интересующихся рассматриваемой темой.

ABSTRACTThe historical process underlying Darwin’s Origin of Species did not play a significant role in the early editions of the book, in spite of the particular inductivist scientific methodology it espoused. Darwin’s masterpiece did not adequately provide his sources or the historical perspective many contemporary critics expected. Later editions yielded the ‘Historical Sketch’ lacking in the earlier editions, but only under critical pressure. Notwithstanding the sources he provided, Darwin presented the Origin as an ‘abstract’ in order to avoid giving sources; (...) a compromise he acknowledged and undertook to set right in later editions, yet failed to provide throughout the six editions under his supervision. Darwin’s reluctance to publish the historical context of his theory and his sources, particularly sources which were also ‘precursors’, may be attributed as much to the matter of intellectual ownership as science, or even good literary practice. Of special concern to Darwin were issues of priority or originality over ‘descent with modification’ and especially over Natural Selection. Many later historians have argued that Darwin was unaware of the work of his precursors on Natural Selection. Darwin’s theory was an example of independent discovery, albeit along with such obscure precursors as Matthew or Wells, who were unknown to Darwin until after the publication of the Origin. Both Matthew and Wells had a medical education, like James Hutton or Erasmus Darwin earlier in the eighteenth century, or even Charles Darwin. Evolutionary theory, at least in Britain was a product largely of the medical evolutionists rather than the natural historians which ‘history’ has chosen to select for the focus of attention; and among the medical evolutionists the figure of John Hunter stands out as theorist, experimentalist and teacher: the medical evolutionists were predominantly the product of Hunter’s legacy or of the medical profession and particularly the Scottish Universities. Much recent Darwin scholarship has focused on the private Notebooks, to establish Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection around 1837–1838 and demonstrate Darwin’s ignorance of his precursors; requiring an explicit acknowledgement by Darwin as the legitimate substantiation of any claim to prior influence. The precursors have been categorized as uniformly obscure or irrelevant to the science of evolution which may be defined exclusively as ‘Darwinian’. The inclination to acknowledge influences, however was not something Darwin was gratuitously given to doing, especially on matters of priority. The Notebooks are not Darwin’s private thoughts; from an early stage he considered them incipient public documents and later sought to protect them as proof of his originality. William C. Wells was not an obscure thinker, but a celebrated scientist whom Herschel, Darwin’s guide to scientific methodology, had recommended as providing a model of scientific method. Darwin discovered Wells through Herschel, and quickly acquired a copy of Wells’ recommended work, no later than 1831, and held it thereafter in his library at Down House. This book, the 1818 edition of Wells’ Two Essays contains a third essay, Wells’ account of Natural Selection. Later, in the Descent of Man Darwin acknowledged his separate discovery of the correlation of colour and disease immunity in man, also earlier recounted by Wells. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James's Faith-Ladder JAMES C. S. WERNHAM JAMES WROTE OFTEN of a "faith-ladder."' What he said about it has drawn some side-glances from critics, but not yet any sustained and careful look.' That is surprising, for what he says is puzzling enough to invite inquiry. It is also important enough to deserve it. His presentations of the ladder show significant variation, so it is useful to look at a generous (...) sample. In the interest of brevity the following six passages have been extracted from contexts which sometimes have an important bearing on them. The unquoted contexts will get attention as needed. 1. "The inner process is a succession of 'synthetic judgments'. What is so good, may be, ought to be, must be, shall be,--so far as I am concerned, I won't admit the opposite. ''s 2. "[W]e have a conception which being opposed by another is only probab /e. But we feel, it is so good that it isfit to be true, it ought to be true, it must be true etc. And then we say it shall be true for me, it/s true. ''4 3- "Its [faith's] natural logic is the Sorites: fit to be, ought to be, may be, must be, shall be, is etc.''5 4. "The following steps may be called the 'faith-ladder': ~. There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing self-contradictory; ' To the best of my knowledge, the name "faith-ladder'"does not occur before 19o6. It occurs in "Faith and Reason" and in "Faith and the Right to Believe," both written in that year. But expositions of the thing predate the name. They are found as early as 1899, and in close connection with the will-to-believe doctrine. 9 Levinson's discussion is a partial exception. His treatment is more extended than most. See H. S. Levinson, $c/ence, Metaphysicsand the Chan~e of Salvation (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 161--67; also his The Religious Investigations of Wdliam James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198 0, 231-34. s Letter to Baldwin, quoted in'R. B. Perry, The Thoughtand Characterof WilliamJames, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1935), 2: 243. 4 Letter to Marshall, Feb. 9, 1899, quoted in Perry, Thought and Character,2: 24~. 5 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard Universit~t Press, 1977), 199. [1o5] lO6 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 1 JANUARY I990 2. If might have been true under certain conditions; 3- It may be true even now; 4. It isfit to be true; 5- It ought to be true; 6. It must be true; 7- It s/m//be true, at any rate true for me. ''6 5. "Faith's form of argument is something like this: Considering a view of the world: 'It isfit to be true', she feels; 'it would be well if it were true; it might be true; it may be true; it ought to be true', she says; 'it must be true', she continues; 'it shall be true', she concludes, 'for me; that is, I will treat it as if it were true so far as my advocacy and actions are concerned'. ''7 6. "A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it true or not? you ask. It might be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory. It may be true, you continue, even here and now. It is fit to be true, it would be well if it were true, it ought to be true, you presently feel. It must be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and then--as a final result--it shall be held for true, you decide; it shall be as if true, for you. ''s 9. Between these statements there are clear similarities and clear differences too. Some of them deserve to be noted, some to be noted and explored. a. In these accounts of it the ladder varies in the number of its rungs. By James's own count in one place, it has as many as seven. In... (shrink)

Descartes’s doctrine of clarity and distinctness states that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. This paper looks at his early doctrine from Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and its application to the demarcation problem of curves in Descartes’s Geometry. This paper offers and defends a novel account of the demarcation criterion of curves: a curve is geometrical just in case it is clearly and distinctly perceivable. This account connects Descartes’s rationalist epistemological programme with his ontological views (...) about mathematics. (shrink)