In this article, I compare two varieties of abduction as reconstructive models for analysing discovery. The first is 'Hansonian abduction', which is based on N. R. Hanson's formulations of abduction. The other is 'Harmanian abduction', the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) model, formulated especially by Gilbert Harman. Peter Lipton has analysed processes of discovery on the basis of his developed form of Harmanian abduction. I argue that Hansonian abduction would, however, be a more apt model for this purpose. As (...) an example, I reconstruct, in a Hansonian manner, Ignaz Semmelweis's research on childbed fever and compare it to the IBE reconstruction of Lipton. I argue that Hansonian abduction is in accordance with Lipton's aim of taking into account the distinction between actual and potential explanations on the one hand, and between likely and lovely explanations on the other. I maintain that a developed version of Hansonian abduction combined with loveliness gives an important, new conceptual means for analysing processes of discovery. (shrink)

Classical Arabic poetry is replete with animal and fruit metaphors commonly used for endearment purposes. The comparative analysis of love metaphors in classical ghazal shows, however, a shift in the poetics of love from the use of animal metaphors in Badi poetry to the occurrence of fruit imagery in Bedouin ghazal. Based on a selection of classical Arabic love poetry, the paper traces the journey of love and sexuality to illustrate the conceptual change from the prevalence of the gazelle metaphor (...) in Bedouin ghazal of pre- and early Islam times to the emergence of fruit metaphors in Badi poetry of the Abbasid era. Evidenced in poetry, the metaphorical shit mirrors a change in the portrayal of women, who cease to be conceived as wild preys, fearing and fleeing male hunters to become exotic ripe fruits, waiting for the male to pick. Seemingly fortuitous, the shift in love imagery is reminiscent of sociocultural changes that help redefine the poetics of love in classical Arabic literature and inform gender dynamics in medieval Arabia. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

This article explores how legal treatises (rasāʾil) were essential sites for the development and expansion of Islamic legal schools’ (madhāhib) positions. The rasāʾil, along with legal dicta (fatāwā)—besides legal commentaries (shurūḥ) and manuals (mutūn)—were among the prime loci where jurists contended with rapid social, political, and economic changes. Although these legal treatises were written to address specific sociolegal issues, I argue that the treatise—as a separate genre—provided a creative space for jurists to reaffirm, restate, or advance a new opinion in (...) the school. These legal treatises were carefully considered and extensively referenced in the authoritative works of the school for their updated legal positions, practical utility for judges in courts, and relevance for official policy purposes. To demonstrate this dynamic, I present a close reading of two legal treatises by Maḥmūd Efendī al-Ḥamzāwī (d. 1887), a key Ḥanafī authority and judge, and the muftī of Damascus (1867–1887). The first covers the issue of criminal law procedures in Islamic/Ottoman courts and the second addresses the topic of hunting with rifles. Both treatises expanded the legal positions of the Ḥanafī school by incorporating new justifications, qualifications, and information. They offer an essential perspective on the status of this genre of legal writing through an exposition of a range of emerging issues in the late nineteenth century. (shrink)

The turbulent 1960s in America testifies to the artistic and intellectual need and move beyond the liberal cult of fantasy and inaction. Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) views the social and political reality in its dynamism, and not in its immutability or stasis. Black art, within a repressive society, must be perceived as an arm, a weapon and not a means of banter or fun. Werner Sollors considers him as the engagé artist par excellence. The political art that Baraka espouses (...) is drastic and functional, an art that exposes common predicaments and plights. Entailed in Baraka’s dramatic art is the diatribe against art for art’s sake, thefusion of art and activism, and the finality of human action. Baraka considers theatrical playwriting as didactic, telic, and constructive. In this light, art, playwriting, and engagement constitute one monolithic unity that could stand in the face of liberal reactionary politics and arrangements. (shrink)

Droit musulman et société au Sahara prémoderne: La justice islamique dans les oasis du Grand Touat aux XVIIe–XIXe siècles. By Ismail Warscheid. Studies in the History and Society of the Maghrib, vol. 9. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Pp. xii + 303. $93, €80.

Magna Carta is one of the most important illustrations of the exceptionalism of English common law. Within a completely feudal framework it gave the clearest possible articulation to the concept of the rule of law and at the same time it also showed that there were certain basic rights which every freeman enjoyed without any specific conferment by the king. From English perspective, continental European law after the process of the reception of Roman law was commonly regarded to be apart (...) and different from the English legal tradition, as well as being perceived to pose a continual threat. The English Parliament constantly turned down royal attempts to emulate the continental reception of Roman law by characterizing it as something entirely foreign to English law. Roman law was supposed to promote an authoritarian and absolutist vision of the relationship between rule and subjection and this was expressed in the famous phrases 'princeps legibus solutus' and 'quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem'. Roman law was also anti-feudal, because one of its main principles that all power originated from one central source was the antithesis of the distribution of power over multiple centers, which was a crucial element of the feudal society. Many English historians have held the view that the English law is democratic, whereas the continental tradition is undemocratic and authoritarian, and this is why the Roman law succeeded on the Continent and failed in England. (shrink)

In the Medieval period, Roman law and canon law formed ius commune or the common European law. The similarity between Roman and canon law was that they used the same methods and the difference was that they relied on different authoritative texts. In their works canonists and civilists combined the ancient Greek achievements in philosophy with the Roman achievements in the field of law. Canonists were the first who carried out research on the distinctions between various legal sources and systematized (...) them according to a hierarchical order. The Medieval civilists sought solutions in canon law for a large number of problems that Justinian’s Codification did not hinge on or did it only superficially. Solutions offered by canon law were accepted not only in the civil law of Continental Europe, but also in the English law. (shrink)

In this paper the authors present the psychological consequences of social isolation on domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the legal framework in the RNM on addressing the phenomenon of domestic violence. In this age of globalization and drive for material conformity, family life is quite difficult to cope with. This “war” for material comfort during the pandemic, has strained and stressed many families as a result of the created circumstances. Public safety measures, including physical distance and (...) social isolation, which have also been implemented in the RNM have contributed in making family problems even more pronounced. Social distance and staying at home are very effective in reducing the transmission of Covid-19 virus, but these safeguards disrupt the routines of spouses and families. Domestic violence affects a large number of families, and it is estimated that in times of social isolation, all forms of violence have been inflicted against family members regardless of their gender and age. The most common forms of domestic violence during Covid-19 pandemic in our country are psychological, physical and economic violence. Some countries affected by Covid-19 have seen increases in levels of domestic violence, including violence against children, violence against partners, and violence against the elderly. This paper presents the results of research conducted which highlight the fact that during the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in levels of domestic violence in the Republic of North Macedonia in the first six months of 2020. The authors give their recommendations on the need for action by state institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to adapt methods and circumstances towards the protection of victims of domestic violence. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume and authored by Sami Pihlström emphasize that our relation to the world we live in and seek to represent and get to know better through our practices of conceptualization and inquiry is irreducibly valuational. There is no way of even approaching, let alone resolving, the philosophical issue of realism without drawing due attention to the ways in which human values are inextricably entangled with even the most purely “factual” projects of inquiry we engage (...) in. This entanglement of the factual and the normative is, as explicitly argued in Chapter 7 but implicitly suggested in all the other chapters as well, both pragmatic (practice-embedded and practice-involving) and transcendental (operating at the level of the necessary conditions for the possibility of our representing and cognizing the world in general). The author claims we need to carefully examine the complex relations of realism, value, and transcendental arguments at the intersection of pragmatism and analytic philosophy. This book does so by offering case-studies of various important neopragmatists and philosophers close to the pragmatist tradition, including Hilary Putnam, Nicholas Rescher, Joseph Margolis, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It appeals to scholars and advanced graduate students focusing on pragmatism and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Peirce presented early formulations of abductive inference nearly 150 years ago. Since then new interpretations have been presented (some of them quite independently of Peirce), but there is still a close link to Peirce’s formulations. Lorenzo Magnani has written a new book on abduction where the main theme is not Peirce’s interpretation of abduction as such, but the book is very interesting from the Peircean perspective. In this review I shall focus on some of the themes from this point of (...) view. Magnani presents a broad view on abduction instead of presenting only one specific interpretation of abduction. This reflects the history of abduction. Peirce’s writings themselves give elements for various.. (shrink)

The covid-19 pandemic and the increasingly polarized political situation in many countries today have highlighted the significance of various humanly natural intellectual mistakes, cognitive biases, and widespread inferential errors. This essay examines, at a philosophical meta-level, the relation between our natural epistemic errors and the kind of humanly unavoidable transcendental illusion analyzed by Immanuel Kant in the Transcendental Dialectic of the First Critique. While both kinds of illusion are usually primarily discussed in an epistemological context, my approach is not exclusively (...) epistemic. Rather, my main argument extends the broadly Kantian critique of reason – as a critical via negativa focusing on what is epistemically “wrong” about us, as the kind of cognitive agents we human beings naturally are – into a pragmatically enriched investigation of “the negative” as constitutive of the human condition, that is, our lack of sufficiently critical epistemic and ethical capacities, including our propensity to both cognitive error and moral evil. Our being inescapably inclined to manifest such negativities in our epistemic and ethical lives, and our insufficient awareness of doing so, are, arguably, “transcendental facts” about us, to be critically examined in terms of a Kantian-cum-pragmatist philosophical anthropology. This significantly enriches our picture of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 12-21, February 2022.

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)

Firearm violence has soared in American cities, but most states statutorily preempt municipal firearm regulation. This article describes a unique collaboration in Philadelphia among elected officials, public health researchers, and attorneys that has led to litigation based on original quantitative analyses and grounded in innovative constitutional theories and statutory interpretation.

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up with each other in (...) long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

Sergius of Reshaina’s Syriac exposition of Aristotle’s _Categories_, with its discussion on substance, quantity, quality, relatives and the other categories, but also the teaching on space from the _Physics_, is presented here in a critical edition with an English translation.

Kant’s philosophy was an important background for the pragmatist tradition, even though some of the major classical pragmatists, especially William James, were unwilling to acknowledge their debt to Kant. This essay considers the relation between Kant and James from the perspective of their conceptions of the human condition. In particular, I examine their sha red pessimism, employing Vanden Auweele’s recent analysis of Kant’s pessimism and arguing that this is required by James’s meliorism. A comparative inquiry into Kant’s and James’s views (...) on the relation between ethics and religion is provided against this background of their shared philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

I. Introduction “Geographical” divisions of philosophy are often misleading – at least if one thinks about the dichotomy between Anglo-American “analytic” and “Continental” philosophy in the twentieth century – but in special contexts it is interesting to consider how certain philosophical traditions have spread geographically. The American tradition of pragmatism became hotly debated in Europe early in the twentieth century, with William James as its leading figure and F. C. S. Schiller as i...

El presente trabajo aborda el problema de la infancia dentro de la filosofía mo- derna y contemporánea, así como la relación conceptual que ésta tiene con la literatura, en especial, con lo que se analiza como novela infantil y novela familiar. Con apoyo de algunas ideas de Deleuze y Guattari, así como de Schérer y Hocquenghem, a la par de fragmentos de novelas, se busca establecer una crítica a las nociones de ontología y libertad establecidas en torno a la infancia (...) por la modernidad. Esta crítica permitirá comprender la infancia y su posible emancipación como alternativa plástica para crear nuevas subjetividades o experiencias políticas dentro del mundo. (shrink)

Pragmatism mediates rival extremes, and religion is no exception: The problems of realism versus antirealism, evidentialism versus fideism, and science versus religion, along with other key issues in the philosophy of religion, receive new interpretations when examined from a pragmatist point of view. Religion is then understood as a human practice with certain inherent aims and goals, responding to specific human needs and interests, serving certain important human values, and seeking to resolve problematic situations that naturally arise from our practices (...) themselves, especially our need to live with our vulnerability, finitude, guilt, and mortality. (shrink)

We consider a seemingly weaker form of $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ Turing determinacy.Let $2 \leqslant \rho < \omega _{1}^{\mathsf {CK}}$, $\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }$ is the statement:Every $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ set of reals cofinal in the Turing degrees contains two Turing distinct, $\Delta ^{0}_{\rho }$ -equivalent reals.We show in $\mathsf {ZF}^-$ : $\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }$ implies: for every $\nu < \omega _{1}^{\mathsf {CK}}$ there is a transitive model ${M \models \mathsf {ZF}^{-} + \textrm{``}\aleph _{\nu } \textrm{ exists''.}}$ As a corollary:If every cofinal $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ set of (...) Turing degrees contains both a degree and its jump, then for every $\nu < \omega_1^{\mathsf{CK}}$, there is atransitive model: $M \models \mathsf{ZF}^{-} + \textrm{``}\aleph_\nu \textrm{ exists''.}$ •With a simple proof, this improves upon a well-known result of Harvey Friedman on the strength of Borel determinacy.•Invoking Tony Martin’s proof of Borel determinacy, $\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }$ implies $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ determinacy.•We show further that, assuming $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ Turing determinacy, or Borel Turing determinacy, as needed:–Every cofinal $\Sigma ^{1}_{1}$ set of Turing degrees contains a “hyp-Turing cone”: ${\{x \in \mathcal {D} \mid d_{0} \leqslant _{T} x \leqslant _{h} d_{0} \}}$.–For a sequence $_{k < \omega }$ of analytic sets of Turing degrees, cofinal in $\mathcal {D}$, $\bigcap _{k} A_{k}$ is cofinal in $\mathcal {D}$. (shrink)

Rien, c’est ce qu’il faut: supporter l’insupportable rien. Maurice Blanchot Subjectivity is undoubtedly a central area of philosophical investigation. In 1984 Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) described h...