Objects of representation: Kant's Copernican revolution re-interpreted -- Synthetic unities of experience -- Three ways in which space and time might be said to be transcendentally ideal -- The given, the unconditioned, the transcendental object, and the reality of the past -- A theory of everything?: Kant speaks to Stephen Hawking -- Opinion, belief or faith, and knowledge -- Freedom of judgment in Descartes, Spinoza, Hume and Kant -- Six levels of mentality -- A Kantian defense of freewill.

Revonsuo proposed an intriguing and detailed evolutionary theory of dreams which stipulates that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat avoidance behaviors. The goal of the present study was to test this theory using a sample of 212 recurrent dreams that was scored using a slightly expanded version of the DreamThreat rating scale. Six of the eight hypotheses tested were supported. Among the positive findings, 66% of the recurrent dream reports contained one or (...) more threats, the threats tended to be dangerous and aimed at the dreamer, and when facing a threat, the dreamer tended to take defensive or evasive actions that were possible and reasonable. However, less than 15% of the recurrent dreams depicted realistic and probable situations critical for one’s physical survival or reproductive success and the dreamer rarely succeeded in fleeing the threat despite important and appropriate efforts. The findings thus provide mixed support for the threat simulation theory. (shrink)

Scholars agree that the environmental and societal impacts of consumption require greater attention, and need examining in more diverse market contexts. This editorial essay focuses on the nascent area of ethical/sustainable luxury, and critically considers how the scope of ethical/sustainable consumption can be broadened in the luxury sector. We address the compatibility of ethicality/sustainability and luxury by examining a range of opportunities and inherent tensions in relation to improving the ethical/sustainable consumption practices within the luxury sector. We also introduce several (...) original articles published as part of this Thematic Symposium, whose arguments underscore both the merits, and flaws, of ethical/sustainable luxury. On the basis of this and prior research, we present a balanced perspective by identifying various factors that facilitate or inhibit the acceptance and furtherance of ethicality/sustainability within sector. Thus, this essay serves as a springboard for further research and development in ethical/sustainable luxury whilst simultaneously highlighting the importance of the topic in general. (shrink)

The theory of fast and frugal heuristics, developed in a new book called Simple Heuristics that make Us Smart (Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group, in press), includes two requirements for rational decision making. One is that decision rules are bounded in their rationality –- that rules are frugal in what they take into account, and therefore fast in their operation. The second is that the rules are ecologically adapted to the environment, which means that they `fit to reality.' (...) The main purpose of this article is to apply these ideas to learning rules–-methods for constructing, selecting, or evaluating competing hypotheses in science, and to the methodology of machine learning, of which connectionist learning is a special case. The bad news is that ecological validity is particularly difficult to implement and difficult to understand. The good news is that it builds an important bridge from normative psychology and machine learning to recent work in the philosophy of science, which considers predictive accuracy to be a primary goal of science. (shrink)

Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors (...) who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles. (shrink)

This book is not aimed at exhuming Kant, but resurrecting him. It is inspired by the Critique of Pure Reason , yet is not about it: perhaps over-ambitiously, it tries to delineate not Kant's metaphysics of experience but the truth of the matter. The author shows rather than says where he agrees and disagrees with the first Critique , in so far as he understood that profound but obscure, over-systematic yet carelessly written, inspiring and infuriating, magnificent but flawed masterpiece. The (...) book attempts a highly systematic presentation, in which the very form of the work reflects the content of the arguments. Kant is often derided for the extent to which he allows his penchant for architectonic structure to distort his insights, but it is argued that he had the right instinct in assuming that there must be some systematic way in which the necessary conditions for experience fit together. The contemporary trend in analytical philosophy seems to be towards ever more specialized, jargon-infested work, and there is a need to draw things together into a wider view that can be more generally appreciated. (shrink)

Ce texte constitue l'introduction d'un dossier disponible ici. Il a déjà paru dans la revue Gradhiva, 1/2013, p. 4-25 Nous remercions Gradhiva et Sophie Archambault de Beaune de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. La dichotomie entre les notions de beauté et d'utilité est récente. Dans l'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert, l'« artiste » est l'ouvrier excellant dans les arts méchaniques, qui supposent l'intelligence, tandis que la technique est ce qui a rapport à l'art, la τέχνη. La question (...) - Anthropologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In diesem zweiten Teil wird zuerst gezeigt, dass Hegel sich am Anfang seiner Jenaer Zeit genau wie Schelling am §76 der Kritik der Urteilskraft mit Kants Gedanken eines Urgrunds orientiert, in dem Sein und Denken, Subjektives und Objektives zusammenfallen. Nach Schellings Weggang 1803 kommt Hegel aber durch seinen Freund Schelver zunehmend mit Goethe in Kontakt, dessen Methodologie eines intuitiven Verstandes im Sinne von KdU §77 Schelver als neuberufener Botanikprofessor und Direktor des botanischen Gartens in die Praxis umzusetzen hat. Hegel übernimmt (...) diese Methodologie zuerst, im sog. zweiten Jenaer Systementwurf von 1804/5, teilweise, ab 1805 in den Vorlesungen zur Geschichte des Philosophie ganz, wobei er sie aber in einem entscheidenden Punkt weiterentwickelt. Sie liegt auch der Phänomenologie des Geistes zugrunde. Zugleich wird deutlich, warum der Systemteil ‚Logik und Metaphysik’ aufgegeben und die Metaphysik selbst zur Logik werden muss, der nun allerdings eine solche ‚Phänomenologie des Geistes’ vorangehen muss. (shrink)

At the time of writing the COVID-19 pandemic was entering its ninth month, with nearly 800 000 recorded fatalities and 22 million infections in 188 countries and territories.1 In previous ethics briefings2 we raised concerns about the possibility that demand for life-sustaining treatment would overwhelm supply, with a consequent requirement for health professionals to make challenging triage decisions. Fortunately, to date, these have largely not been realised, although there is a possibility that countries in which containment measures have been less-successful, (...) such as South Africa, may still be required to triage.3 Despite the successful ‘flattening of the curve’ in many countries, there is a wide consensus that we remain firmly within the pandemic. Enormous practical challenges remain. It is unclear whether the pandemic will ultimately take the form of two or more successive waves, or whether the patchwork of global responses will lead to a sustained slow ‘burn’ with sporadic flare-ups.4 Areas of uncertainty include whether infection confers some immunity, how long any such immunity might last, whether effective vaccines can be developed and if seasonal temperature fluctuations alter the spread of the virus. The pandemic will also be fundamentally shaped by the decisions that governments make and the extent to which their diktats are complied with by citizens. With the – possibly temporary – retreat of urgent clinical ethics issues, such as triage, opportunities have arisen to reflect on some of the ethical questions that underlie and structure the demanding policy decisions that governments are wrestling with. One of the early questions was how to balance the complex constellation of costs and benefits associated with lockdown. Countries that …. (shrink)

Si le multiculturalisme est un objet clairement identifie par les sciences sociales, sa dimension philosophique reste relativement negligee en France. Comment les politiques multiculturelles s'articulent-elles aux fondements normatifs de la citoyennete moderne? Quelles sont les raisons qui justifient ou invalident le droit a la difference? Enfin, quel eclairage ces soubassements conceptuels apportent-ils au diagnostic recemment pose d'une crise du multiculturalisme? L'enjeu de cet ouvrage collectif est double: mettre en evidence les sources liberales et democratiques du projet multiculturel, tout en interrogeant (...) les limites de la citoyennete differenciee. Les contributions de ce volume, qu'elles soient a charge ou a decharge, suggerent dans leur ensemble que le retour a la citoyennete aveugle aux differences n'est plus envisageable, et ouvrent des pistes pour repenser l'egalite democratique. (shrink)

This article explains a new ‘foreignizing’ approach to translation that was invented in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, especially by Herder and Schleiermacher, and that has since become the predominant approach in translation theory. The article argues that despite the great virtues of this approach, it was based on an unduly narrow restriction to Indo-European languages, which leaves considerable room for further improvement. Greater attention to Hebrew has since made up this deficit to a certain extent. But Chinese (...) holds the potential for even more important refinements of the original theory. The article explains the original theorists’ failure to exploit this case in terms of a certain prejudice against Chinese language and culture that had arisen at the time, and for which these theorists were themselves partly responsible. It then tries to show in some detail how deeply enriching for the theory a consideration of Chinese can be. (shrink)

Affective disposition theory explains well the process of enjoying hero narratives but not the appeal of narratives featuring antiheroes. Recent antihero studies suggest that character identification and moral disengagement might be important factors in the enjoyment of such fare. The current study builds on this work. A sample of 101 self-identified fans and nonfans of the television series 24 viewed a condensed version of Season 1, providing evaluation of various protagonist perceptions, moral judgments, and emotional responses to the narrative, as (...) well as overall enjoyment. As expected, fans reported greater liking of the protagonist and greater enjoyment. But more importantly, regression analyses illuminated key differences between the groups in terms of the factors predicting enjoyment, providing a clearer picture of how we enjoy antihero narratives. (shrink)

A epistemologia de Charles Sanders Peirce parece paradoxal quando comparada a de Rudolf Carnap e W.V. Quine. Como Carnap, mas diferentemente de Quine, Peirce considera que o conhecimento científico reside em princípios lógicos que devem se sustentar para que o discurso sobre o verdadeiro e o falso tenha sentido. Ele também compartilha a visão de Carnap de que esses princípios são anteriores à, e independentes das constatações nas ciências naturais, uma visão que Quine notoriamente rejeita. Todavia, como Quine, mas diferentemente (...) de Carnap, Peirce insiste que não há conhecimento além daquele que é obtido por meio de testes empíricos, que as verdades da lógica estão epistemologicamente a par das verdades descobertas nas ciências naturais, e que nos revelam algo sobre como as coisas são, em vez de carecerem de conteúdo fatual, como Carnap afirma. Um ar de paradoxo emerge no comprometimento simultâneo de Peirce às visões comumente consideradas próprias das teorias epistemológicas incompatíveis. A análise desse paradoxo pela comparação da concepção de conhecimento de Peirce ao de Quine e Carnap nos ajuda a apreciar melhor sua importância na tradição filosófica e na profundeza e originalidade de suas razões. (shrink)

Arabo-Islamic alchemy enjoyed considerable popularity until well into the 19th and 20th centuries. It can be considered both as a predecessor of modern chemistry and as a natural philosophy whose purpose is to explain the world. Yet one of the unresolved questions concerning alchemy is how one was supposed to learn it, since it was an art that was meant to be kept secret and only revealed to a few select individuals. While the practicalities of the learning experience remain obscure, (...) it is noteworthy that Arabic alchemical literature often makes use of the literary form of the dialogue, a genre strongly associated with teaching and learning. This paper focuses on three Arabic dialogues on alchemy; namely, Masāʼil Khālid li-Maryānus al-rāhib, Kitāb Mihrārīs al-ḥakīm and Risālat al-ḥakīm Qaydarūs, and discusses how the transfer of secret knowledge is represented. I will focus on the literary frames of these texts, their mise-enscéne, the master-disciple relation as represented within them, and the question of interaction between unequal partners. (shrink)

Many commentators on Kant’s views on idealism, such as Kemp-Smith [1918], Strawson [1966] and, more recently, Guyer [1983 and 1987], begin by offering two choices. Either objects in space are nothing in themselves, or they exist independently of all knowers and all thought. After a fleeting, adolescent romance with idealism in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant is often said to emerge a mature realist in the second edition. It is said that for the later Kant (...) there is a noumenal realm of things-in-themselves which metaphysically grounds the phenomena we experience. We cannot have knowledge of things-in-themselves for reality must be taken as it comes, transformed by human cognitive capacities. Kant’s empirical realism is thus a genuine realism since it involves an ontologically separate mind-independent reality; yet it is an empirical realism because reality is accessible only by means of its causal impact on the senses. Moreover Kant is still an idealist since he holds that the nature of reality as experienced by humans is dependent on their cognitive structure. (shrink)

Previous findings indicate that the goals of teachers and their experienced emotions when interacting with students play an important role for their well-being. However, studies on the psychological impact of events have shown that the impact of bad events is stronger than the impact of good events. Thus, it may be that teachers’ goals and emotions for students showing undesirable behaviors contribute more to their well-being than teachers’ goals and emotions for students showing desirable behaviors, a distinction that has not (...) been made in previous research. To examine this question, we measured teachers’ goals and emotions for students showing desirable and undesirable behaviors, and their affective, evaluative, occupational, and psychological well-being. The results showed that teachers’ well-being was relatively strongly related to their goals and emotions for students showing undesirable behaviors: The higher the goals and the more positive the emotions, the higher the reported well-being. By contrast, the goals and emotions for students showing desirable behaviors were unrelated to teachers’ well-being. These results demonstrate that the principle of “bad is stronger than good” holds also for the influence of teachers’ goals and emotions on their well-being. (shrink)

Leitfaden zu einer künftigen Geschichte der Menschheit.--Über die Humanität des Künstlers.--Über historische Glaubwürdigkeit.--Über den gelehrten Zunftzwang.--Fragment einer Rede, gehalten in Mainzer Jakobiner klub.--Anrede an die Gesellschaft der Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit am Neujahrstage 1793.--Parisische Umrísse.

This volume focuses on cosmological and cosmogonical concepts in hermetic writings and studies their syncretistic origins, subject matter and impact from an interdisciplinary perspective. In doing so, it incorporates articles from various fields of research and academic disciplines.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmaticaAnne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio)Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up by (...) these relics: was such-and-such a shell, a mollusk, or an arthropod? Did this fossil fish live high up in the water, among the plankton, or grub in the mud on the sea floor?These studies have for many paleontologists been a blessedly human-free zone, detached from the busy realities of our everyday lives. The science of paleontology, though, is simply one obscure part of a burgeoning and rapidly evolving technosphere that underpins our lives, and that is now evolving millions of new kinds of fossils—technofossils—far more rapidly than ever happened in biological evolution. Many of these objects will, quite certainly, become part of Earth’s future fossil record.If such an endeavor as paleontology were ever to arise again, in a distant post-human future, how would its practitioners deal with these bizarre relics?We provide a preview, on the following pages, of just one such enigma, and how it may be resolved (or not) by our puzzled disciplinary descendants. [End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 35] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 36] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 37] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 41] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 44]Anne-Sophie Milon Anne-Sophie Milon is an artist-researcher who applies her illustration skills (HEAR, Strasbourg, France, 2010) and 2D traditional animation (UWE, Bristol, UK, 2012) to political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po, 2015) and science and technology studies (HSTS, EHESS, 2022). For the past ten years, she has translated geological narratives–and ordinary ones for Earth sciences–into extraordinary plots for the uninitiated, including the humanities. She is currently working with Jan Zalasiewicz on a play, The Petrified Museum (2024), based on the British Geological Survey (Keyworth, UK), and on a PhD project in science and technology studies looking at limestones’ agencies in extractive industry practices (2025). She regularly collaborates with researchers from the Anthropocene Working Group: The Cosmic Oasis (Oxford University Press, 2022), “The Victims of Carbon Dioxide are Starting to Appear” in Feral Atlas (2021), and The Epochs of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2016).Jan Zalasiewicz Jan Zalasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He was formerly a field geologist and paleontologist with the British Geological Survey, involved in the geological mapping of eastern England and central Wales. His interests include Early Paleozoic fossils, notably the graptolites (a kind of extinct zooplankton), mud and mudrocks, the Quaternary Ice Ages, the nature of geological time, and the geology made by humans. In recent years, he has helped develop the concept of an Anthropocene epoch. He enjoys writing popular science articles and books, and being involved in art/science projects.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)