Nature is a key theme of philosophical concerns today. This book examines Merleau-Ponty’s investigations on nature and provides a timely guide to his remarkable approach to scientific advances and their implications for our understanding of nature.

This book explores a radically integrative phenomenology of nature through the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. By revisiting novel empirical findings in the sciences and advances in scientific methods and concepts, Merleau-Ponty leads us to rediscover a first nature right at the heart of the subject. Alessio Rotundo traces and documents the presence of a double meaning of nature affecting Merleau-Ponty's analyses across foundational aspects of human experience: sense perception, organic development and behavior, cognition, language, and history. (...) Physical, biological, and psychological processes in nature are not merely scientific data; they provide the evidence for another, more primordial sense of nature. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of (...) the sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

I argue that linguistic meanings are instructions to build monadic concepts that lie between lexicalizable concepts and truth-evaluable judgments. In acquiring words, humans use concepts of various adicities to introduce concepts that can be fetched and systematically combined via certain conjunctive operations, which require monadic inputs. These concepts do not have Tarskian satisfaction conditions. But they provide bases for refinements and elaborations that can yield truth-evaluable judgments. Constructing mental sentences that are true or false requires cognitive work, not just an (...) exercise of basic linguistic capacities. (shrink)

This is a book about normativity -- where the central normative terms are words like 'ought' and 'should' and their equivalents in other languages. It has three parts: The first part is about the semantics of normative discourse: what it means to talk about what ought to be the case. The second part is about the metaphysics of normative properties and relations: what is the nature of those properties and relations whose pattern of instantiation makes propositions about what (...) ought to be the case true. The third part is about the epistemology of normative beliefs: how we could ever know, or even have rational or justified belief in, propositions about what ought to be the case. (shrink)

First published in 1985, D. M. Armstrong's original work on what laws of nature are has continued to be influential in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Presenting a definitive attack on the sceptical Humean view, that laws are no more than a regularity of coincidence between stances of properties, Armstrong establishes his own theory and defends it concisely and systematically against objections. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface (...) written by Marc Lange, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is available for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, (...) necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. -/- Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency. (shrink)

토마스 아퀴나스의 자연법에 관한 주요한 논쟁 중의 하나는 자연법의 제일 원리들에 관한 것이다. 자연법의 제일 원리들에 관련된 논쟁은 내용상 2가지로 구분된다. 하나는 자연법의 제일 원리들이 어떻게 파악되는지를 묻는 인식론적 문제이고, 다른 하나는그것들이 행위의 규범성과 관련하여 어떤 성격을 가지는지를 묻는질문이다. 이러한 논쟁은 주로 토마스 아퀴나스의 자연법에 대한전통적 해석을 지지하는 학자들과 신자연법이론을 대표하는 학자들 사이에서 발생했다. 전통적 해석에 따르면 자연법의 제일 원리들이 파악되기 위해서는 인간의 본성에 대한 사변적 탐구가 반드시 필요하다. 그리고 그렇게 파악된 제일 원리들은 또한 행위와 관련된 규범적 성격을 갖게 된다. (...) 그러나 신자연법이론에 따르면 제일 원리들은 실천이성에 의해 직관적으로 파악되고, 어떠한 규범적 성격도 가지지 못한다. 본 논문의 목적은 토마스 아퀴나스의 텍스트에 근거해서 이러한두 해석을 조화시키는데 있다. 본 연구에 따르면 제일 원리들의 인식과 관련해서는 신자연법이론이 토마스를 올바르게 해석하고 있다. 그러나 제일 원리들의 규범성과 관련해서는 전통적 해석이 토마스에 관한 올바른 해석이다. 이러한 목적을 달성하기 위해 본 논문은 핵심적으로 신데레시스, 원리들의 이해, 직관적 지성, 그리고능동지성 등의 상호관계를 밝히고 있으며, 또한 사변이성과 실천이성의 구분과 역할에 대해서 논하고 있다. 더 나아가 본 논문은 토마스의 자연법을 근본적으로 이해하려고 할 때, 영원법의 의미와 역할을 애써 부인할 필요가 없다는 주장도 부분적으로 긍정한다. (shrink)

Nature has been widely represented in literature and culture as healing, redemptive, unspoilt, and restorative. In the aftermath of the First World War, writers grappled with long cultural associations between nature and healing. Having survived a conflict in which relations between people, and the living environment had been catastrophically ruptured, writers asked: could rural and wild places offer meaningful sites of solace and recovery for traumatised soldiers? In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Rebecca West’s The Return of (...) the Soldier (1918), Nan Shepherd’s The Weatherhouse (1930) and Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (1932), trauma severs emotional, social, and cultural relationships with the natural world. These interwar literatures offer counter-narratives to simplistic depictions of nature as a healing space and highlight the difficulties of returning to rural environments and ‘reconnecting’ with known and natural places. (shrink)

This article discusses Abū ʽUthmān al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869) (one of the first Muʽtazilī scholars) Allah-world relationship, his understanding of custom, and his view on miracles. The Muʻtazilī thinkers examined the problem of miracles within their concept of prophethood. They divide miracles, which they accept as the only proof of prophethood, into two: those under the power of Allah and under the power of the created. Jāḥiẓ explains these two sorts of miracles with the order in the universe established by (...) Allah and people and expresses this order with the concept of custom (ʻāda). Jāḥiẓ divides custom into three. The first of these is the “qā’im (constant) custom”, which is based on the theory of kumūn-ẓuhūr and expresses the general rules that occur as a requirement of the general functioning in the universe. According to Jāḥiẓ “qā’im (constant) custom” is that knowledgeable people are aware of the custom of the universe. This custom is an order created by Allah in the eyes of intelligent and knowledgeable people, which is continuous and therefore cannot be interrupted, and in which there is no chaos. He states that this order is realized through the natures in the objects, which are knowable to everyone. But rarely a nature in this order can be interrupted due to a situation that takes it out of the natural flow and cannot be explained by natural causes. According to him, this is proof that nature, which has the defining feature of the object, is created by the creator, and maintains its continuity based on an arranged program. However, the creator can involve in this order when necessary. In this type of custom, God’s intervention occurs by breaking the qā’im custom that continues on a regular basis. The second of these is the “regional custom”, which is not known to everyone but only known to people living in a certain area. Jāḥiẓ states that the miracle in this type of custom occurred when Allah broke the custom known to the people in the region. The third of these is “social custom” which is established by people. For Jāḥiẓ, the miracles of this kind are under the power of people. He argues that the miracle in this type of custom occurs with sarfa, that is, by God’s intervention with human’s motive or knowledge. In this study, Jāḥiẓ’s view of miracles is discussed together with his theory of nature, his understanding of custom and sarfa. (shrink)

Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist (...) Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems. (shrink)

This study includes an analytical study of the term "Qiyās al-Adna” among the Scholars of Uṣūl al-Fiqh. It is known that the Qiyās is divided into the following types: an analogy of higher order (Qiyās al-Awla), an analogy of an equivalent order (Qiyās al-Musawi), an analogy of a lower order (Qiyās al-Adna). However, Qiyās al-Adna raised issues and objections among some scholars, in past and present; hence, there is an urgent need to present a comprehensive study that shows the meaning (...) of Qiyās al-Adna for those who advocate it, discusses the objections and issues that have been raised about it, and clarifies its connection to other Qiyās types. Moreover, the study will concern the applied side of Qiyās al-Adna by explaining how jurists used it. The researcher used the analytical method and referred to the most important, ancient and modern Uṣūl al-Fiqh sources and references. The study concluded with results, the most prominent of which is that the Qiyās al-Adna has two meaning: the first is that in which the original case is more deserving of legal ruling than the new or parallel case, so the new case is considered as a lower order, and the second is that the effective cause in the new case is weaker than in the original case. Among the results of the study is that the objections directed to the Qiyās al-Adna are weak, and that it is not limited to the presumptive Qiyās on the most correct opinion, also, that the jurists used the term Qiyās al-Adna in the second meaning, which says that the lower order is in its effective cause, not the legal ruling. (shrink)

Du Châtelet holds that mathematical representations play an explanatory role in natural science. Moreover, she writes that things proceed in nature as they do in geometry. How should we square these assertions with Du Châtelet’s idealism about mathematical objects, on which they are ‘fictions’ dependent on acts of abstraction? The question is especially pressing because some of her important interlocutors (Wolff, Maupertuis, and Voltaire) denied that mathematics informs us about the properties of material things. After situating Du Châtelet in (...) this debate, this chapter argues, first, that her account of the origins of mathematical objects is less subjectivist than it might seem. Mathematical objects are non-arbitrary, public entities. While mathematical objects are partly mind-dependent, so are material things. Mathematical objects can approximate the material. Second, it is argued that this moderate metaphysical position underlies Du Châtelet’s persistent claims that mathematics is required for certain kinds of general knowledge, including in natural science. The chapter concludes with an illustrative example: an analysis of Du Châtelet’s argument that matter is continuous. A key premise in the argument is that mathematical representations and material nature correspond. (shrink)

In this article I aim to clarify the nature of Kant’s transformation of rationalist metaphysics into a science by focusing on his conception of transcendental reflection. The aim of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued, consists primarily in liberating the productive strand of former general metaphysics - its reflection on the a priori elements of all knowledge - from the uncritical application of these elements to all things and to things that can only be thought. After considering (...) Kant’s conception of metaphysics and his various uses of the term ‘transcendental’ I closely examine his account of logical and transcendental reflection in the section entitled ‘On the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection’. Whereas commentators generally attribute the activity called transcendental reflection to Kant alone, I contend, first, that Kant regarded philosophy as such to rely on a mode of transcendental reflection and, second, that the critical mode of transcendental reflection enacted in the Critique itself yields insight into the reason why our a priori knowledge is limited to the realm of possible objects. This is illustrated by outlining the difference between Kant’s and Leibniz’ employment of the concepts of reflection. (shrink)

Schelling's first systematic attempt to articulate a complete philosophy of nature.

This Element provides an opinionated introduction to the metaphysics of laws of nature. The first section distinguishes between scientific and philosophical questions about laws and describes some criteria for a philosophical account of laws. Subsequent sections explore the leading philosophical theories in detail, reviewing the most influential arguments in the literature. The final few sections assess the state of the field and suggest avenues for future research.

Perceptual constancies have been studied by psychologists for decades, but in recent years, they have also become a major topic in the philosophy of mind. One reason for this surge of interest is Tyler Burge’s (2010) influential claim that constancy mechanisms mark the difference between perception and mere sensitivity, and thereby also the difference between organisms with genuine representational capacities and ‘mindless’ beings. Burge’s claim has been the subject of intense debate. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that we cannot (...) hope to settle this debate (as well as related debates in the philosophy of mind) without a clear and substantive theoretical account of what perceptual constancies are. In the first part of this paper, I argue that the standard definitions in the literature fall short of providing such an account. Still, as I aim to show in the second part of the paper, by taking a closer look at some of the paradigm examples, it is possible to construct a plausible general account of perceptual constancies that is both clear and substantive, and that can serve as a firm foundation for settling debates like the dispute about Burge’s ‘constancy mechanism criterion’ for perception. (shrink)

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews invites us to view this as a response to something inherently problematic in the basic notions that philosophy deals with. He examines the intriguing shifts in Plato's attitude to perplexity and suggests that this development may be seen as an archetypal pattern that philosophers follow even today. (...) So it is that one may be won over to philosophy in the first place by the example of a Socratic teacher who displays an uncanny gift at getting one perplexed about something one thought one understood perfectly well. Later, however, wanting like Plato to move beyond perplexity to produce philosophical 'results', one may be chagrined to discover that one's very best attempt to develop a philosophical theory induces its own perplexity. Then, like late Plato and like Aristotle, the philosopher may seek to 'normalize' perplexity in a way that both allows for progress and yet respects the peculiarly baffling character of philosophical questions. (shrink)

In: B. Hardy-Vallee & N. Payette, eds. Beyond the brain: embodied, situated & distributed cognition. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar’s Press), in press. Abstract: In this article, I do three main things: 1. First, I introduce an approach to the mind motivated primarily by evolutionary considerations. I do that by laying out four principles for the study of the mind from an evolutionary perspective, and four predictions that they suggest. This evolutionary perspective is completely compatible with, although broader than, the embodied (...) cognition approach. 2. Then I look at one prediction in depth, the idea that the brain evolved by exaptation–reusing exiting functional units, and combining them in novel ways to generate new cognitive capacities. 3. Finally, I try to lay out some of the implications, both of the in-depth example, and of the more general approach. (shrink)

This is a companion paper to Braüner where a natural deduction system for propositional hybrid logic is given. In the present paper we generalize the system to the first-order case. Our natural deduction system for first-order hybrid logic can be extended with additional inference rules corresponding to conditions on the accessibility relations and the quantifier domains expressed by so-called geometric theories. We prove soundness and completeness and we prove a normalisation theorem. Moreover, we give an axiom system (...) class='Hi'>first-order hybrid logic. (shrink)

As a subject of inquiry, laws of nature exist in the overlap between metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Over the past three decades, this area of study has become increasingly central to the philosophy of science. It also has relevance to a variety of topics in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology. Readings on Laws of Nature is the first anthology to offer a contemporary history of the problem of laws. The book is (...) organized around three key issues: the matter of distinguishing laws from mere correlations, questions concerning inductive reasoning and laws, and the consideration of whether there are any true laws in science. Designed for class use, the anthology covers a remarkably broad range of views and concerns, and consists exclusively of articles that have proved highly influential in the field. Readings on Laws of Nature will also serve as a valuable research and reference tool for philosophers who do not specialize in the subject, but who have occasion to examine concepts relating to the laws of nature in their own work. (shrink)

Hermann Weyl was one of the twentieth century's most important mathematicians, as well as a seminal figure in the development of quantum physics and general relativity. He was also an eloquent writer with a lifelong interest in the philosophical implications of the startling new scientific developments with which he was so involved. Mind and Nature is a collection of Weyl's most important general writings on philosophy, mathematics, and physics, including pieces that have never before been published in any language (...) or translated into English, or that have long been out of print. Complete with Peter Pesic's introduction, notes, and bibliography, these writings reveal an unjustly neglected dimension of a complex and fascinating thinker. In addition, the book includes more than twenty photographs of Weyl and his family and colleagues, many of which are previously unpublished. Included here are Weyl's exposition of his important synthesis of electromagnetism and gravitation, which Einstein at first hailed as "a first-class stroke of genius"; two little-known letters by Weyl and Einstein from 1922 that give their contrasting views on the philosophical implications of modern physics; and an essay on time that contains Weyl's argument that the past is never completed and the present is not a point. Also included are two book-length series of lectures, The Open World and Mind and Nature, each a masterly exposition of Weyl's views on a range of topics from modern physics and mathematics. Finally, four retrospective essays from Weyl's last decade give his final thoughts on the interrelations among mathematics, philosophy, and physics, intertwined with reflections on the course of his rich life. (shrink)

Love and War deepens our understanding and brings us one step closer to that distant day when we will lay down our sword and shield and deserve the name Homo sapiens-wise human beings. - Sam Keen, Best-selling author of Faces of the Enemy Love and War is a stunning tour de force which traces the darkest shadows of our progenitors on humankind's evolutionary journey through individual, societal, communal, and nation-state relationships. It is a compelling and wonderfully readable analysis of how (...) innate latent noble and fearsome factors in the human psyche surface in varying circumstances. In demonstrating how the latter can collectively lead to hostilities to achieve tribal or national goals, this book provides profound psychological insights as to why nations in the twenty-first century still employ war as an instrument of national policy. The authors specify what we must do, as nations and individuals, to create a global community working in concert to deal with the now-recognized universal threats to life on Earth. - Harry J. Petrequin, Jr. Retired Foreign Service Officer. (shrink)

How nature of scientific knowledge or nature of science and scientific inquiry are contextualized, or related to each other, significantly impacts both curriculum and classroom practice, specifically with respect to the teaching and learning of NOSK. NOS and NOSK are considered synonymous here, with NOSK more accurately conveying the meaning of the construct. Three US-based science education reform documents are used to illustrate the aforementioned impact. The USA has had three major reform documents released over a period of (...) 20 years. The Benchmarks for Science Literacy was the first in 1993, followed by the National Science Education Standards in 1996, and the newest, the Next Generation Science Standards, was released in 2013. NOS or NOSK was strongly emphasized and given a prominent position in the first two, while the NGSS has marginalized the construct. It is categorized as a set of connections that can be made to some of the Science Practices or Crosscutting Ideas. However, a careful conceptual analysis of how the NGSS positions NOSK/nos relative to the previous reform documents reveals a complex situation related to how NOSK/nos is contextualized and apparent assumptions about how NOSK/nos is best taught and learned. A historical review of how NOSK/nos is contextualized reveals a longstanding confusion concerning the relationship between NOSK/nos and SI as well as about how the reform documents seem to assume how it can be best taught to students. The assumptions often run contrary to the empirical research on the teaching and learning of NOSK as well as call into question the ability of the NGSS to promote the perennial science education goal of scientific literacy. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates (...) in us the virtue of gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude. (shrink)

Power demonism - or the demonic nature of power - is a phenomenon found everywhere one can identify a political power center. Niccolo Machiavelli is the person who revealed clearly for the first time the nature of power demonism. Paradoxically, far from being himself a demonic being-- a description which Goethe ascribed to the meaning of this term - the author of The Prince was just a realistic theoretician of his time. Power demonism is the ability of (...) the politician to create the general conditions to achieve political power from the dark side of the individual. This phenomenon evidently has a destructive potential. (shrink)

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, (...) including the connection of cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal. (shrink)

When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature hit the philosophical world like a bombshell. In it, Richard Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. Rorty's book is a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. Thirty years later, the book remains a must-read and stands as a classic (...) of twentieth-century philosophy. Its influence on the academy, both within philosophy and across a wide array of disciplines, continues unabated. This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The Philosopher as Expert.". (shrink)

First, The doctrine of naturalism, That reality is spatio-Temporal, Is defended. Second, The doctrine of materialism or physicalism, That this spatio-Temporal reality involves nothing but the entities of physics working according to the principles of physics, Is defended. Third, It is argued that these doctrines do not constitute a "first philosophy." a satisfactory first philosophy should recognize universals, In the form of instantiated properties and relations. Laws of nature are constituted by relations between universals. What universals (...) there are, And what relations hold between them, Must be discovered "a posteriori" by scientific investigation. (shrink)

What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not (...) another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective. (shrink)

This paper explores sensory perception in classrooms, and the relationship between classrooms and nature in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it argues that this crisis provides a unique opportunity to rethink how we perceive classrooms and their connection with nature. Second, the paper describes what students and teachers usually see, hear, touch, smell, and taste in classrooms, and identifies unusual or overlooked sensory phenomena that COVID-19 has brought to our attention. Third, the paper discusses three (...) types of classrooms (traditional, innovative learning environment, open-air) and how they model our perception and conceptualization of nature. The paper concludes by emphasizing the relevance of everyday aesthetics in education, what stands as an opportunity to sensorially enrich pedagogy, and to approach classrooms as proper dwellings for both humans and other-than-human beings. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I address a highly controversial question of feminist philosophy, namely, the so-called sex/gender distinction, from a Deweyan perspective. I argue that Dewey's naturalism provides useful insights for dealing with and solving the problems concerning this particular type of dualism. My argumentation unfolds in three steps. First, after having briefly introduced the meanings of the two terms, I outline two different, both unsuccessful strategies for overcoming the sex/gender distinction, namely, what I call the radical social constructionist (...) and the nondialectical naturalist strategies. Second, I draw on Dewey's version of naturalism with the aim of conceiving of human beings as simultaneously naturally and socially constructed. Third, I sketch out the hypothesis that Dewey's way of overcoming the pernicious dichotomy between nature and society may be useful for outlining a critical metaphysics of gender. (shrink)

In The Grammar of Society, first published in 2006, Cristina Bicchieri examines social norms, such as fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity, in an effort to understand their nature and dynamics, the expectations that they generate, and how they evolve and change. Drawing on several intellectual traditions and methods, including those of social psychology, experimental economics and evolutionary game theory, Bicchieri provides an integrated account of how social norms emerge, why and when we follow them, and the situations where we (...) are most likely to focus on relevant norms. Examining the existence and survival of inefficient norms, she demonstrates how norms evolve in ways that depend upon the psychological dispositions of the individual and how such dispositions may impair social efficiency. By contrast, she also shows how certain psychological propensities may naturally lead individuals to evolve fairness norms that closely resemble those we follow in most modern societies. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the collected volume. In the first section, we aim to provide background on important themes in social egalitarianism and to set the context for understanding which significant questions the chapters in this book pose and attempt to answer. In this section we focus especially on what could be said to characterize socially egalitarian relationships, on which relationships are of concern, and on what might make social egalitarianism distinct. In the second section, we (...) provide a brief explanation of the structure of the book and each of its chapters. (shrink)

According to the standard Humean account of laws of nature, laws are selected partly as a result of an optimal trade-off between the scientific virtues of simplicity and strength. Roberts and Woodward have recently objected that such trade-offs play no role in how laws are chosen in science. In this paper, we first discuss an example from the field of automated scientific discovery which provides concrete support for Roberts and Woodward’s point that scientific theories are chosen based on (...) a single-virtue threshold. However, we then use this very same example as a starting point to argue that i) by insisting on a single best theory, Humeans rely on an overly simplistic conception of trade-offs, that ii) this conception should give way to one which allows for a Pareto front of equally optimal theories, and iii) that given this new conception, threshold behaviour for a virtue like strength is a) compatible with the existence of a genuine trade-off and b) can even play the positive role of a selection criterion. (shrink)

I. An approach to the question of teleology in nature for Aristotle requires first of all a sufficiently clear understanding of the terms involved. In regard to the notion of teleology itself, there can hardly be any pertinent difficulty. The term is a modern one, and is quite definitely fixed in meaning by contemporary use. It seems to have been coined in eighteenth-century philosophical Latin to denote the study of final causes in nature. It became readily accepted (...) in modern philosophical vocabulary. Against this historical background it is commonly understood today to focus on “purposive or goal-directed activity.” In application to nature it assumes that purposive activity is present and asks how the activity is to be identified and described. The initial problem, accordingly, will lie not with the notion of teleology but rather with the other term, ‘nature’. (shrink)

The paper will be divided into two parts. In the first part concerning teleological order in nature, different types of order will be distinguished: beginning with order as structure and then proceeding to higher and stronger types of order, which include special arithmetical and geometrical relations and eventually also negentropy. It will be shown that certain processes of becoming can possess higher order in such a way that they can have teleological order. In the second part a definition (...) of teleological explanation will be given and the following two questions will be answered: Are there teleological explanations which are logically valid? Are there teleological explanations which are used by scientists? (shrink)

The remainder of thi8 work will have a different object from that of the four preceding books, which were contained in the first volume. ...

In Metaphysics Λ, Aristotle appeals to the prime mover: an unmoved mover that is the first moving cause of the world. Elsewhere, he calls the science concerned with the prime mover ‘theology’ (Meta. E.1, 1026a19). But what is the point of this science? On a common view, its purpose is to give an account of the prime mover itself, and especially to prove its existence. By contrast, I argue that Aristotle’s theology in Metaphysics Λ is ‘nature-bound’: it ultimately (...) aims at explaining facts about the perceptible world, in particular the motion of heavenly bodies and the cycle of generation of perishable substances. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions offers the first book-length defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement (MRTJ). Although the theory was much maligned by Wittgenstein and ultimately rejected by Russell himself, Lebens shows that it provides a rich and insightful way to understand the nature of propositional content. In Part I, Lebens charts the trajectory of Russell’s thought before he adopted the MRTJ. Part II reviews the historical story of the theory: What led Russell (...) to deny the existence of propositions altogether? Why did the theory keep evolving throughout its short life? What role did G. F. Stout play in the evolution of the theory? What was Wittgenstein’s concern with the theory, and, if we can’t know what his concern was exactly, then what are the best contending hypotheses? And why did Russell give the theory up? In Part III, Lebens makes the case that Russell’s concerns with the theory weren’t worth its rejection. Moreover, he argues that the MRTJ does most of what we could want from an account of propositions at little philosophical cost. This book bridges the history of early analytic philosophy with work in contemporary philosophy of language. It advances a bold reading of the theory of descriptions and offers a new understanding of the role of Stout and the representation concern in the evolution of the MRTJ. It also makes a decisive contribution to philosophy of language by demonstrating the viability of a no-proposition theory of propositions. (shrink)

Academics have the impression that human nature is good advocate Confucianism, Christianity should make the evil human nature. So when Matteo Ricci and other missionaries to China, agree that people are basically good in the Chinese writings of contemporary scholars do not think that Ricci would have just done for the purpose of mission compromise and will be attached. This article do not support this view. Through on Aquinas' Summa Theologica, "read the relevant chapter and" Mencius "rigorous analysis, (...) I believe that Ricci received" basically good "proposition has its theology support, and closer to Mencius, human nature is good on. However, the era of Matteo Ricci in China is also the era of the popular theory of Wang Yangming. In this article, by a large number of text analysis, pointed out that Wang's human nature is good and Mencius on human nature is good vary widely. Thus, while certainly human nature is good Matteo Ricci, the other critics' re the first, "said, has its theoretical basis. In fact, this return to Mencius Ricci, resist the neo-Confucian practice, is the common position of the Qing Dynasty Han scholars. In this paper, Dai Zhen and Chen Li as an example to illustrate how they both certainly Mencius on human nature is good, but criticized the excessive expansion of human nature is good Song learning theory. Therefore, the Ricci's human nature is good, unexpectedly affected the development of Confucianism in the Qing Dynasty. A large number of contemporary Chinese somehow got the impression that whereas the key tenet of Confucianism is the Thesis of the Innate Goodness of Human Nature, the key tenet of Christianity is the opposite, viz., The Thesis of the Innate Evilness of Human Nature. When Matteo Ricci and his fellow Jesuit missionaries came to China and learnt Chinese culture, Ricci endorses the Thesis of the Innate Goodness of Human Nature in his Chinese book The True Meaning of The Lord of Heaven. Some contemporary Chinese scholars find this endorsement unreasonable and argue that Ricci's endorsement strains the interpretation of Christian doctrine for the appeasement of Confucian literati. This article argues that such contemporary Chinese assessments are based on a misunderstanding of Christian thought. A meticulous reading of relevant sections of Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas shows that there is no conflict between Catholic theological anthropology and the theory of human nature according to Menzi. However, Ricci and his company came to China when the thought of Wang Yangming, one major school of neo-Confucianism, was very influential. Ostensibly Wang also endorses the Innate Goodness of Human Nature, but a careful reading of his works indicates that there is a tremendous difference his thesis and that of Menzi. The latter advocates only that there is a "sprout of goodness" in human nature whereas the former advocates the fill presence of supreme goodness in human nature. Accordingly, it is legitimate for Ricci to endorse the Thesis of the Innate Goodness of Human Nature in the sense of Menzi and simultaneously reject the Thesis of Uncovering the Supreme Goodness in Human Nature of the neo-Confucians. In fact, Ricci's stance of aligning with Menzi in opposition to Song-Ming neo-Confucianism is a common stance of most Qing Confucian scholars. For example, among his fierce criticisms, one of Dai Zhen's critiques is against the neo-Confucian Thesis of Uncovering the Supreme Goodness in Human Nature. He argues that Mengzi's view of "developing the good inclinations" is conducive to the cultivation of virtues whereas neo-Confucians' view of "uncovering our original supreme goodness," misled by Buddhism and Daoism, is not. Very recent historical scholarship in mainland China articulates a view that Dai Zhen has carefully read Ricci's book The True Meaning of The Lord of Heaven and borrows views from it. In fact, according to these historians, Dai Zhen and a closed circle of court scholars who are in charge of compiling the Siku quanshu have read all the works of the Jesuit missionaries and admire their scholarship. Hence the first encounter between Christian civilization and Confucian civilization helped develop the Han School of Learning in opposition to the Song School of Learning in the early Qing Dynasty. (shrink)

Christian Leduc | : Dans le présent article, je montre que Maupertuis et Euler proposent une conception contrastée de la métaphysique de la nature. Il s’agit principalement pour eux de repositionner la cosmologie par rapport aux sciences de la nature. Au lieu de considérer la métaphysique comme étant au fondement des théories scientifiques, comme le supposent Descartes, Wolff et, d’une certaine manière, Kant, ou simplement d’interdire l’idée même d’une cosmologie, comme le stipulerait à la même époque d’Alembert, Maupertuis (...) et Euler, renversent l’ordre des disciplines pour donner aux sciences physiques une primauté sur la métaphysique. Ce repositionnement entraîne évidemment plusieurs questions : d’abord, de quelle manière les théories scientifiques peuvent-elles valider ou infirmer un principe métaphysique? Plus important encore, quel rôle incombe à la métaphysique de la nature, étant donné que les sciences possèdent non seulement une autonomie théorique, mais même une priorité sur les réflexions ontologiques. Il semblerait d’ailleurs que la métaphysique se réduise, pour ces deux philosophes, au seul domaine du cosmologique, en particulier aux questions qui concernent la force et le principe de moindre action, au statut ontologique de l’espace et du temps et aux déterminations de la matière que sont l’étendue, l’inertie, l’impénétrabilité et le mouvement. | : In this paper, I show that Maupertuis and Euler offer a contrasting conception of metaphysics of nature. It consists mainly for them in repositioning cosmology in relation to natural sciences. Instead of considering metaphysics to be at the foundation of scientific theories, as was assumed by Descartes, Wolff, and, in a certain way, Kant, or simply prohibiting the very idea of a cosmology, as d’Alembert would stipulate at the same period, Maupertuis and Euler invert the order of disciplines to give priority to physical sciences over metaphysics. This repositioning leads of course to several questions : first, how does scientific theories validate or deny metaphysical principles? Even more important, which role falls to metaphysics of nature given that sciences not only possess a theoretical autonomy, but also a priority over ontological reflections? Besides, it seems that metaphysics would be reduced, for these two philosophers, to the realm of cosmology alone, in particular to questions concerning force and the principle of least action, the ontological status of space and time, and the first constituents of matter, such as extension, inertia, impenetrability, and motion. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to extend the meaning of the concept of indeterminacy for the human sciences. The authors do this by coining the term methodological indeterminacy and arguing that indeterminacy is better understood when linked to specific methodological techniques. Paradoxically, while specific research techniques demonstrate that the issue of indeterminacy is complex, yielding the possibility of types and degrees, it does not eliminate the problem of translation first raised by Quine. However, the authors go on to argue (...) that, from a research perspective, indeterminacy can and must be approached in such a way that it is possible to reduce cases of it, even though never completely eliminating it in the human sciences. (shrink)

Gathering an international team of scholars, The Companion to Freedom and Nature is the first book devoted exclusively to Paul Ricoeur’s Freedom and Nature. Covering important influences on Ricoeur’s early thought and connecting it to current issues in embodied cognition and the philosophy of will, the companion promotes a renewed appreciation of the contemporary relevance of this groundbreaking work.

A common theme of this set of thirteen essays by one of the major figures in contemporary German philosophy is the idea of a postmetaphysical modernity. In his preface Wellmer relates the title of his book, Endgames, to this common theme: The historical utopias of the Marxist tradition and the programs of ultimate justification in the Kantian tradition are both endgames within metaphysics, the deconstruction of those utopias and programs of ultimate justification are endgames played with metaphysics, and the game (...) with an end as ultimate telos--the end of history, the end of knowledge, the end of human life--is metaphysics. The title, Endgames, finally also refers polemically to postmodernist games with an end of modernity; as opposed to these, Wellmer defends the fragile moral and political substance of the modernity that postmodernists attempt to overcome--and that sense of what needs to be preserved of the modern tradition for a postmetaphysical modernity is what makes his writings unique.In the first of the book's three parts, "Negative and Communicative Freedom," Wellmer focuses on political philosophy, examining in particular the links and tensions between liberal basic rights and modern ideas of democracy. In Part II, "Postmetaphysical Perspectives," he attempts to develop a postmetaphysical perspective on aesthetics and metaphysics, on the problem of truth, and on hermeneutics. Part III, "Images of the Times," contains occasional pieces on Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Frankfurt School, Hans Jonas, and architecture. The book closes with an appended critical essay on Hannah Arendt, reflecting the importance of Arendt's political philosophy to Wellmer's work. (shrink)