Economics is probably the most subtle, precise and powerful of the social sciences and its theories have deep philosophical import. Yet the dominant alliance between economics and philosophy has long been cheerfully simple. This is the textbook alliance of neo-Classicism and Positivism, so crucial to the defence of orthodox economics against by now familiar objections. This is an unusual book and a deliberately controversial one. The authors cast doubt on assumptions which neo-Classicists often find too obvious to defend or, indeed, (...) to mention. They set out to disturb an influential concensus and to champion an unpopular cause. Although they go deeper into both philosophy and economics than is usual in interdisciplinary works, they start from first principles and the text is provokingly clear. This will be a stimulating book for all economic theorists and philosophers interested in the philosophy of science and social science. (shrink)

Preview: Almost twenty-five years have passed after the publication of Jacques Derrida’s 1996 seminal essay, “Faith and Knowledge: Religion at the Limits of Reason Alone,” one of the most important, but also most enigmatic post-secular texts of late modernity. Six articles in this issue are devoted directly to Derrida’s essay. The other two can also be read along them as dealing with broadly conceived post-secular issues. They all can be brought under the traditional heading of “faith and knowledge” – simultaneously (...) in recognition of Derrida’s title and in opening a wider perspective on fides et ratio today (a few decades after the famous 1994 Capri seminar on religion). Derrida participated in the seminar with his 2000 essay (Glauben und Wissen), on the same subject, along with the equally famous intervention of Jürgen Habermas. The main theme of Derrida’s take on the confrontation between fides and ratio is the analysis of the relation between modern philosophy/knowledge and modern religion/faith: a complex co-dependence which challenges Hegel’s conviction that philosophy had managed to sublate religion completely and allowed for the survival of its most valuable contents in a new rational form. Pace Martin Hägglund’s thesis, (according to which Derrida’s philosophy should be classified as “radical atheism” in the Hegelian vein), the essays in this volume present Derrida’s thinking on religion as far more ambivalent, leaning toward not so much atheism as radical iconoclasm which does not annul the idea of divinity, but rather hides it away from sight. (shrink)

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's (...) career as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In his recent book Bad Beliefs and Why They Happen to Good People, Neil Levy argues that conspiracy theories result from the same rational processes that underlie epistemic success. While we think many of Levy’s points are valuable, like his criticism of the myth of individual cognition and his emphasis on the importance of one’s social epistemic environment, we believe that his account overlooks some important aspects. We argue that social deference is an active process, and as such can be (...) helped or hindered by epistemic virtues and vices. With this in mind, holders of bad beliefs acquire more responsibility than is considered by Levy. (shrink)

The main theme of this essay is f i n i t e l i f e, which is the bedrock of modern biopolitics. In the series of lectures devoted to the ‘birth of biopolitics,’ Michel Foucault defines it as a new system of ‘governing the living’ based on the natural cycle of birth and death, and the law of genesis kai phtora, ‘becoming and perishing.’ Foucault’s answer to modern biopolitics is to accept its basic premise – that life is (...) finite, and, consequently, reduced to the natural law of birth and death – and then slightly correct the naive liberal trust in the ‘naturalness’ of human existence by appropriating and internalizing the true essence of the biopolitical paradigm: the disciplining practices. This essay contests Foucault’s minimalist Neostoic program of the ‘care of the self’ by demonstrating that we can still hope for a n o t h e r f i n i t u d e that refrains from any renaturalization of human existence. (shrink)

One of the main motivations for compositional nihilism, the view that there are no composite material objects, concerns the many puzzles and problems associated with them. Nihilists claim that eliminating composites provides a unified solution to a slew of varied, difficult problems. However, numerous philosophers have questioned whether this is really so. While nihilists clearly avoid the usual, composite-featuring formulations of the puzzles, the concern is that the commitments that generate the problems are not eliminated along with composites. If this (...) is correct, it severely undercuts the motivation for the view. However, I argue that it is not correct. The aim of this paper is to explain exactly how and why eliminating composites dissolves substantive metaphysical puzzles. More generally, I aim to clarify the nihilist’s ontological commitments and the scope of the paraphrase strategy she employs. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

Two Greek myths attest to the power of music to blur distinctions between humans and nonhumans: Orpheus made music that inspired human-like attention in animals, trees, and stones, while the Sirens reduced passing sailors to the level of animals incapable of resisting their song. Recast in terms employed by Lacan, these myths portray music as calling forth a response in creatures thought merely able to react and, contrariwise, stripping away the capacity for response in humans, leaving nothing but reaction in (...) its place. Critiquing Lacan’s dogmatic distinction between human and animal behavior, Derrida questioned the “purity and indivisibility” of reaction and response and recommended that critics explore the involvement of both in “the whole differentiated field of experience and of a world of life-forms.” In this essay, I take up Derrida’s challenge with regard to music as it has been understood in the European aesthetic tradition. While music has long been considered capable of provoking highly refined cognitive and emotional responses, it also acts upon the body in a wide variety of ways, many of them involuntary – a fact that has struck music’s advocates as alternately promising and disturbing. Revisiting eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commentaries by the philosophers and critics Johann Georg Sulzer, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Eduard Hanslick, I first illuminate persistent anxieties over the admixture of reaction and response in musical listening. I then turn to recent ethological studies in order to argue against any decisive separation of the human from the nonhuman in the arena of musical aesthetics. (shrink)

Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who may be (...) uncertain about the circumstances in which she acts, and hence is unable to use her standard moral principle directly in deciding what to do. This paper distinguishes two important senses of “moral guidance”; proposes criteria of adequacy for accounts of subjective rightness; canvasses existing definitions for “subjective rightness”; finds them all deficient; and proposes a new and more successful account. It argues that each comprehensive moral theory must include multiple principles of subjective rightness to address the epistemic situations of the full range of moral decision-makers, and shows that accounts of subjective rightness formulated in terms of what it would reasonable for the agent to believe cannot provide that guidance. (shrink)

Recently two distinct forms of rule-utilitarianism have been introduced that differ on how to measure the consequences of rules. Brad Hooker advocates fixed-rate rule-utilitarianism, while Michael Ridge advocates variable-rate rule-utilitarianism. I argue that both of these are inferior to a new proposal, optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism. According to optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism, an ideal code is the code whose optimum acceptance level is no lower than that of any alternative code. I then argue that all three forms of rule-utilitarianism fall prey to two fatal (...) problems that leave us without any viable form of rule-utilitarianism. (shrink)

Background The field of bioethics has evolved over the past half-century, incorporating new domains of inquiry that signal developments in health research, clinical practice, public health in its broadest sense and more recently sensitivity to the interdependence of global health and the environment. These extensions of the reach of bioethics are a welcome response to the growth of global health as a field of vital interest and activity. Methods This paper provides a critical interpretive review of how the term “global (...) health ethics” has been used and defined in the literature to date to identify ethical issues that arise and need to be addressed when deliberating on and working to improve the discourse on ethical issues in health globally. Results Selected publications were analyzed by year of publication and geographical distribution, journal and field, level of engagement, and ethical framework. Of the literature selected, 151 articles were written by authors in high-income countries, as defined by the World Bank country classifications, 8 articles were written by authors in low- or middle-income countries, and 13 articles were collaborations between authors in HIC and LMIC. All of the articles selected except one from 1977 were published after 1998. Literature on global health ethics spiked considerably from the early 2000s, with the highest number in 2011. One hundred twenty-seven articles identified were published in academic journals, 1 document was an official training document, and 44 were chapters in published books. The dominant journals were the American Journal of Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics, and Bioethics. We coded the articles by level of engagement within the ethical domain at different levels: interpersonal, institutional, international, and structural. The ethical frameworks at use corresponded to four functional categories: those examining practical or narrowly applied ethical questions; those concerned with normative ethics; those examining an issue through a single philosophical tradition; and those comparing and contrasting insights from multiple ethical frameworks. Conclusions This critical interpretive review is intended to delineate the current contours and revitalize the conversation around the future charge of global health ethics scholarship. (shrink)

Does it make sense to refer to bird song - a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate - as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as "the art of possibly animate things," Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist (...) approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature--approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change--Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music's structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music's physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music's formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share. (shrink)

This book is a philosophers' attempt to bring together ideas put forward by economists, sociologists and political theorists. The author begins by exploring the economist's assumption that action is rational if it helps to achieve the agent's goals as efficiently as possible. The assumption is explored with the aid of rational-choice theory and game-theory, but it is rejected in the end for failing to account for the elements of trust and morality which rational social life requires. A discussion of 'Rational (...) Expectations' and of 'maximising' and 'satisficing' leads to a portrait of social actors as rational role-players. Rationality is, finally, the expression of the self in a social world. The book intervenes in intense current debates within and among several disciplines. Its concern is with the true nature of social actors and the proper character of social science. Its arguments are the more challenging for being presented in a simple, incisive and lucid prose. It will be of particular interest to philosophers, social theorists and social scientists interested in the philosophical aspects of their discipline. (shrink)

Era Nietzsche um relativista conservador ou, pelo contrário, seria possível alocar o filósofo no sítio teórico do pensamento crítico? Tal pergunta-problema delimita o presente artigo. Ela se refere a uma conhecida querela entre modelos interpretativos (SEBOLD, [20--?]) pós-modernos e naturalistas e, especificamente, deriva da revisão de literatura de uma pesquisa em andamento, realizada no âmbito do curso de doutorado do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, a partir da qual observamos uma ausência, talvez um esquecimento (...) em relação à contribuição de Nietzsche para a filosofia crítica no campo da Educação, espaço acadêmico no qual as pesquisas, em grande medida, alinham-se à recepção relativista de seu pensamento. A hipótese central, comprovada pela análise de posições filosóficas de Nietzsche (1979; 1992a; 1992b; 1998; 2000; 2003; 2004) e de alguns de seus comentadores, considera que o filósofo é um pensador crítico (HEIT, 2018; HEIT; PICHLER, 2015), não relativista (MARTON, 2011), perspectivista (CORBANEZI, 2013; MATTOS, 2013) e adepto a um tipo perspectivístico de naturalismo (CARVALHO, 2018; HEIT, 2016; HEIT, 2015; ITAPARICA, 2018), traços que de certa forma tendem a impactar a cosmovisão, quase hegemônica, no que diz respeito à recepção nietzschiana no campo da educação. O objetivo central do artigo é destacar que a discussão destes aspectos pode levar a um reposicionamento da filosofia de Nietzsche no universo do pensamento contemporâneo, incluindo-se aí a pesquisa em educação, bem como compreender em que medida a perspectiva crítica se choca com a perspectiva relativista no que diz respeito à teorização de uma formação de caráter emancipatório. Em termos metodológicos, a análise da revisão de literatura recorre à hermenêutica crítica. (shrink)

Este artigo objetiva identificar e analisar as múltiplas presenças do filósofo francês contemporâneo Gilles Deleuze no arranjo teórico-conceitual da Teoria da Dança Imanente. A Teoria da Dança Imanente, criada pela pensadora do corpo e da dança Ana Flávia Mendes, pretende atribuir um caráter de pessoalidade, idiossincrasia e subjetividade à obra coreográfica que se insere nos terrenos discursivos do corpo, das artes performativas e da ontologia da arte. Os conceitos-cernes abordados nesta investigação estão aliançados aos pressupostos contemporâneos dos estudos do corpo (...) e da dança especialmente no elo entre corpo, cena e vida. Para tanto, perpassaremos os conceitos de Corpo Imanente, Corpo como sujeito rizomático, Corpo sem Órgãos e a concepção de imanência como vida, de Mendes, os quais encontram-se intimamente relacionados com o panorama filosófico deleuziano. (shrink)

Heidegger has never been the darling of analytic philosophy. From Carnap’s (1931) dismissal of ‘the nothing noths’ and other remarks of Heidegger’s as paradigmatic examples of the kind of nonsense...

The present text deals with some of the ways used to argue in favor of the existence of God. It seems, however, that an appeal to the arrangement of the world in order to evidence the truth of theism faces a number of limitations. The central hypothesis of theistic worldview, however, is consistent with the assumption of science itself, an intelligible universe being what one would expect from a reality created by someone intelligent with purpose. The approach of focusing on (...) the cognoscibility of the world, although not eliminating the doubt about the existence of God, seems to be a more promising proposal, in the context of the dialogue between science and theology, than the proposal that focuses on gaps in human knowledge, in order to fit God in these gaps, since the previous one, contrary to this, can’t be eroded by the progress of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Nas ciências naturais comumente se aceita que apenas os profundamente imersos nos seus problemas são reconhecidos pesquisadores competentes para emitir comentários sobre estes campos de investigação. Paradoxalmente, parece que estes cientistas são os que encontram maior dificuldade para relacionar sua formação profissional e atividades acadêmicas com seu papel na sociedade. Um exemplo é a dificuldade em determinar a natureza e a origem de um evento científico, como a consciência humana. Dominique Pestre caracteriza o Science Studies na década de 1970 e (...) dá tons políticos ao seu discurso. A mudança de opinião desse historiador da ciência seria suficiente para sinalizar uma reviravolta neste movimento? (shrink)

A hermenêutica pode contribuir para uma reflexão filosófica na escola, propiciando ao estudante uma noção de conjunto. O papel da hermenêutica é tornar o estudante consciente dos pré-conhecimentos que possui e que configuram todo o compreender.

Resumo Apresentaremos neste artigo uma breve discussão acerca das influências do comunitarismo cristão na vida social e política brasileira. Trata-se de um ensaio exploratório. O objetivo é uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema. A partir daquilo que foi possível selecionar, tentamos elaborar algumas ideias, no sentido de apresentar, mesmo que sucintamente, tópicos que podem indicar a importância do comunitarismo cristão, tradição forte e influente não somente nas décadas de 1960 e 1970, mas que, sobretudo no atual contexto político, ainda desempenha (...) um papel central na sociedade brasileira. Recorte especial é a análise sobre as influências do comunitarismo nas ações da Igreja Católica, no Brasil. Assim, a Teologia da Libertação e as Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (CEBs) derivariam do pensamento comunitarista. Por fim, o comunitarismo cristão é apresentado como uma reação ao neoliberalismo, por priorizar "o valor inelutável da dignidade e da transcendência humana e uma resistência insuperável a deixar engolfar o destino humano em uma lógica mercantil, de individualismo possessivo. Essa tradição, em grande medida identificada com as posições hoje encarnadas pela CNBB, é responsável por vastas experiências de solidariedade entre os pobres e oprimidos brasileiros". Palavras-chave: Comunitarismo cristão; Igreja Católica; Ação social; Política; Movimentos sociais.This article discusses briefly the influences of Christian Communitarianism on Brazilian social and political life. It is an exploratory essay aimed at a bibliographical review of the subject. Based on what was possible to select, we tried to elaborate some ideas to present topics that may indicate the importance of Christian Communitarianism, a strong and influent tradition, not only in the 1960s and 1970s, but especially in the current political context, still playing a central role in Brazilian society. A special point is the analysis of the influences of Communitarianism on actions of the Catholic Church in Brazil. Thus, the Theology of Liberation and the Base Ecclesial Communities (BECs) could have derived from the communitarian thought. Finally, Christian Communitarianism is presented as a reaction against neoliberalism, as it gives priority to "the inestimable value of human dignity and transcendence and an insuperable resistance to let human destiny be engulfed by a mercantile logic of possessive individualism. This tradition, largely identified with the positions assumed by CNBB, is responsible for vast experiences of solidarity between the Brazilian poor and oppressed". Key words: Christian Communitarianism; Catholic Church; Social action; Politics; Social movements. (shrink)

Um dos principais problemas sociais da atualidade é o assustador crescimento de várias modalidades de crimes violentos em várias cidades brasileiras. O retrato atual da violência no Brasil pode ser assim exposto: crescimento da delinqüência urbana, com espantoso aumento dos homicídios em torno do tráfico de drogas nas grandes cidades; consolidação da criminalidade organizada, através de redes de tráfico internacional, tráfico de órgãos e seres humanos, máfias internacionais de contrabando e pirataria; aumento das violações de direitos humanos, comprometendo a ordem (...) social e política e, no campo, a explosão de conflitos motivados pela estrutura agrária concentradora e historicamente violenta. Como a religião, enquanto instrumento de coesão social, pode contribuir para a reversão dessa perversa onda de criminalidade e violência? É o que pretendemos apresentar. Palavras-chave: Religião; Violência urbana; Criminalidade; Coesão social; Doutrina Social da Igreja; Cultura da paz. ABSTRACT One of the main current social problems is the appalling growth of various kinds of violent crime in many Brazilian cities. The current portrait of violence in Brazil can be thus designed: the growth of urban delinquency, with a remarkable increase in the number of murders connected to drug traffic in big cities; the consolidation of organised crime, through nets of international traffic, organs and human beings’ traffic, international smuggling and piracy mafias; an increase in the violation of human rights, jeopardising social and political order; and, in the rural area, the explosion of conflicts motivated by an agrarian structure of concentration and historical violence. How can religion, as an instrument of social cohesion, contribute to revert that hideous wave of criminality and violence? This is our scope. Key words: Religion; Urban violence; Criminality; Social cohesion; Social doctrine of the Church; Culture of peace. (shrink)

Este trabalho visa mostrar a forma em que o filósofo Kant percebe o conceito de ciência e interage com ele na escrita da Crítica da Razão Pura, por essa razão, é necessário recorrermos a textos do período pré-crítico onde poderemos perceber como foi construído o conceito de ciência em Kant a partir daquilo que ele vivia no século XVIII. Assim, esse texto possui seis alíneas descritivas, quais sejam: a primeira norteia o leitor a entender o ponto de onde partimos e (...) o caminho a ser percorrido, seguido pela descrição do problema que envolve a ciência em suas nuances. A terceira alínea descreve a formação Kantiana, em sua historicidade, desde o que se estudava na Alemanha, seguido pela forma em que Kant apresenta o conceito de ciência como condição de possibilidade e a última aponta uma possibilidade de reflexão à luz daquilo que Kant entende sobre ciência. (shrink)

This essay proposes that subcultural practices such as gossip and fan writing are feminist epistemologies that can form radical archive inquiry and knowledge production, and creative outputs. Drawing on feminist new materialism and archive theory, I develop a set of principles for practice-based research methodologies that incorporate a researcher's intersubjective relationship with archive matter (e.g. records, documents, classification systems, social-material contexts) and consider the production of knowledge from such research as forms of tabulation. Fabulation here is seen as part of (...) a critically transgressive epistemological stance that expands feminist critiques of universalising master narratives and archive orthodoxies. My proposition, formed in part through a residency in the Woman's Art Library in London, is to name such research gestures ‘archive fanfiction’, where experimental and practice-oriented method moves with feminist politics and activism. (shrink)

Ellis argues that certain essential properties of objects in the world not only determine the nature of these objects but also how they will behave in any situation. In this paper I will critique Ellis's essentialism from the perspective of the philosophy of chemistry, arguing that our current knowledge of chemistry in fact does not lend itself to essentialist interpretations and that this seriously undercuts Ellis's project. In particular I will criticize two key distinctions Ellis draws between internal vs. external (...) properties and essential vs. accidental properties, showing that at the chemical level such distinctions are insupportable. If essential properties only exist at the level of sub-atomic physics, then Ellis's hopes that essentialism will provide a theoretical basis for a philosophy of chemistry are at best hopes for a very distant future, since the argument that chemical structure and dynamics can be explained at the quantum level derived is purely from analogy to much simpler systems than those chemists actually study. This suggests that we have very little scientific evidence that scientific essentialism is a viable ontology. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

For centuries it has been a mainstay of European and American moral thought that keeping promises—and the allied activity of upholding contracts—is one of the most important requirements of morality. On some historically powerful views the obligation to uphold promises or contracts not only regulates private relationships, but also provides the moral foundation for our duty to support and obey legitimate governments. Some theorists believe that the concept of keeping promises has gradually moved to center stage in European moral thought. (...) They see this movement as part of an historical shift from a moral conception in which an individual’s duties are mainly externally imposed and unalterable, to a conception in which duties are largely chosen by the individual. (shrink)

Even though the evidence‐based medicine movement (EBM) labels mechanisms a low quality form of evidence, consideration of the mechanisms on which medicine relies, and the distinct roles that mechanisms might play in clinical practice, offers a number of insights into EBM itself. In this paper, I examine the connections between EBM and mechanisms from several angles. I diagnose what went wrong in two examples where mechanistic reasoning failed to generate accurate predictions for how a dysfunctional mechanism would respond to intervention. (...) I then use these examples to explain why we should expect this kind of mechanistic reasoning to fail in systematic ways, by situating these failures in terms of evolved complexity of the causal system(s) in question. I argue that there is still a different role in which mechanisms continue to figure as evidence in EBM: namely, in guiding the application of population‐level recommendations to individual patients. Thus, even though the evidence‐based movement rejects one role in which mechanistic reasoning serves as evidence, there are other evidentiary roles for mechanistic reasoning. This renders plausible the claims of some critics of evidencebased medicine who point to the ineliminable role of clinical experience. Clearly specifying the ways in which mechanisms and mechanistic reasoning can be involved in clinical practice frames the discussion about EBM and clinical experience in more fruitful terms. (shrink)

In this field guide, I distinguish five separate senses with which the term ‘mechanism’ is used in contemporary philosophy of science. Many of these senses have overlapping areas of application but involve distinct philosophical claims and characterize the target mechanisms in relevantly different ways. This field guide will clarify the key features of each sense and introduce some main debates, distinguishing those that transpire within a given sense from those that are best understood as concerning distinct senses. The ‘new mechanisms’ (...) sense is at the center of most of these contemporary debates and will be treated at greater length; subsequent senses of mechanism will be primarily distinguished from this one. In part I of this paper, I distinguish two senses of the term ‘mechanism’, both of which are explicitly hierarchical and nested in character, such that any given mechanism is comprised of smaller sub-mechanisms, in turn comprised of yet smaller sub-sub-mechanisms and so on. While both of the senses discussed here are anti-reductive, they differ in their focus on scientific practice versus metaphysics, in the degree of regularity they attribute to mechanisms, and in terms of their relationships to the discussions of mechanisms in the history of philosophy and science. (shrink)

Certain primitive Yoruba carry about with them boxes covered with cowrie shells, which they treat with special regard. When asked what they are doing, they apparently reply that the boxes are their heads or souls and that they are protecting them against witchcraft. Is that an interesting fact or a bad translation? The question is, I believe, partly philosophical. In what follows, I shall propound and try to solve the philosopher's question, arguing that it has large implications for the theory (...) of Social Anthropology. (shrink)

A finer-grained delineation of a given explanandum reveals a nexus of closely related causal and non- causal explanations, complementing one another in ways that yield further explanatory traction on the phenomenon in question. By taking a narrower construal of what counts as a causal explanation, a new class of distinctively mathematical explanations pops into focus; Lange’s characterization of distinctively mathematical explanations can be extended to cover these. This new class of distinctively mathematical explanations is illustrated with the Lotka-Volterra equations. There (...) are at least two distinct ways those equations might hold of a system, one of which yields straightforwardly causal explanations, but the other of which yields explanations that are distinctively mathematical in terms of nomological strength. In the first, one first picks out a system or class of systems, finds that the equations hold in a causal -explanatory way; in the second, one starts with the equations and explanations that must apply to any system of which the equations hold, and only then turns to the world to see of what, if any, systems it does in fact hold. Using this new way in which a model might hold of a system, I highlight four specific avenues by which causal and non- causal explanations can complement one another. (shrink)

'Alain Badiou: Between Theology and Anti-theology' provides one of the first comprehensive analyses of the relationship between Badiou's philosophy and theology. Examining the full range of Badiou's writings, this provocative study explores how Badiou's philosophy relies on theology even if he claims otherwise and actively attempts to work against theology. Despite the complex questions discussed - ranging across ontology, the theory of truth and the subject, philosophy and its conditions, and anti-philosophy - this book presents a clear and accessible overview (...) of the theological, religious and biblical themes which animate Badiou's philosophy. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely characterize causal relata, including their degree (...) of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques. (shrink)

Analisaremos alguns elementos constituintes da profissão de jornalista e possíveis contrastes com os modelos analíticos apresentados pela Sociologia das Profissões em busca de níveis de adesão ao trabalho jornalístico. No texto, a relação do jornalista com o labor é classificada em quatro categorias como sendo: sacerdócio (missão a ser cumprida); negócio (venda da mão-de-obra no mercado de trabalho); profissão (trabalho especializado com uma identidade específica); e emprego (trabalho apenas remunerativo sem vínculo identitário). O intuito é o de um breve panorama (...) sobre as conceituações e modelos analíticos que propiciem o entendimento da especialização do trabalho jornalístico. Abordaremos a relação do jornalista com o trabalho utilizando também as tipologias: vocação e trabalho; profissão e emprego; sacerdócio e negócio, da Sociologia das Profissões. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that music is deeply moving? Or that music's aesthetic value derives from its deep structure? This study traces the widely employed trope of musical depth to its origins in German-language music criticism and analysis. From the Romantic aesthetics of E. T. A. Hoffmann to the modernist theories of Arnold Schoenberg, metaphors of depth attest to the cross-pollination of music with discourses ranging from theology, geology and poetics to psychology, philosophy and economics. The book demonstrates (...) that the persistence of depth metaphors in musicology and music theory today is an outgrowth of their essential role in articulating and transmitting Germanic cultural values. While musical depth metaphors have historically served to communicate German nationalist sentiments, Watkins shows that an appreciation for the broad connotations of those metaphors opens up exciting new avenues for interpretation. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that music is deeply moving? Or that music's aesthetic value derives from its deep structure? This study traces the widely employed trope of musical depth to its origins in German-language music criticism and analysis. From the Romantic aesthetics of E. T. A. Hoffmann to the modernist theories of Arnold Schoenberg, metaphors of depth attest to the cross-pollination of music with discourses ranging from theology, geology and poetics to psychology, philosophy and economics. The book demonstrates (...) that the persistence of depth metaphors in musicology and music theory today is an outgrowth of their essential role in articulating and transmitting Germanic cultural values. While musical depth metaphors have historically served to communicate German nationalist sentiments, Watkins shows that an appreciation for the broad connotations of those metaphors opens up exciting new avenues for interpretation. (shrink)

I highlight a metaphysical concern that stands in the way of more widespread adoption of causal modeling techniques such as causal Bayes nets. Researchers in some fields may resist adoption due to concerns that they don't 'really' understand what they are saying about a system when they apply such techniques. Students in these fields are repeated exhorted to be cautious about application of statistical techniques to their data without a clear understanding of the conditions required for those techniques to yield (...) genuine insight into the data. They are acutely aware that anyone can chuck some data into a software package and get what looks like an answer, even though these tests may not be well-defined for the data on which they can apparently be run. This is thus a healthy skepticism for uptake of causal modeling methods, which points directly to the need for a metaphysical understanding of causation in order to successfully use the modeling methods. Without a clear understanding of what the methods are committing to, including what it means to say that there exists a causal relationship, researchers have limited ability to identify potentially bad output, or to independently verify results. (shrink)

What should we do if we cannot figure what morality requires of us? Holly M. Smith argues that the best moral codes solve this problem by offering two tiers, one of which tells us what makes acts right and wrong, and the other of which provides user-friendly decision guides. She opens a path towards resolving a deep problem of moral life.

Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of (i) what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and (ii) what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who (...) may be uncertain about the circumstances in which she acts, and hence is unable to use her standard moral principle directly in deciding what to do. This paper distinguishes two important senses of “moral guidance”; proposes criteria of adequacy for accounts of subjective rightness; canvasses existing definitions for “subjective rightness”; finds them all deficient; and proposes a new and more successful account. It argues that each comprehensive moral theory must include multiple principles of subjective rightness to address the epistemic situations of the full range of moral decision-makers, and shows that accounts of subjective rightness formulated in terms of what it would reasonable for the agent to believe cannot provide that guidance. -/- . (shrink)

In this field guide, I distinguish five separate senses with which the term ‘mechanism’ is used in contemporary philosophy of science. Many of these senses have overlapping areas of application but involve distinct philosophical claims and characterize the target mechanisms in relevantly different ways. This field guide will clarify the key features of each sense and introduce some main debates, distinguishing those that transpire within a given sense from those that are best understood as concerning two distinct senses. The ‘new (...) mechanisms’ sense is the primary sense from which other senses will be distinguished. In part II of this field guide, I consider three further senses of the term that are ontologically ‘flat’ or at least not explicitly hierarchical in character: equations in structural equation models of causation, causal-physical processes, and information-theoretic constraints on states available to systems. After characterizing each sense, I clarify its ontological commitments, its methodological implications, how it figures in explanations, its implications for reduction, and the key manners in which it differs from other senses of mechanism. I conclude that there is no substantive core meaning shared by all senses, and that debates in contemporary philosophy of science can benefit from clarification regarding precisely which sense of mechanism is at stake. (shrink)