In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 125-126 [Access article in PDF] Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians (Adversos Mathematicos I). Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by D. L. Blank. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. lvi + 436. Cloth, $105.00. Sesto Empirico. Contro gli astrologi. Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by Emidio Spinelli. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2000. Pp. 230. Paper, L. 70.000. No historian of philosophy should be retailing the old (...) canards that the Hellenistic philosopher Sextus Empiricus was silly, wholly confused, or merely a compiler and not a philosopher in his own right. These translations and commentaries, along with the recent work of Richard Bett, James Hankinson, and others, should bury those notions forever.Against the Grammarians is the first and Against the Astrologers is the fifth volume of Sextus's six-volume Against the Teachers of the technai or professional arts and sciences (grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music). Sextus is not against all forms of the study of these matters; in fact, one of the skeptic's "rules for living" is that he will engage in an art (techne) to make a living (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.24). But he is against the claims of each of them to special technical expertise. He prefers the unpretentious experience of everyday life—living by the phenomena; non-expert, practical forms of grammar, astronomy, music—to fancy theories about the nature of things.Against the Grammarians is Sextus's critique of the interpreters of poetry and prose—today's English professors and historians. Philosophers will be amused by his deconstruction of various sorts of lit crit arrogance and rashness that are still with us. Regrettably, some of us are not immune from the same critiques.Against the Astrologers is Sextus's critique of the Chaldean soothsayers. He is not against the observation of celestial phenomena for agricultural or navigational purposes. His critiques of the astrologers for lack of empirical evidence and promotion of superstition make him sound like a proto-scientist.One originality of Sextus's work was his combination of a dogmatic Epicurean critique of the grammatologists and astrologers with a skeptical aporetic critique. Precisely because he does not hesitate to make use of the arguments of others, some interpreters have decided that Sextus was unoriginal and derivative. But Blank and Spinelli both show that he recombines these arguments in ways that no one else had done. That is one of the ways of being original in philosophy. The upshot is that he is our earliest source of quite a number of critiques of grammarians and astrologers.The use of dogmatic arguments raises the problem of whether Sextus engages in so-called "negative dogmatism" in these volumes. Right at the beginning of Against the Astrologers, Sextus accuses them of violating "right reason." What right does a skeptic have to invoke such a standard? Some have felt that at this stage Sextus was a dogmatic skeptic, invoking one set of truths to tear down another. But that is not necessary. Blank and Spinelli explain this well with a combination of points. One, we can see the dogmatic and Epicurean attacks as clearing the ground for the following skeptical equipollence of arguments. Two, we can follow Jonathan Barnes in assuming that each claim that something has been demolished assumes the counterargument that it has been proven, so that the implied upshot is equipollence. Three, "right reason" can be the sort of unpretentious practical reasoning and living in accord with the appearances that the skeptics often claimed to live by.Spinelli and Blank provide many useful improvements over the previous English translations of these texts by Bury and the Italian translations by Russo. Blank rightly relies on Spinelli's 1995 translation and commentary on Sextus's Against the Ethicists and Spinelli rightly relies on Blank for a number of points. Spinelli supplies the Greek on facing pages of the translation; Blank does not. Spinelli also supplies five Greek zodiac charts and a beautiful print of a fifteenth-century zodiac.Neither Blank nor Spinelli unduly lionizes Sextus. They admit that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 105-107 [Access article in PDF] Richard H. Popkin. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 415. Cloth, $74.00. Paper, $24.95. Richard Popkin tells the story that once a long time ago when he asked a question at a conference that made reference to late-eighteenth-century skeptics like (...) Maimon and Platner, Myles Burnyeat turned to the audience and asked, "Does anyone else read these people that Popkin reads?" The answer, by the time we get to this, the fourth edition of a book that first appeared in 1960, is that lots of people are reading the people that Popkin reads. Now [End Page 105] Myles Burnyeat is quoted on the cover of this volume for graciously saying "I regard it as one of the seminal books in the history of ideas." In one of the three Festschriften that have been published in Popkin's honor, David Katz even reports that some of those who work in areas Popkin pioneered refer to themselves as "Popkinites" (James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., Everything Connects [Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999], ix).Popkin was also founding editor of this journal, and his name has been footnoted in numerous articles over the years, so it will not be unknown to many. But readers will want to know what is new in this latest version of the classic work. For openers, it is roughly fifty percent longer, now 18 chapters instead of the 12 chapters of the last version. The original book was subtitled "From Erasmus to Descartes" and the later California edition subtitle became "From Erasmus to Spinoza." This edition pushes the envelope in both directions: back to Savonarola and forward to Pierre Bayle.The Savonarola connection comes from the unlikely discovery that the famous monk collected manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus and was planning to have them translated as tools for use against pagan philosophy and in favor of revealed religion. This brings out one of Popkin's favorite points: that what we think of as philosophical skepticism was part and parcel of religious debate early on. Among other new findings in this edition, Popkin finds clues that Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) may have helped Gianfrancesco Pico read anti-Aristotelian Hebrew texts. Jews could use this sort of skepticism against the dogmatic Christians who tried to refute them.The religious connection is fundamental throughout the text. In his new introduction, Popkin admits that "I am more in sympathy with those who used the sceptical and fideist views of the nouveaux pyrrhoniens for religious rather than secular purposes" (p. xxiii). He has developed this sympathy into research on millenarianism in volumes such as Popkin and David S. Katz, Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) and Popkin, et al., eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, 4 vols. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).Other new materials follow the discussion of Descartes with a chapter on Henry More, Pascal, and the Quietists and another one on Hobbes's political and practical answer to skepticism. There are new chapters on Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill of the Royal Society, and on late seventeenth-century metaphysics. New material on Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet is followed by the concluding chapter on Pierre Bayle as a "super sceptic."The book has never been uncontroversial. Although they could follow the skeptical undercutting of the Bible in Spinoza, many scholars could not see how the master of the geometrical method in ethics could be anything but a dogmatist in the final analysis. (Popkin has an answer.) The same doubt will now apply to the treatment of Pierre Bayle in this version. To Popkin, as we have seen, Bayle is a "super sceptic" who "carried scepticism to its ultimate extreme" (300); to Gianluca Mori (Bayle philosophe, Paris: Champion, 1999) and others, he is a dogmatic philosophical atheist as well as moral rigorist. To his credit... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 1, April 1994, pp. 143-149 David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and GREG COOLIDGE David Hume's views on public credit have not only received prominent attention in the literature on his political thought, but have even been the subject of attention in The Wall Street Journal.1 Most of the attention has centered on Hume's essay "Of Public Credit" (...) of 1752, and treats it only as an expression of ideas, without relating it to the historical facts. This note lays out Hume's views on this matter throughout his lifetime, and juxtaposes them with figures for the actual public debt, carrying the story down to the twentieth century. Public debt as we know it only goes back about 300 years. The British government in the 1690s was the first modern government to establish enough genuine credit that private citizens would loan it money without having to be compelled.2 At the turn of the century, in the year 1700, the British public debt amounted to 14.2 million pounds sterling.3 As early as 1741, Hume was already worrying about the public debt in the essay "Of Liberty and Despotism" (later changed to "Of Civil Liberty"). In the last paragraph of that essay, he wrote of the "degeneracy" brought about by public debt, suggested that debt-service "taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of" the government. If it is not curbed, we may come to "curse our very liberty," he wrote.4 That year, the national debt totaled 48.8 million pounds (45.2 million in 1701 pounds5). John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge are at the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Laursen e-mail: [email protected]. 144 John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge Hume's essay of 1752, "Of Public Credit, " was devoted entirely to criticism of the public debt (Essays, 349-365). His thoughts on public credit at this time can be summed up in this ominous warning: It must, indeed, be one of these two events; either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. (Essays, 360-361) Hume acknowledged that the use of public credit could benefit the economy in some ways: more men with large stocks and incomes, may naturally be supposed to continue in trade, where there are public debts; and this, it must be owned, is of some advantage to commerce, by diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry. (Essays, 354) But the many disadvantages would outweigh such advantages (Essays, 354355 ): 1) "It is certain, that national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital," making the head too large for the body. 2) Public stocks "banish gold and silver from the most considerable commerce of the state." 3) The taxes levied to pay the interest oppress the poorer people. 4) "As foreigners possess a great share of our national funds, they render the public, in a manner, tributary to them, and may in time occasion the transport of our people and our industry." 5) Public credit encourages an idle and useless rentier class. All of this pales, however, in comparison to the political consequences. From the point of view of the body politic, public credit was a threat to the security of the state. It would die a natural or a violent death. In wartime, or some national emergency, the funds necessary for the functioning of the economy would be diverted to other purposes. The economy, now dependent on credit, would crumble. The whole fabric, already tottering, falls to the ground, and buries thousands in its ruins. And this, I think, may be called the natural death of public credit. (Essays, 363) Hume Studies David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? 145 Another scenario would occur if the government became too indebted to intervene in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Our children, weary of the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure, and see their neighbors oppressed and conquered ; till, at last, they themselves... (shrink)

Contextualising biblical teaching entails the adoption of certain forms, terms or thought patterns that might confuse the original message, especially if the effort takes place in a Javanese culture context that is full of subtlety and indirect communication. This study analyses a Javanese poetry form that contains the narrative of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman. The indigenous poems are widely sung by the adherents of Javanese indigenous religions. However, only a few studies are conducted on such indigenous poems that (...) contain Christian messages. This study examines whether or not the poetry form and religious terms that the writer used could serve as a vehicle to convey the good news message of the narrative of John 4:4–42 instead of creating impediment. Through literary form analysis followed by content analysis, the results showed that the Javanese poem contains several cantos, each with an embedded meaning. Finally, it intends to demonstrate how a combination, instead of contestation, of the indigenous, Islam and Christian terms is effective for the writer’s purpose. Thus, the writer’s choice was suitable in his effort to communicate the original teaching.Contribution: This study contributes to inter-religious communication by identifying the Javanese indigenous communication pattern, particularly the placement of their messages inside their poem’s structure and in various terminologies. Strengthening inter-religious communication to create a mutual understanding in Indonesian pluralistic society is needed especially as the Javanese indigenous religions are often misunderstood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Apostolic Letter of Our Most Holy Father PAUL VI, by Divine Providence, POPE to Our Venerable Brethren, Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, and Gordon Joseph Gray, Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh and to the other Archbishops and Bishops of England, Wales and Scotland. On the Occasion of the Second Scholastic Congress held at Oxford and Edinburgh on the Seventh Centenary of the Birth of John (...) Duns Scotus. Venerable Brethren, Greetings and Apostolic Blessing: A devoted mother of valiant men, Great Britain is distinguished by a quality no less estimable than the honour and the feats of her glorious children, for she knows how to cherish fondly the memory of her glorious sons and, when tradition demands that recurrences be celebrated solemnly, she knows how to sing their praises as though striving to repay them a debt of honour. These were the thoughts that sprang to our mind, and gave no slight satisfaction as we dwelt upon them, when we first learned the details of the Second International Scholastic Congress which is being prepared in your countries in memory of the Venerable John Duns Scotus on the seven hundredth anniversary of his birth. This Congress will be held at Oxford and Edinburgh under your patronage, Venerable Brethren, with lively interest and careful organization. One can already foresee that it will produce excellent results and will be of considerable importance, in view both of the arguments that will be discussed and of the distinguished persons who will take part in the sessions. Universities of England and Scotland and, from abroad, the universities of Paris and Cologne where he lectured, and many others, will send official representatives; apart from Catholics, there will be outstanding members of the Anglican Communion, of the Church of Scotland, of other Christian Communities of Great Britain, and well known exponents of sacred learning from every part of the world. As We voice our wishes for a successful Congress and abundant fruits to follow from it, we express frankly our satisfaction at the particular character of this Congress and certain features with which it is intended to distinguish it. Its principal and definite purpose is to shed 6 POPE PAUL VI. a brilliant light on the person of John Duns Scotus, on his philosophical and theological doctrine, and his moral and ascetic principles. Avoiding the reefs of discussion and controversy which so often stood in the way in times gone by, the critico-historical method has been adopted in accordance with modern preferences, a method which, employed by learned men in discovering which are the genuine works of the Subtle Doctor and what are really and truly his teachings, has yielded excellent results. For this reason combined efforts are being made to produce the broad outline of a panorama, namely a unified vision of the whole family of the Scholastic doctors, in which it will be possible to measure and understand the variety, the richness, and the fecundity of the philosophical and theological doctrine which flourished in the Middle Ages. There is no doubt that in this panorama Saint Thomas Aquinas with his "Summa theologica" rises like a lofty peak dominating the mountains in the vicinity, that is, the whole world of sacred learning developed during his time. The synthesis created bythe Angelic Doctor in describing the relationship between Faith and Reason, between Faith seeking understanding (as your own Saint Anselm of Canterbury had already expressed it1) and understanding seeking Faith, achieved such universal agreement that he is recognised as leader in the ranks of the Scholastics and is rightly celebrated by the name of Doctor Communis. Side by side with him, however, other prominent Scholastic teachers and doctors stand out, like stars illuminating the Catholic learning of the period. In the encyclical letter Aeterni Patris, in which Our Predecessor of happy memory, Pope Leo XIII, pleads for the revival of Scholasticism under the leadership of Saint Thomas Aquinas in opposition to modern errors, after the statement that "Saint Thomas towers above all others",2 other Scholastic doctors are enumerated and a prominent place is reserved for Saint Bonaventure, whom Saint Pius X afterwards called "the second leader of Scholasticism",3 and it is universally recognised... (shrink)

Older adults often have long-term relationships, and many of their goals are intertwined with their respective partners. Joint goals can help or hinder goal progress. Little is known about how accurately older adults assess if a goal is joint, the role of over-reporting in these perceptions, and how joint goals and over-reporting may relate to older partners' relationship satisfaction and physical health. Two-hundred-thirty-six older adults from 118 couples listed their three most important goals and whether they thought of them as (...) goals they had in common with and wanted to achieve together with their partner. Two independent raters classified goals as “joint” if both partners independently listed open-ended goals of the same content. Goal progress and relationship satisfaction were assessed 1 week later. Allostatic load was calculated using nine different biomarkers. Results show that 85% self-reported at least one goal as joint. Over-reporting– the perception that a goal was joint when in fact it was not mentioned among the three most salient goals of the spouse – occurred in one-third of all goals. Multilevel models indicate that the number of externally-rated joint goals was related to greater goal progress and lower allostatic load, but only for adults with little over-reporting. More joint goals and higher over-reporting were each linked with more relationship satisfaction. In conclusion, joint goals are associated with goal progress, relationship satisfaction, and health, but the association is dependent on the domain of functioning. (shrink)

This paper pursues two lines of inquiry. First, drawing on evidence from clinical literature on borderline states of consciousness, I propose a new categorical framework for liminal states of consciousness associated with certain forms of meditative attainment; second, I argue for dissociating phenomenal character from phenomenal content in accounting for the etiology of nonconceptual states of awareness. My central argument is that while the idea of nonconceptual awareness remains problematic for Buddhist philosophy of mind, our linguistic and categorizing practices (...) cannot be adequately explained without considering the ways in which the first-person phenomenology grounds a more basic level of cognitive and affective sensing. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I draw, on a purely conceptual level, a distinction between two kinds of reasons: content-related and attitude-related reasons. The established view is that, in the case of the attitude of believing something, there are no attitude-related reasons. I look at some arguments intended to establish this claim in the second section with an eye to whether these argument could be generalized to cover the case of preferences as well. In the third section (...) I argue against such generalizations and present a case in favour of accepting attitude-related reasons for preferences. In the fourth section I present an objection to which I react in the fifth section where I try to strengthen my case for attitude-related reasons for preferences. Finally, I discuss and reject criticisms raised by two opponents of the view defended here. (shrink)

If I am aware that p, say, that it is raining, is it the case that I must be aware that I am aware that p? Does introspective or object-awareness entail the apprehension of mental states as being of some kind or another: self-monitoring or intentional? That is, are cognitive events implicitly self-aware or is “self-awareness” just another term for metacognition? Not surprisingly, intuitions on the matter vary widely. This paper proposes a novel solution to this classical debate by reframing (...) the problem of self-knowledge in terms of the relation between phenomenal concepts and phenomenal knowledge. Concepts of consciousness such as “introspective awareness” and “reflexive self-awareness” are grounded in phenomenal experiences rather than physical events and processes. As such they yield a different kind of self-knowledge than what can be gained by applying externalist conceptual schemas to understanding the mind. I argue that Dharmakīrti’s theory of content can be seen as endorsing the efficacy of phenomenal experience as a vehicle for self-knowledge. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and (...) multi-stage aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

How should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain not just about morally relevant empirical matters, like the consequences of some course of action, but about the basic principles of morality itself? This question has only recently been taken up in a systematic way by philosophers. Advocates of moral hedging claim that an agent should weigh the reasons put forward by each moral theory in which she has positive credence, considering both the likelihood that that theory is (...) true and the strength of the reasons it posits. The view that it is sometimes rational to hedge for one's moral uncertainties, however, has recently come under attack both from those who believe that an agent should always be guided by the dictates of the single moral theory she deems most probable and from those who believe that an agent's moral beliefs are simply irrelevant to what she ought to do. Among the many objections to hedging that have been pressed in the recent literature is the worry that there is no non-arbitrary way of making the intertheoretic comparisons of moral value necessary to aggregate the value assignments of rival moral theories into a single ranking of an agent's options. -/- This dissertation has two principal objectives: First, I argue that, contra these recent objections, an agent's moral beliefs and uncertainties are relevant to what she rationally ought to do, and more particularly, that agents are at least sometimes rationally required to hedge for their moral uncertainties. My principal argument for these claims appeals to the enkratic conception of rationality, according to which the requirements of practical rationality derive from an agent's beliefs about the objective, desire-independent value or choiceworthiness of her options. Second, I outline a new general theory of rational choice under moral uncertainty. Central to this theory is the idea of content-based aggregation, that the principles according to which an agent should compare and aggregate rival moral theories are grounded in the content of those theories themselves, including not only their value assignments but also the metaethical and other non-surface-level propositions that underlie, justify, or explain those value assignments. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, I discuss Benatar’s asymmetry argument for the claim that it would have been better for each of us to have never lived at all. In contrast to other commentators, I will argue that there is a way of interpreting the premises of his argument which makes all of them come out true. (This will require one departure from Benatar’s own presentation.) Once we see why the premises are true, we will, however, also realise (...) that the argument trades on an ambiguity that renders it invalid. In the second part of the paper, I consider whether discussions of how best to implement the anti-natalist conclusion crosses a moral barrier. I ask whether we can, independently of any philosophical argument, raise a legitimate moral objection to discussions of how best to end all life on earth. I discuss three views concerning the role of our pre-philosophical views and attitudes in philosophical debates: the external view according to which these attitudes set moral barriers to the content of philosophical debate whilst themselves standing outside this debate; the internal view according to which our intuitions are part of the material for philosophical reflection and play no further role; and the intermediate view according to which our pre-reflective views and attitudes, without themselves requiring philosophical validation, can play an important role when it comes to issues regarding the implementation of philosophical claims. (shrink)

In response to Koplin and Wilkinson, I argue, first, that the uncertain clinical prospects of human-pig chimera based transplantation makes the reason to spend resources for clarifying whether such practice might imply serious ethical breach due to enhanced cognitive capacities of the chimeras rather weak. T he benefits of further pursuing this avenue of research is so uncertain, so that taking even very unclear risks of serious ethical breach is not worth the price in terms of spent resources, and therefore (...) only limited resources should be spent to clarify such risk before the project is abandoned due to unacceptable risks. Second, I argue that as there are some reason to pursue this avenue further, the analogy to the notion of halting all farming of larger animals for food does not hold up. The reason is that we do not need to probe any further any comparable risk to know that such farming practices should be halted. A fundamental underlying issue to the question discussed by Koplin and Wilkinson1 in this paper is formulated when they write: > We should therefore be confident that human-pig chimeras would lack morally relevant cognitive capacities before setting out to use them as a source of transplantable human organs. This leaves open the question of how confident …. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy of biology is one of the strongest chapters of Hegel'sPhilosophy of Nature. It can be argued that Hegel's understanding of organicity underscores the explanatory power of ‘dialectical thinking’, as Hegel himself claims. Hegel's interpretation of organicity is based upon the logical development of categories in his chapter on Objectivity of his Logic. If we compare Hegel's treatment of teleology in the Logic with his interpretation of organicity in his Philosophy of Nature, a mismatch can be found. In the (...) Logic, Hegel introduces the notion of life (Leben) after the chapter on Objectivity, i.e. after elaborating on external teleology. In his Philosophy of Nature, the notion of the inner purposiveness of organicity belongs to the externality of nature. This article compares Hegel's treatment of teleology in his Logic and his Philosophy of Nature, reconstructs possible explanations for mismatches and offers a possible solution to the question whether the notion of life should be regarded as the last part of the chapter on teleology or the first part of the chapter on the Idea. (shrink)

Frege distinguished the thought qua logical content from the assertoric force attached to it when judged to be true. The gist of this distinction is captured by the so-called Frege-Geach point. Recently, several authors have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein to reject this point and the distinction it is based on. This article proceeds from the observation that Wittgenstein himself did not reject the force-content distinction but urged us to reformulate it in a non-dualistic way. While drawing on Wittgensteinian (...) lessons about thought and its expression, the overall purpose of this paper is systematic, not exegetic: it seeks to contribute to the contemporary debate aboute force and content by arguing that this distinction should be redrawn in such a way as to exhibit force as internal to thought, namely, as that which provides for the unity of thought. To this end, it is investigated what it is for a thought to occur as a forceless part of a propositionally complex assertion (e. g. for p to occur as a part of the assertion that not p). (shrink)

Previous studies with adult participants have investigated reasoning from one or two uncertain premises with simple deductive arguments. Three exploratory experiments were designed to extend these results by investigating the evaluation of the plausibility of the conclusion of "combined" arguments, i.e. arguments constituted by two or more "atomic" standard arguments which each involved the same conclusion and one uncertain premise out of two. One example is "If she meets Nicolas it is very improbable she will go to the swimming pool; (...) if she meets Sophie it is very probable she will go to the swimming pool; she meets Nicolas; she meets Sophie". With two conflicting arguments, one supporting and one unfavourable, participants chose a compromise stance (Exp. 1), unless the thematic content of the premises allows one to consider one argument as more important than the other (Exp. 3). With two favourable arguments and rather unfamiliar materials, two typical behaviours appeared. One consisted in choosing a degree of plausibility of the conclusion that is intermediate between the modals asserted in the premises, and the other in choosing a more favourable degree than the most favourable modal (Exp. 1). The plausibility of the conclusion increased when the number of supporting atomic arguments increased from one to three, and decreased when the number of unfavourable arguments increased (Exp. 2). Theoretical implications are discussed and a model is sketched. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between interpreting a fiction and specifying its content. The former plays a major role in literary studies; the latter is of central concern in the philosophical debate on truth in fiction. After elucidating these activities, I argue that they do not coincide but have interesting interdependencies. In particular, I argue that correct interpretations are metaphysically grounded in fictional content. I discuss this claim in detail and show why it is not in (...) tension with the evidential claim that correct interpretations give us epistemic access to fictional content, which I also endorse. (shrink)

Leibniz’s universal characteristic is a fundamental aspect of his theory of cognition. Without symbols or characters it would be difficult for the human mind to define several concepts and to achieve many demonstrations. In most disciplines, and particularly in mathematics, the mind must then focus on symbols and their combinatorial rules rather than on mental contents. For Leibniz, mental perception is most of the time too confused for attaining distinct notions and valid deductions. In this paper, I argue that the (...) functions of symbolization differ depending upon the kind of concepts that are replaced with characters. In my view, most commentators did not sufficiently underline the distinction between two main functions of formal substitution in Leibniz’s characteristic: either increasing our knowledge or simply structuring it. In the first case, we complete our knowledge because formal substitution makes sensible and imaginary concepts more distinct. In the second case, symbolization helps to organize contents that are already conceived of by reason. Thus the process of substitution is not always identically applicable, for symbols replace different types of concepts. (shrink)

This volume brings together a range of influential essays by distinguished philosophers and political theorists on the issue of global justice. Global justice concerns the search for ethical norms that should govern interactions between people, states, corporations and other agents acting in the global arena, as well as the design of social institutions that link them together. The volume includes articles that engage with major theoretical questions such as the applicability of the ideals of social and economic equality to the (...) global sphere, the degree of justified partiality to compatriots, and the nature and extent of the responsibilities of the affluent to address global poverty and other hardships abroad. It also features articles that bring the theoretical insights of global justice thinkers to bear on matters of practical concern to contemporary societies, such policies associated with immigration, international trade, and climate change. -/- Contents: Introduction; Part I Standards of Global Justice: (i) Assistance-Based Responsibilities to the Global Poor: Famine, affluence and mortality, Peter Singer; We don't owe them a thing! A tough-minded but soft-hearted view of aid to the faraway needy, Jan Narveson; Does distance matter morally to the duty to rescue? Frances Myrna Kamm. (ii) Contribution-Based Responsibilities to the Global Poor: 'Assisting' the global poor, Thomas Pogge; Should we stop thinking about poverty in terms of helping the poor?, Alan Patten; Poverty and the moral significance of contribution, Gerhard Øverland. (iii)Cosmopolitans, Global Egalitarians, and its Critics: The one and the many faces of cosmopolitanism, Catherine Lu; Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities, Simon Caney; The problem of global justice, Thomas Nagel; Against global egalitarianism, David Miller; Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism: a critique, Christian Barry and Laura Valentini. Part II Pressing Global Socioeconomic Issues: (i) Governing the Flow of People: Immigration and freedom of association, Christopher Wellman; Democratic theory and border coercion: no right to unilaterally control your own borders, Arash Abizadeh; Justice in migration: a closed borders utopia?, Lea Ypi. (ii) Climate Change: Global environment and international inequality, Henry Shue; Valuing policies in response to climate change: some ethical issues, John Broome; Saved by disaster? Abrupt climate change, political inertia, and the possibility of an intergenerational arms race, Stephen M. Gardiner; Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change, Elinor Ostrom. (iii) International Trade: Responsibility and global labor justice, Iris Marion Young; Property rights and the resource curse, Leif Wenar; Fairness in trade I: obligations arising from trading and the pauper-labor argument, Mathias Risse; Name index. -/- See: www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=483&sort=pubdate&forthcoming=1&title_i d=9958&edition_id=13385. (shrink)

The Buddhist philosophical investigation of the elements of existence and/or experience (or dharmas) provides the basis on which Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and their followers deliberate on such topics as the ontological status of external objects and the epistemic import of perceptual states of cognitive awareness. In this essay I will argue that the Buddhist epistemologists, insofar as they accord perception a privileged epistemic status, share a common ground with phenomenologists in the tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, who contend that perception is (...) best understood as bearing intentional content. On this phenomenological account of intentionality, to perceive an object (or to have a perceptual experience) is to apprehend an intentional relation: whether the object intended in perception (the one the perception is of) is real is less important than how it is intended. Indeed, the central feature of intentionality is that it reveals the co-constitutive nature of perception and that which is perceived; as such, it discloses the world rather than attempting to establish a relationship to a discrete, ‘external’ world. I will begin by offering an overview of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti's account of perception and intentionality, focusing on the epistemic role of svasaṃvitti ("self-awareness," "self-cognition") as a dual aspect cognition. Then, I will briefly discuss three dominant accounts of the relation between perception and phenomenal content in contemporary philosophy (drawing from the work of Dennett, Dreyfus, O'Regan and Noë, and Zahavi, among others). Finally, I will offer several reasons why the Buddhist epistemologists, along with Western phenomenologists, are justified in asserting that direct perception opens up a domain of phenomenal experience that is prior to our conceptualizing and theorizing about it. (shrink)

Due largely to the work of Mark Murphy and Philip Quinn, divine will theory has emerged as a legitimate alternative to divine command theory in recent years. As an initial characterization, divine will theory is a view of deontological properties according to which, for instance, an agent S‟s obligation to perform action A in circumstances C is grounded in God‟s will that S A in C. Characterized this abstractly, divine will theory does not specify which kind of mental state is (...) supposed to ground S‟s obligation; it could be God‟s desires, beliefs, intentions, or emotions. My purpose here is not to challenge this view. Rather, I want to examine the decision by Murphy and Quinn to base their version of divine will theory on God‟s intentions, and argue that this may have been an unwise move. As an alternative, I suggest that those who are initially attracted to divine will theory would be better served to develop the view with a focus on God‟s desires rather than intentions. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

The IOC and WADA have announced their ambition to develop control program in order to detect athletes' illegitimate use of genetic technology for enhancing performance. Although it is far from clear what such uses should be counted as illegitimate, as well as to what extent the idea of control programs for such things is a feasible idea, I will assume that such programs will concern so-called somatic genetic modifications that aims at altering the athlete's initial bodily biochemistry in a way (...) that may enhance performance without the presence of any medical reason for undertaking such modifications. This means that the envisioned control-program will have to make use of the method of genetic testing in order to detect the possible presence (or non-presence) of various genetic variants within the athlete. As a consequence of this, several ethical issues familiar within the field of genetic testing for health purposes are suddenly actualised within the area of doping control. These issues concern primarily how to handle and communicate the information about the athlete that is uncovered by such testing. However, due to the ways in which gene doping may be performed, in the case of atheletic control programs, issues of medical safety and the question of what hardships it is reasonable to require of athletes to endure also become paramount. As a consequence, one may ask whether or not sporting ethics will have to consider applying the rule of informed consent in connection to testing programs of the kind here discussed. (shrink)

In the present article, I will advocate caution against developing artificial moral agents based on the notion that the utilization of preliminary forms of AMAs will potentially negatively feed back on the human social system and on human moral thought itself and its value—e.g., by reinforcing social inequalities, diminishing the breadth of employed ethical arguments and the value of character. While scientific investigations into AMAs pose no direct significant threat, I will argue against their premature utilization for practical and economical (...) use. I will base my arguments on two thought experiments. The first thought experiment deals with the potential to generate a replica of an individual’s moral stances with the purpose to increase, what I term, ’moral efficiency’. Hence, as a first risk, an unregulated utilization of premature AMAs in a neoliberal capitalist system is likely to disadvantage those who cannot afford ’moral replicas’ and further reinforce social inequalities. The second thought experiment deals with the idea of a ’moral calculator’. As a second risk, I will argue that, even as a device equally accessible to all and aimed at augmenting human moral deliberation, ’moral calculators’ as preliminary forms of AMAs are likely to diminish the breadth and depth of concepts employed in moral arguments. Again, I base this claim on the idea that the current most dominant economic system rewards increases in productivity. However, increases in efficiency will mostly stem from relying on the outputs of ’moral calculators’ without further scrutiny. Premature AMAs will cover only a limited scope of moral argumentation and, hence, over-reliance on them will narrow human moral thought. In addition and as the third risk, I will argue that an increased disregard of the interior of a moral agent may ensue—a trend that can already be observed in the literature. (shrink)

I start by explaining what attitude-related reasons are and why it is plausible to assume that, at least in the domain of practical reason, there are such reasons. Then I turn to Raz’s idea that the practice of practical reasoning commits us to what he calls exclusionary reasons. Being excluded would be a third way, additional to being outweighed and being undermined, in which a reason can be defeated. I try to show that attitude-related reasons can explain the phenomena Raz (...) appeals to equally well. Attitude-related reasons, however, are weighted against other reasons and, thus, don’t determine a third relation of defeat. On this basis, I voice some doubts about Raz’s conception of exclusionary reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, (...) is crucial for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

Between Summits I and II, media ethics established its legitimacy, summarized into recommendations for the field's future fluorescence. This history points to the challenges through which media ethics moves to another order of magnitude. A historical map of media ethics scholarship since 1980 divides into 5 domains, and each is introduced: theory, social philosophy, religious ethics, technology, and truth. From this content analysis of the literature, an agenda emerges for research and academic study that can raise media ethics to (...) a higher level. (shrink)

In 1764, Kant published his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and in 1790 his influential third Critique , the Critique of the Power of Judgment . The latter contains two parts, the 'Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment' and the 'Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment'. They reveal a new principle, namely the a priori principle of purposiveness ( Zweckmäßigkeit ) of our power of judgment, and thereby offer new a priori grounds for (...) beauty and biology within the framework of Kant's transcendental philosophy. They also unite the previous two Critiques , the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason . Besides contributing to general and systematic aspects within his transcendental philosophy, Kant's aesthetics also offers new insights into old problems. It deals with feeling versus experience, subjectivity versus objectivity, disinterested pleasure, aesthetic universality, free and adherent beauty, the sensus communis , genius, aesthetic ideas, beauty as the symbol of morality, beauty of nature versus beauty of art, the sublime, and the supersensible. In this article I will limit myself to this critical aesthetics of Kant. But I will also discuss the ugly and the possibility of beauty in mathematics and see whether Kant's theory can successfully explain or deal with them. I will also compare his theory with philosophical ideas from a very different tradition, namely from Confucius, not only as a challenge to Kant's theory, but also because there is a growing interest from the Chinese side in combining ideas from Confucius and Kant, an interest that might well become influential in both East and West during the 21st century. (shrink)

In 1975, Imre Lakatos and Elie Zahar claimed that the determination of planetary distances represents excess empirical content of Copernicus's theory over that of Ptolemy. This claim provoked an interesting discussion during the first half of the 1980s. The discussion started when Alan Chalmers affirmed that it is not correct to attribute this advantage to the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic. Other scholars criticized Chalmers's assertion, reaffirming the position of Lakatos and Zahar: one went even further, asserting that Copernicus (...) has not one but two methods for calculating distances, even though this claim was subsequently also criticized. But all participants assumed that Ptolemy has no method for calculating planetary distances. In this article, I argue that this is not correct. I argue, in fact, that Ptolemy has two independent methods for calculating the distances of some of the planets and, therefore, as far as the calculation of planetary distances is concerned, Ptolemy's system surpasses that of Copernicus. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider Joshua Gert’s novel view of subjective practical rationality in his book Brute Rationality. After briefly outlining the account, I present two objections to his view and then consider his own objections to a rival approach to understanding subjective rationality which I take to be much more plausible.

I argue for the claim that for Aristotle, the content of productive understanding primarily concerns the nature of the object a craftsperson aims to bring into existence as well as its material requirements, and only derivatively things she might do with a view to producing that object. I explain why technê is a form of understanding, by considering what it shares with and how it differs from its practical and theoretical cousins. I give four arguments for my claim. The (...) analogy of craft and nature suggests that a craftsperson understands the nature of their product and the material necessities required by the product’s existence. Further evidence comes from some of Aristotle’s remarks on the practical syllogism, from considerations concerning capacities for change in general, and from his views on why it is a two-way capacity. I end by mentioning several respects in which technê goes beyond productive understanding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, (...) is crucial for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 199-203 [Access article in PDF] Lived Time and to Live Time Christian Kupke Keywords time, dimensional time, temporality, dialectics, subjectivity In this paper, I argue that a phenomenological description of temporality is a description of what it is to "live" time, that is, to live time in its three-dimensional aspects: past, future, and present. And it is suggested that this dimensional (...) time can be analyzed on two different levels: on a microstructural level that is part of the subject–object relationship (cognitive–intentional time), and on a macrostructural level that is part of the subject–subject relationship (intersubjective time). In a close reading of Martin Wyllie's paper "Lived Time and Psychopathology" (2005) some implications and consequences of these suggestions are discussed. Conceptual Problems: Personal and Intersubjective Time One of Martin Wyllie's main theses is that to accurately describe suffering one may have to use a conceptual framework of a bipartite structure that includes the embodied temporal subject on the one hand and the temporal world on the other. It is this what the author calls a "dialectical relationship" between the time of the individual person called "personal time" and the time of the world called "world time" or "intersubjective time" (Wyllie 2005, 173).But then Martin Wyllie also deals with another model, another conceptual framework that follows a different logic and that—in contrast to the dualistic model—is usually associated with dialectics: the tripartite structure of past, future, and present. "Now in lived time", Wyllie claims, "is a unity of the past, present, and future, and is more than simply a succession because the immediate 'no-more', 'present', and 'yet-to-come' are ordinarily never sharply separated" (Wyllie 2005, 174).I want first to discuss the conceptual problems that come along with Martin Wyllie's use of these models. It seems to me that the author is dealing with the complexity of the relationship between these models by means of a double strategy: to conceptualize world time as intersubjective time (a), and to focus the analysis on the external, dualistic model of personal and intersubjective time (b).(a) "World time" may be differentiated at least into three categories: physical and cosmological time; natural and biological time; and social or sociocultural time. But the question is: how are these (quasi-) objective time matrices realized (and perhaps even "constituted") by the individual subject? To answer this question it is, also in my view, a good strategy for a psychopathology of time to concentrate on intersubjective [End Page 199] time, for, as Martin Wyllie states, there is indeed no doubt that "the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world" (Wyllie 2005, 177).But what I think might be a severe problem with this focal point of the analysis is the tendency to identify the world exclusively with an intersubjective world. That the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world does not mean that the subject's whole world is nothing more than an intersubjective world. Those temporal processes that are, for instance, necessary to "read"—in an intersubjective world—Martin Wyllie's text and to "write" a comment on it (as I do now) are part of at least a double temporal structure.First, reading and writing are formal processes of an integration of cognitive and intentional activities that are the transcendental basis of any intelligible discussion of semantic questions, namely, to recognize signs, retentionally and protentionally, as integral parts of higher temporal units to enable the subject to understand what is read or written. Without such retentional and protentional acts, as they were generally described by Husserl, any text would be a mere accumulation of signs without any formal or logical order.But, second, reading and writing are also informal processes of an integration of those intersubjective activities that result in an intelligible discussion of semantic questions. Here it is necessary to remember what was read or written, by Martin Wyllie, myself, and others (an intersubjective remembrance that is essential for the... (shrink)

The starting point of the following article are statements by various prominent musical performers of the 20th century who have testified to the life-experience of musical identification, i.e. the experience of unity and oneness with music. The purpose of the article is to explore the phenomenological implications of this experience on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s early phenomenological work. The article compares Heidegger’s early view of phenomenal givenness with that of Edmund Husserl. While Husserl sees phenomenal givenness as constituted by (...) (transcendental) consciousness, Heidegger finds primary givenness in the resonance (Mitschwingen) between the I and its lifeworld. I argue that in Heidegger’s early phenomenology it is not the subject, but rather the relatio between I and world, which “constitutes” givenness. This viewpoint allows for the exploration of musical identification as a life-experience. Musical identification suspends the difference between subject and object. In musical identification, it is the relation between “I” and music, which is constitutive of both. Thus, music cannot be adequately grasped in phenomenological terms if it is regarded simply as an object, which is the premise of more traditional phenomenological approaches to music such as Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s. Ingarden and Dufrenne both position music at a distance from the subject, as something to be explored in its objective characteristics, without presupposing the constitutive relation between them. Contrary to them, Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht, Günther Anders and Ilya Yonchev all recognize that the subject-object divide is insufficient for the exploration of musical experience. However, while Eggebrecht ultimately remains within the subject-object-dichotomy, Anders and Yonchev both develop the idea of musical Mitsein, or Being-with-music, which dispenses with the subject-object premise altogether and interprets musical life-experience as a mode of Being within which the sense of the I and musical sense coincide. (shrink)

This paper examines some consequences of the (quasi-)epiphenomenalism implied by a property dualistic view of phenomenal consciousness. The focus is upon the variation of phenomenal content over time. A thought-experiment is constructed to support two claims. The weaker claim exhibits an incompatibility which arises in certain logically possible situations between a conscious subject’s epistemic norms and the requirement that one be aware of one’s conscious experience. This could be interpreted as providing some epistemic grounds for the postulation of bridging (...) laws between the physical/functional and phenomenal domains. The stronger claim has it that the ontology of property dualism is not properly able to account for the certainty I have of being phenomenally conscious. The problem is viewed as resulting from the neglect of the intensional context involved in a proper representation of the argument for property dualism. It is argued that only a transcendental move can do justice to this certainty I have. (shrink)

During the second half of the 20th century education has been recognized as a human right in several international conventions, and the UN also holds that “Education shall be free” and that “Elementary education shall be compulsory” (UN, 1948, Article 26). The education-as-a-human right-project could be viewed as a good intention of global inclusion in recognizing that all individuals have a right to education in virtue of being humans, and the idea of education as a human right thus has a (...) tremendous global significance. However, if we look at this more critically, the education-as-a-human right-project, may not only be grounded in altruistic good intensions for the disadvantaged. The term “elementary education”, or sometimes “primary education”, which is used in several human rights-documents seems to suggest that it is some sort of formalized education. It would be useful however to make a distinction between formal and informal education, as well as between teaching, learning, education and schooling, in the discussion of the right to education and specifically in the discussion concerning education as a “human right”. There is obviously a difference between the right to teach, the right to learn, the right to education and the right to schooling. And how are these rights related to compulsory schooling, compulsory education and the supposed duty to teach and duty to learn? A further concern is what makes this a human right rather than for example a juridical right as a citizen. By addressing these questions within a theoretical framework of social ontology and ameliorative conceptual analysis I believe that we can find new ways of dealing with fundamental problems within philosophy of education such as the nature, purpose and aims of education as well as the right to education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa MonasticismChristian P. B. HaskettIdentity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism. By Martin A. Mills. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 404 + xxi pp. with 12 black and white plates.In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a type of teaching called a dmar khrid, a "red instruction," wherein the lama brings students (...) through a teaching as a physician might dissect a corpse, pointing out and explaining the various parts and organs and their places and functions. In Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism, Martin Mills has done very much the same thing, with the exception that the body he examines is still very much alive, and emerges, to my eyes at least, as a new and wholly vital entity. Mills exposes the subcutaneous and sanguine body of Tibetan Buddhism, the bones and muscles that make up its structure, the blood that flows through it, and the organs that keep it alive, in "a plain and open manner," just as in a dmar khrid.1 The value of such a presentation truly cannot be overstated. An attempt to catalog the contents of each chapter would be both impossible and counterproductive, as the wealth of theoretical material and ethnographic detail is a large part of what makes this book so powerful. Instead, I will identify several topics, several of the vital organs alluded to, that are either not commonly noticed in the academic study of Buddhism, or that are given fresh perspective by Mills's anthropological and sociological methodology, and that are so crucial to understanding how it is that Buddhism lives in a typical Himalayan village. The latter portion of this review explains why I place such high value on this book and its potential place in Buddhist-Christian studies.Identity, Ritual and State is an ethnography of Kumbum Monastery in Lingshed, Ladakh (the eastern half of the Kashmir valley, located in Jammu and Kashmir, India), but its concerns are much more far-reaching than a single remote Himalayan village. The central question of the work is "how we are to understand the nature of religious authority in Tibetan Buddhist monasticism" (p. xiii), although it might more properly be the religious authority of Tibetan [End Page 187] Buddhist monastics. This answer is worked out in three overlapping areas of analysis: local ritual activity, ecclesiastical structure of the monastery, and the ritual foundations of Tibetan political thought (p. xvii).Mills convincingly asserts that there is a framework within which Buddhism happens in the Himalayas. The starting point of this framework is birth itself, which establishes the embodied person. The very physicality of personhood has several implications. First, the body is embedded in a very specific local space and place, and personhood is thus not only embodied, but also chthonic—intimately bound up with the earth or soil onto which it is born. At birth, persons are injected into a complex matrix of relations between people and various spirits, such as household gods and protectors, nāga, and itinerant demons. For example, Lingshed is divided into seven subterritories, each under the jurisdiction of a local deity whose physical abode and reign are well known to all in the village.2 These deities are associated with features of the local geography, and they regulate and influence local agricultural and social production, so birth in one area or another signifies a relation with the deity presiding over it. The land itself is imbued with a notion of personhood and agency. The human body is also the repository for pollution (sgrib), which comes about as a result of violating the established hierarchy of space and place and from bringing about changes to the local matrix of embodied persons. Both bodily pollution concerns and the need for proper relations with local spirit numina mandate definite, ongoing ritual attention. Rituals are occasioned in response to births, deaths, spirit possession, unintentional pollution of places or household objects, and movements within the monastic ecclesiastical structure, or happen regularly according to an astrologically and agriculturally influenced calendar.Rituals are performed by monks not only because they are trained specialists, but because... (shrink)

Friedrich Albert Lange author of a famous History of Materialism and Critique of Its Present Significance, was also interested in the epistemological foundations of formal logic.Part I of his intended two‐volume Logische Studienwas published posthumously in 1877 by Hermann Cohen“head”of the Marburg school of neo‐Kantianism.Lange, departing from Kant, claims that spatial intuition is the source of the apodeictic character not only of the truths of mathematics, but also of the truths of logic.He aims at showing this by basing validity and (...) invalidity of syllogistic inferences on an interpretation of the standard forms with the help of the five kinds of possible relations between extensions of concepts given to us as areas in a plane, i.e.in space.Generality is achieved by considering all possible variations within each type of spatial relation, exhibiting a connection between concept and intuition reminding Lange of the Kantian “schema”. Lange is well aware of the contemporary English “algebraic” logic, but he considers its approach as the appropriate one for a logic of content and not for a logic of extension Lange did not live to enjoy the recognition by some leading logicians, nor could he respond to the many critics of his proposed foundation of logic.Its radicality as well as its broad reception seem to entitle Lange’s Logische Studiento an, if modest, place in the history of logic in the 19th century. (shrink)

In the last two sections of Structure, Thomas Kuhn first develops his famous threefold conception of the incommensurability of scientific paradigms and, subsequently, a conception of scientific progress as growth of empirical strength. The latter conception seems to be at odds with the former in that semantic incommensurability appears to imply the existence of situations where scientific progress in Kuhns sense can no longer exist. In contrast to this seeming inconsistency of Kuhns conception, we will try to show in this (...) study that the semantic incommensurability of scientific terms appears to be fully compatible with scientific progress. Our argumentation is based on an improved version of the formalization of Kuhns conception as developed in the 1970s by Joseph Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmüller: In order to be comparable, incommensurable theories need the specification of relations that refer to the concrete ontologies of these theories and involve certain truth claims. The original structuralist account of reduction fails to provide such relations, because (1) it is too structural and (2) it is too wide. Moreover, the original structuralist account also fails to cover important cases of incommensurable theories in being too restrictive for them. In this paper, we develop an improved notion of “reduction” that allows us to avoid these shortcomings by means of a more flexible device for the formalization of (partially reductive) relations between theories. For that purpose, we use a framework of rigid logic, i.e., logic that is based on a fixed collection of objects. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a new semantic framework designed to capture a distinctly cognitive or epistemic notion of meaning akin to Fregean senses. Traditional Carnapian intensions are too coarse-grained for this purpose: they fail to draw semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, differ in meaning. This has led some philosophers to introduce more fine-grained hyperintensions that allow us to draw semantic distinctions among co-intensional sentences. But the hyperintensional strategy has a flip-side: it risks drawing semantic distinctions (...) between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, do not differ in meaning. This is what we call the ‘new problem’ of hyperintensionality to distinguish it from the ‘old problem’ that faced the intensional theory. We show that our semantic framework offers a joint solution to both these problems by virtue of satisfying a version of Frege’s so-called ‘equipollence principle’ for sense individuation. Frege’s principle, we argue, not only captures the semantic intuitions that give rise to the old and the new problem of hyperintensionality, but also points the way to an independently motivated solution to both problems. (shrink)

This paper examines some consequences of the (quasi‐)epiphenomenalism implied by a property dualistic view of phenomenal consciousness. The focus is upon the variation of phenomenal content over time. A thought‐experiment is constructed to support two claims. The weaker claim exhibits an incompatibility which arises in certain logically possible situations between a conscious subject’s epistemic norms and the requirement that one be aware of one’s conscious experience. This could be interpreted as providing some epistemic grounds for the postulation of bridging (...) laws between the physical/functional and phenomenal domains. The stronger claim has it that the ontology of property dualism is not properly able to account for the certainty I have of being phenomenally conscious. The problem is viewed as resulting from the neglect of the intensional context involved in a proper representation of the argument for property dualism. It is argued that only a transcendental move can do justice to this certainty I have. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growing consensus in the philosophical community that the grandfather paradox and similar logical puzzles do not preclude the possibility of time travel scenarios that utilize spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. At the same time, physicists, who for half a century acknowledged that the general theory of relativity is compatible with such spacetimes, have intensely studied the question whether the operation of a time machine would be admissible in the context of the same theory and of (...) its quantum cousins. A time machine is a device which brings about closed timelike curves—and thus enables time travel—where none would have existed otherwise. The physics literature contains various no-go theorems for time machines, i.e., theorems which purport to establish that, under physically plausible assumptions, the operation of a time machine is impossible. We conclude that for the time being there exists no conclusive no-go theorem against time machines. The character of the material covered in this article makes it inevitable that its content is of a rather technical nature. We contend, however, that philosophers should nevertheless be interested in this literature for at least two reasons. First, the topic of time machines leads to a number of interesting foundations issues in classical and quantum theories of gravity; and second, philosophers can contribute to the topic by clarifying what it means for a device to count as a time machine, by relating the debate to other concerns such as Penrose's cosmic censorship conjecture and the fate of determinism in general relativity theory, and by eliminating a number of confusions regarding the status of the paradoxes of time travel. The present article addresses these ambitions in as non-technical a manner as possible, and the reader is referred to the relevant physics literature for details. (shrink)

John Searle''s hypothesis of the Background seems to conflict with his initial representationalism according to which each Intentional state contains a particular content that determines its conditions of satisfaction. In Section I of this essay I expose Searle''s initial theory of Intentionality and relate it to Edmund Husserl''s earlier phenomenology. In Section II I make it clear that Searle''s introduction of the notion of Network, though indispensable, does not, by itself, force us to modify that initial theory. However, a (...) comparison of this notion to the notion of horizon from Husserl''s later phenomenology and an interpretation of Husserl''s conception of the determinable X as providing a solution to the problem of perceptual misidentification lead me to conclude that in his discussion of ''twin examples'' Searle had better modified his initial theory. Finally, I critically examine Searle''s claim that anyone who tries seriously to follow out the threads in the Network will eventually reach a bedrock of non-Intentional capacities. In Section III I show in detail, partly in a rather Husserlian vein, that Searle''s four official arguments for the Background thesis, though containing some very valuable contributions to a theory of linguistic skills, are not convincing at all if they are to be understood as going beyond the scope of Searle''s ''content-cum-Network'' picture of Intentionality. The upshot of these considerations is that the Background thesis should be read as a thesis concerning the causal neurophysiological preconditions of human Intentionality rather than concerning the logical properties of Intentional states in general. Recently Searle himself has come to the same result, but he does not say for which reasons. The present essay makes it clear why Searle just had to arrive at this important result. (shrink)

Résumé — Bien que le « social » ne soit pas un thème central du néokantisme de Bade, il est néanmoins l’occasion de développer, dans le contexte de ce courant philosophique, ce qu’on appelle aujourd’hui une ontologie sociale, qui peut être élaborée de manière exemplaire dans la perspective de Rickert. La conception fondamentale de la philosophie de l’histoire, que j’analyse, offre chez Rickert la clef d’une détermination formelle de l’ontologie sociale. En outre, Rickert offre une base systématique qui permet de (...) définir le « social ». Les tenants de l’école de Bade, tels Windelband, Bauch, Cohn, voient, comme Rickert, dans le « social » la condition de la réalisation de la culture ; mais à la différence de ce dernier, cette sphère revêt chez eux une coloration éthique.— Although the « social » is not a core concept of the Southwest school of Neo-Kantianism, this philosophy offers beginnings for the development of what is nowadays called social ontology. I develop this point by presenting an analysis of Rickert’s concept of the philosophy of history. He turns out to be the key for a formal determination of a social ontology. Moreover, Rickert also offers a systematic beginning as far as the content of the social is concerned. Like Rickert also other thinkers of the Southwest school conceive the social as a condition for realizing values, but unlike Rickert in their model the sphere of realization has an « ethical » flavour. (shrink)

Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875) author of a famous History of Materialism and Critique of Its Present Significance (1866, English transI. 1877-79, repr. 1925 with introduction by Bertrand Russell), was also interested in the epistemological foundations of formal logic. Part I of his intended two-volume Logische Studien was published posthumously in 1877 by Hermann Cohen, head of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. Lange, departing from Kant, claims that spatial intuition is the source of the apodeictic character not only of the truths (...) of mathematics, but also of the truths of logic. He aims at showing this by basing validity and invalidity of syllogistic inferences on an interpretation of the standard forms (of proposition in assertoric syllogistic) with the help of the five kinds of possible relations (in fact what is known today as the Gergonne-Euler relations) between extensions of concepts given to us as areas in a plane, i.e.in space. Generality is achieved by considering all possible variations within each type of spatial relation, exhibiting a connection between concept and intuition reminding Lange of the Kantian "schema". Lange is well aware of the contemporary English "algebraic" logic, but he considers its approach as the appropriate one for a logic of content (Inhaltslogik) and not for a logic of extension (Umfangslogik). Lange did not live to enjoy the recognition by some leading logicians (amongst them John Venn, to whose reference in 1881 to Lange's "admirable Logische Studien" the present paper owes it title), nor could he respond to the many critics of his proposed foundation of logic. Its radicality as well as its broad reception (and discussion up to at least 1959) seem to entitle Lange's Logische Studien to an, if modest, place in the history of logic in the 19th century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische PerspektivenChristian StrubStefan Kappner Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische Perspektiven. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter2004, ISBN 3–11-018288–2, 432 pp.1. Problem focusKappner intended only partially a Peirce-interpretation; he attempts to think further along with Peirce, and he succeeds as well. The first chapter serves as a sketch of the problem of intentionality from a historical perspective, starting from Brentano. Kappner formulates the problem correctly by (...) stating that from the contemporary standpoint on the one hand every sort of methodological mind—body dualism is obsolete, because the mainstream of research has adopted a methodological physicalism along with an anti-foundationalistic epistemology; yet on the other hand our common sense view of psychic and thus also of intentional phenomena, which is inclined towards just such a dualism, must be taken into consideration. The systematic task thus consists in describing the particular quality of psychic phenomena in such a manner that this description "is compatible with methodological naturalism" (47). Kappner's main concern is thus the attempt to anchor the intentionality of thoughts and of human consciousness in more primitive forms of intentionality which are already exhibited by non-psychic goal-oriented natural processes. The solution to this task must accomplish two things: firstly, Kappner must justify the distinction between three types of "carriers" of "intentionality": concrete objects which intentionally contain an object in themselves, i.e. signs (381f.): Ch. 7; organisms which are capable of producing "inner signs for the simulation of external processes" (cf. 320–326: insightful behavior) (382f): Ch. 8; organisms which are capable of understanding this production as their own (self-consciousness) (383): Ch. 9. I will call this distinction the "internal differentiation thesis" (IDT). Secondly, Kappner must demonstrate that these three types of carriers are founded in one another. Over and above this, Kappner asserts that sign-intentionality is founded in something which he (with Arno Ros, 263, cf. 144) calls "quasi-intentionality" (Ch. 6). I will call this the "founding thesis" (FT). Obviously FT presupposes IDT, but not vice versa. Kappner claims to have successfully concluded such an ambitious naturalization program (342). Even when one [End Page 439] does not always agree with the partial solutions of Kappner, reading the book is definitely rewarding, as it shows in what a precisely differentiated manner one can reflect on a central problem of the "philosophy of mind" using Peirce's array of semiotic instruments.The reader is, naturally, astonished to hear the name Peirce in the context of a program for the naturalization of intentionality, for Peirce himself never used the concepts of "intention" and "intentionality" in the sense in which Brentano used them (47, 66), and himself clearly espoused an antifoundationalism and a methodological monism—but never a methodological naturalism; rather its opposite, namely a methodological idealism which can only conceive of physical properties as derived from psychic properties (synechism; 50–54). The reader is all the more eager to see how Kappner will prove his thesis to the effect that Peirce nevertheless has made a systematic contribution to the solution of the problem of intentionality under contemporary conditions. The decisive methodological step of Kappner (60) in Ch. 2 consists in declaring Peirce's metaphysics to be independent of his epistemic realism, which holds reality to be independent of the subject's mode of access to this reality. It is first at the end of the work that Kappner can precisely formulate what he means by Peircean naturalism: "For [Peirce], it is not primarily a question of how in (mere) thought relations to real things can be produced [as it is for Brentano and Husserl], but rather the opposite, namely how the progressive distancing of humans from the linguistic or mentally denoted object was and is possible [ellipsis]. In my opinion Peirce's approach can above all for this reason be characterized as 'naturalistic'" (376). This is plausible—of course, only under the assumption (not acknowledged as such by Kappner) that something like a "protodistancing" from the world can already be ascertained in the realm of quasi-intentionality. Nevertheless, Kappner employs two different concepts of "naturalistic": a naturalistic theory of intentionality means (1... (shrink)

Incidences of organizational wrongdoing have become wide spread throughout the whole business world. The management of organizational wrongdoings is of growing concern in organizations globally, since these types of acts can be detrimental to financial well being. Wrongdoing occurs within organizational settings and organizational members commonly have knowledge of and thus the opportunity to report the wrongdoing. An employee’s decision to report individual or organizational misconduct, i.e. blow the whistle, is a complex phenomenon that is based upon organizational, situational and (...) personal factors. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between value orientations of individuals and choices for particular whistleblowing modes. Our results show that there are significant relationships between these variables. We contribute to the extant literature by choosing Turkey as context as most studies have been conducted in the US and Europe, and little has been reported about the actions taken by employees in non-Western cultures when they observe wrongdoing in their organizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 146-149 [Access article in PDF] Gianluca Mori. Bayle philosophe. Paris: Champion, 1999. Pp. 416. Paper, N.P. Stefano Brogi. Teologia senza verità: Bayle contro i "rationaux." Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1998. Pp. 306. Paper, N.P. Why do professional philosophers spend so much time on Descartes and so little time on Pierre Bayle, when Bayle was clearly the better philosopher? I hope that the (...) real answer is not that Bayle wrote too much that is too hard to survey and synthesize, whereas Descartes wrote short works that are easy to teach to undergraduates. Of course, part of any answer will turn on what is meant by "the better philosopher," and [End Page 146] we will return to this issue. If the two books reviewed here get the attention they deserve, Bayle may begin to get more of the attention he deserves.Bayle is well-known for his attacks on Pierre Jurieu, but less well-known are his fights with the 'rationalist' theologian-philosophers Jean LeClerc, Jacques Bernard, and Isaac Jaquelot. They reveal that Bayle was not the automatic supporter of "Enlightenment" of later legend. Stefano Brogi explores these attacks in three of Bayle's last works, the Continuation of the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet (1705; very different from the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet of 1683), Response to Questions of a Provincial (1704-1707), and Conversations between Maxime and Thémiste (1707). Regrettably, none of these—nor any of the works of LeClerc, Bernard, and Jaquelot—have been translated. Greater attention to Descartes may derive from the excellent translations of his work, contrasted with the absence of translations of much of Bayle.Brogi begins with Bayle's reconstruction of "Pyrrho's theology." Faith, in Bayle's hands, is almost completely non-cognitive, accepting the Scripture without understanding it. Rationality, to Bayle, is a second Penelope, unraveling all that it makes. Then Brogi explores what Bayle could have meant by praising Simonides, the ancient Greek who, asked to define God, always asked for more time. He also reviews Bayle's views on euhemerism and the theory of impostorship, and cannot believe Bayle's pretended unawareness of some of the implications of his arguments.The third section, "Ethics against religion," tackles the paradox that Bayle fiercely attacked reason and the argument from consensus for the existence of God, but then invoked reason and consensus as proof of moral claims. In ethics, Bayle's skepticism evaporates. That leads to the further paradox that his rigorous moral evaluation of religion leads to atheism. The ostensible argument is that pagan religions have such immoral gods that it is better not to believe in them; the implication is that the same goes for Judeo-Christianity.It all comes together in Brogi's discussion of "Theology without morality." In his controversies with LeClerc about Origenism (universal salvation) and evil, Bayle brings out the dubious moral consequences of both Origenism and Augustinianism. There is no rational way of saving God's goodness. Then Bayle simply declares his faith in revelation. LeClerc thinks this is bad faith, but he ends up relying on blind faith. Jaquelot argues that God's glory requires the world as it is, but when Bayle asks what glory could come from human suffering, Jaquelot also takes refuge in the inscrutability of God. If anyone thinks these were insignificant controversies, remember that they provoked Leibniz's Theodicy (1710). Austin Farrar once pronounced, exignorantia, that Bayle was "hopelessly confused" ("Introduction," Routledge edition of Leibniz's Theodicy, 1951; now Open Court edition, 35), but Leibniz knew better.Gianluca Mori's book ranges far more widely than Brogi's. It is the best all-around book on Bayle's philosophy in twenty years. Mori begins with a chapter on interpretation, pointing out that everything that Leo Strauss said about encoded language can be found in Bayle. Using Bayle's own claims about such artifices to interpret his work, he explores the writer's ironies, dissimulation, self-censorship, and implied meanings. The interior thoughts of Bayle are unreachable... (shrink)