The Wisdom We're Born With explores the desire to live that we carry with us from birth. While some people may believe that it's impossible to acquire perspective like Gottlieb's without a similarly catastrophic life experience, the fact is that every infant possesses a raw need to keep on going. Gottlieb's book awakens us to the idea of our natural perspective, traces the growth and diminishment of that perspective over the years, and brings us back to advanced age, (...) where it recurs once more. If we are aware of this capacity in ourselves, we can actively nurture it, enabling ourselves to embrace the desire to live and grow every day, whether we're joyful or in the grip of a powerful depression. In a time of anxiety and worry, Gottlieb's words provide comfort and strength-if we can remember the wisdom we're born with, we can possess a limitless energy to keep fighting. (shrink)

A theory is presented to explain how accurate, single-joint movements are controlled. The theory applies to movements across different distances, with different inertial loads, toward targets of different widths over a wide range of experimentally manipulated velocities. The theory is based on three propositions. (1) Movements are planned according to “strategies” of which there are at least two: a speed-insensitive (SI) and a speed-sensitive (SS) one. (2) These strategies can be equated with sets of rules for performing diverse movement tasks. (...) The choice between SI and SS depends on whether movement speed and/or movement time (and hence appropriate muscle forces) must be constrained to meet task requirements. (3) The electromyogram can be interpreted as a low-pass filtered version of the controlling signal to the motoneuron pools. This controlling signal can be modelled as a rectangular excitation pulse in which modulation occurs in either pulse amplitude or pulse width. Movements to different distances and with loads are controlled by the SI strategy, which modulates pulse width. Movements in which speed must be explicitly regulated are controlled by the SS strategy, which modulates pulse amplitude. The distinction between the two movement strategies reconciles many apparent conflicts in the motor control literature. (shrink)

These original essays, never published before, suggest the breadth and richness of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophy and are signs of the contemporary effort to explore the relationship between his system of thought and current philosophical debates. Some of the issues discussed included the relationship between "theoretical" and "practical" reason; the philosophy of language; antifoundationalism; the juridical status of women; duties toward natural beings; and the political implications of the Wissenschaftslehre. In addition, the volume includes an introduciton that surveys the (...) history of Fichte interpretation in the English-speaking world and assesses the current state of Fichte studies. (shrink)

A surprising explosion of interest in J. G. Fichte's system of transcendental philosophy--the so-called Wissenschaftslehre or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge"--has occurred in recent decades. Whereas previous interest in Fichte centered primarily upon the early works which he published while in Jena and was concerned to establish his position on the mythical stairway stretching from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the most interesting recent work focuses upon his later, often unpublished, writings and makes large (...) claims concerning the originality and contemporary relevance of the WL. Despite a blizzard of new monographs and essays, a general overview of Fichte's entire work from the perspective of current research has been lacking. This lack is now remedied with the publication of this new Introduction to Fichte's thought by a noted exponent of the prevailing "Munich school" of Fichte interpreters, Joachim Widmann, who is best known for his highly original and rigorously formal study of Fichte's spring 1804 lectures on the WL. (shrink)

The selected proceedings of a meeting on the German idealist philosopher (1762-1814), held at Duquesne U., Pittsburgh, in February 1992. Among the topics in 13 papers: Fichte's dialectical imagination; Fichte and the typology of mysticism; Leibniz and Fichte; and Fichte and the relationship between right and morality. Includes an excellent 29-page bibliography. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The philosophical thought of J. G. Fichte, particularly his later work, is at the very center of the paradigm shift under way in the field of German idealism. Crucial to this reassessment is Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo_ of 1796 to 1799, the manuscript at the heart of this essay colleciton and an articulation of the philosopher's _Wissenschaftslehre,_ or overall system of philosophy, which he discussed in lectures at the University of Jena. Coherent, comprehensive, and edited by two of the foremost (...) Fichte scholars in the world, the essays provide a much needed introduction to the major themes of the most important period of Fichte's philosophical thought--and thus to German idealism itself--and make a persuasive case for the originality and continuing significance of the later Jena _Wissenschaftslehre._. (shrink)

Rammenau is a tiny village situated in the lovely Oberlausitz countryside east of Dresden. It is a village with two claims to fame: it possesses a large and well-preserved early eighteenth century Baroque palace, which now contains an elegant restaurant, hotel, and museum; and it is also the birthplace of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The modest house where Fichte was born in 1762 no longer survives, but the village still includes several structures from the time of Fichte, including the church (...) where he was baptized and the school where the future philosopher was enrolled before his serendipitous “discovery,” at the age of nine, by Baron von Miltitz, who was so astonished by the extraordinary intellectual talents of the young Fichte that he offered to sponsor his study at Schulpforta and elsewhere. The village also contains several other reminders of its most famous son, including various monuments and, in the palace itself, a three-room “Fichte museum.”. (shrink)

A surprising explosion of interest in J. G. Fichte's system of transcendental philosophy--the so-called Wissenschaftslehre or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge"--has occurred in recent decades. Whereas previous interest in Fichte centered primarily upon the early works which he published while in Jena and was concerned to establish his position on the mythical stairway stretching from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the most interesting recent work focuses upon his later, often unpublished, writings and makes large (...) claims concerning the originality and contemporary relevance of the WL. Despite a blizzard of new monographs and essays, a general overview of Fichte's entire work from the perspective of current research has been lacking. This lack is now remedied with the publication of this new Introduction to Fichte's thought by a noted exponent of the prevailing "Munich school" of Fichte interpreters, Joachim Widmann, who is best known for his highly original and rigorously formal study of Fichte's spring 1804 lectures on the WL. (shrink)

Theories of the representation of specific kinetic and spatiotem-poral features of movement range from the explicit assertion that temporal aspects of movement are not represented to the idea that they are represented and that they have neurophysiological correlates. Jeannerod's thesis is that mental and visual images have common mechanisms and that there is a link between the image to move and the mechanisms involved with movement. The target article takes the position that certain parameters are coded in motor representations but (...) that the duration of an action is not one of them. This position is based on the work of Gottlieb et al. and of Decety et al.. Both these studies are worth considering in detail. In Note 1, Jeannerod suggests that: “in time-constrained tasks subjects control the amplitude parameter of force impulses, whereas in spatially constrained tasks the duration of the force impulse is affected by accuracy demands.” This is not exactly correct. Excitation pulse intensity is modulated both in tasks that require spatial and those that require temporal accuracy. Excitation pulse duration is modulated for changes in movement distance and inertial load. If subjects are required to be very accurate spatially, they will move at less than maximum speed for a given distance and this is achieved by lower levels of excitation intensity. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished papers dealing with the neglected "phenomenological" dimension of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which it compares and contrasts to the phenomenology of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and to that of Edmund Husserl and his 20th century followers. Issues discussed include: phenomenological method, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, temporality, intentionality, mind and body, and the drives. In addition to Fichte, authors discussed include: Hegel, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Ricur.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a widely known transcendental philosopher and obviously a thinker of the first rank. Yet contemporary interest in and evaluation of "transcendental philosophy" as well as the precise meaning of the terms and its relation to "transcendental method" remains unclear. With renewed attention to German idealism in general and to Fichte in particular, this timely collection of new papers will be of interest to anyone concerned with transcendental philosophy, German idealism, modern German philosophy, and transcendental arguments.

The German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, has long been recognized as an important and original figure in the history of philosophy and Western thought and as a seminal influence upon the Romantic tradition. This book focuses on Fichte's contributions in political theory as set out in his Foundations of Natural Right. The essays, which examine such issues as Fichte as a social contract theorist, his theory of gender relations and his theories on punishment and the criminal law among many (...) other topics, remedy what has been a striking lacuna in the existing scholarly literature. (shrink)

Fichte’s Ethical Thought follows a format familiar to those who have read Allen Wood’s books on the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel: Wood integrates Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work into topical chapters, each discussing an important component of Fichte’s ethical system. The text he focuses on, of course, is Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics, but Fichte scholars will likely be pleased to find that Wood discusses a wide range of Fichte’s Jena-era writings. Wood makes use (...) of Addresses to the German Nation, The Closed Commercial State, and earlier works such as Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, especially in the final two chapters, which cover Fichte’s thought on public life, the... (shrink)

"FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book reviews. It is co-edited by Daniel Breazeale and David W. Wood, with associate editor Kienhow Goh. -/- .

This issue 23 of FICHTEANA is dedicated to Daniel Breazeale, who passed away on 30 December 2023. -/- "FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an annual online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book (...) reviews. Editors: Daniel Breazeale (†) and David W. Wood; with associate editors Kienhow Goh and Gesa Wellmann. -/- . (shrink)

How would we regard a composer of the stature of Beethoven, if only his early works, original and accomplished though they are, were known to us—such as the fir.

This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or "phronesis"--an excellence of deliberating and making choices--which ...

Salomon Maimon, philosophischer Autodidakt und wichtiger zeitgenössischer Kritiker Kants, schreibt in einem Kommentar, dass er angesichts des Spinozismus 'vor dem Nichts zurück schaudert'. An anderer Stelle heisst es, jene Philosophie sei 'das akosmische System'. Die schwerwiegende inhärente Problematik dieser Äusserungen wird in dem vorliegenden Band ausführlich diskutiert. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, was es mit Maimons komplexer Beziehung zur Philosophie Spinozas auf sich hat. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass es dort zu erheblichen Kollisionen verschiedenartiger Vorstellungen vom Intellekt kommt, vom menschlichen wie (...) göttlichen. Letztlich geht es in diesem jahrhunderteübergreifenden Disput um nicht weniger als um eine tiefgreifende Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Welt, Gott und menschlichem Denken.Indem verschiedene Zweige der Philosophie Maimons in Bezug zueinander gesetzt werden und damit ein facettenreiches Gesamtbild ergeben, wird der Versuch eines neuartigen Zugangs zu seiner Philosophie insgesamt unternommen. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

Numerous jurisdictions have recently raised the age of retirement or plan to do so. Pressure to extend people's working lives is due to population aging, which makes it harder to fund retirement through existing methods. Raising the retirement age can improve the ‘dependency ratio’ by increasing the fraction of the population that works (and pays taxes) relative to the fraction retired. This article gives sustained attention to connecting the case for retirement with one view about wellbeing, according to which old (...) age is subject to distinctive goods. The importance of being able to access these goods in old age favours an eventual exit from labour market participation that retirement provisions enable. This view is stronger than one that treats retirement as merely a safety net to enable people to stop work only when advanced aging makes it unreasonably burdensome. At the same time, the view likely does not justify status quo retirement ages, meaning that some increase to the retirement age might be defensible. The article also seeks to illuminate ways in which different aspects of population aging – in particular the distinction between dependency ratios and inequalities in longevity – bear differently on the wider debate about justice and retirement. (shrink)

There’s the question of what there is, and then there’s the question of what ultimately exists. Many contend that, once we have this distinction clearly in mind, we can see that there is no sensible debate to be had about whether there are such things as properties or tables or numbers, and that the only ontological question worth debating is whether such things are ultimate (in one or another sense). I argue that this is a mistake. Taking debates about ordinary (...) objects as a case study, I show that the arguments that animate these debates bear directly on the question of which objects there are and cannot plausibly be recast as arguments about what’s ultimate. I then address the objection that, because they are easy answerable, questions about what there is cannot be a proper subject of ontological debate. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction that illuminates the field of theory through a variety of useful and relevant examples. Covering all key theories and theorists, this book looks at the relation of theory to form, discourses, subjectivity, media and networks, and environments. Organized thematically, Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory illuminates the field by focusing on the concepts and methodologies of key thinkers, while also providing historical introductions that contextualize the latest (...) developments with regard to forms; discourses; subjectivities and embodiments; media, networks, and machines; and animals, affects, objects, and environments. Each chapter includes examples from a canonical novel, a contemporary text, and a new media artefact, while textboxes regularly introduce additional emerging or overlooked theorists of interest. An ideal guide for undergraduates studying literary theory, this book will give readers the background they need to continue their own fruitful explorations of this vibrant field of study. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

In each of these areas, he reviews the contributions of earlier care theorists and then extends their arguments to provide a more complete description of the ...

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms (...) to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best it will leave you much better off than you otherwise would have been. Thus, it (...) is a good, no-risk bet; in game-theoretic terms, cryonics is a weakly dominant strategy relative to refraining from utilizing cryonics. I object to this argument for two reasons. First, I argue that there is a practically relevant chance that cryonics will put you into an inescapable and very bad situation. Hence, cryonics is neither a no-risk bet nor a weakly dominant strategy. Second, I argue that the experience of being reanimated and living in the distant future would likely be transformative, and this likelihood undermines your justification for thinking that reanimation would be beneficial to you. I conclude that the standard argument does not show that cryonics is prudentially justified. (shrink)

Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar argues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through (...) exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields. (shrink)

The paper aims to offer an account of the cognitive capacities involved in judgements about thought experiments, without appealing to the notions of analyticity or intuition. I suggest that we employ a competence in the application of the relevant concepts. In order to address the worry that this suggestion is not explanatory, I look at some theories of concepts discussed in psychology, and I use them to illustrate how such competence might be realized. This requires, crucially, distinguishing between concepts and (...) ways of applying concepts, or conceptions. I end by considering a possible objection and comparing my account with a similar one defended by David Papineau. (shrink)

Syntax and semantics in Łukasiewicz infinite-valued sentential logic Ł are harmonized by revising the Bolzano-Tarski paradigm of “semantic consequence,” according to which, θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} follows from Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} iff every valuation v that satisfies all formulas in Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} also satisfies θ.\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta.$$\end{document} For θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} (...) \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} to be a consequence of Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document}, we also require that any infinitesimal perturbation of v that preserves the truth of all formulas of Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} also preserves the truth of θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document}. An elementary characterization of Łukasiewicz implication shows that the Łukasiewicz axiom →Y)→→X)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \rightarrow Y ) \rightarrow \rightarrow X )$$\end{document} guarantees the continuity and the piecewise linearity of the implication operation →\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\rightarrow $$\end{document}, an appropriate fault-tolerance property of any logic of [0,1]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\,\mathrm{[0,1]}\,}}$$\end{document}-valued observables. The directional derivability of the functions coded by all ψ∈Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi \in \Theta $$\end{document} and by θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} then provides a quantitative formulation of our refinement of Bolzano-Tarski consequence, which turns out to coincide with the time-honored syntactic Ł-consequence. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate the view that quantitative parsimony is a theoretical virtue: that is, we should be concerned not only to minimize the number of kinds of entities postulated by our theories (i. e. maximize qualitative parsimony), but we should also minimize the number of entities postulated which fall under those kinds. In order to motivate this view, I consider two cases from the history of science: the postulation of the neutrino and the proposal of Avogadro's hypothesis. I (...) also consider two issues concerning how a principle of quantitative parsimony should be framed. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

The pessimistic hypothesis is the hypothesis that life is bad for us, in the sense that we are worse off for having come into existence. Suppose this hypothesis turns out to be correct — existence turns out to be more of a burden than a gift. A natural next thought is that we should stop having children. But I contend that this is a mistake; procreation would often be permissible even if the pessimistic hypothesis turned out to be correct. Roughly, (...) this is because we are often in a position to know that future people will approve of having been created, and their approval will not be inappropriate even if they are worse off for having been created. And our respect for the attitudes of future people can permit us to create them. (shrink)

Can Marxism still serve the American left? "History and Subjectivity" answers this question by synthesizing the conflict perspectives of traditional Marxism, Western and neo-Marxism, socialist-feminism, and various minority political movements into a comprehensive and original social theory. Roger Gottlieb argues convincingly that a properly transformed Marxism must understand how socialisation processes and political structures and experiences have joined the mode of production as socially primary. Drawing on resources from Marxist philosophy, political economy, feminism, Western Marxism, and from detailed historical (...) studies of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and the American left, Gottlieb has produced a sweeping synthesis of existing Marxist thought and an original and compelling social theory. In this edition, Roger Gottlieb has added a new introduction addressing the central questions that have emerged since the book's first publication. These include the effect on Marxist theory of the fall of communism, the theoretical challenge of postmodernism, the environmental crisis, and the rise of modern spiritual movements. The book is challenging and complex, yet clearly written and accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It will provoke a strong response from any scholar concerned with the present status and future possibilities of Marxist theory. (shrink)

This anthology brings together new essays by leading figures in contemporary philosophy, scholars whose work is well known not only to the entire community of academic philosophy, but to many in the associated fields of sociology, women's studies, literary theory, and political science. Defining for the first time the boundaries and accomplishments of a body of work deeply critical of both the philosophical and the social dimensions of domination, the collection draws on diverse traditions and social movements. These include feminism, (...) critical theory, Marxism, deconstruction, democratic socialism, theories of race and ethnicity, deep ecology, and politicized spirituality. The contributors use these resources to comprehend and indict the present social order and to help us imagine a more just, liberating, and fulfilling society. In his lucid Introduction, Roger S. Gottlieb describes the formative contexts, achievements, and dilemmas of radical philosophy. Essays in Part I, Tradition, challenge the pretensions of philosophy in epistemology, ethics, and the theory of human nature. These articles unveil the social oppression hidden behind self-proclaimed attempts at Grand and Unbiased Philosophical Reason. In Part II, Counter-Tradition, the contributors engage with today's dominant critical perspectives and show how multi-faceted, rich, and sometimes confusing these perspectives are. Their topics include issues of exploitation, democracy, and justice; the current status of Marxism; the impact of deep ecology on radical theory; and some dilemmas faced by cultural feminism. Part III, Politics, addresses questions about contemporary North American political and cultural life. The essaysexamine relations among varying types of oppression, the experience of community and communities, the possibilities of fundamental political change, and the representation of difference in popular culture. (shrink)

In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics.