It is nowadays a commonplace of Kant-interpretation that Kant's response to Hume in the Analogies of Experience is not strictly speaking a refutation of Hume but in fact only an extended critical response to Hume's skeptical accounts of object-identity and causation, that also accepts many of Hume's working assumptions. But this approach can significantly underestimate the extent to which Kant's conception of the representational mind is radically distinct from Hume's. In particular, Kant's conception of the human mind's innately-specified spontaneous actions (...) as ultimate sources of the veridical representation of both logical and metaphysical necessity in the world of objective experience, if correct, entails a flat-out rejection of Hume's conception of the human mind's merely projectivist abilities and activities. This in turn entails that, to this extent, the Analogies contain not only a critical response to Hume, but also a flat-out refutation of Hume. (shrink)

Sadi Carnot’s 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire created the new science of thermodynamics. It succeeded in its audacious goal of finding a very general theory of the efficiency of heat engines, by introducing and exploiting the strange and unexpected notion of a thermodynamically reversible process. The notion is internally contradictory. It requires the states of these processes to be both in unchanging equilibrium, with a perfect balance of driving forces, while also changing. The work of Sadi’s father, (...) Lazare Carnot, on the efficiency of ordinary machines provided Sadi with a template of a very general theory of the efficiency of ordinary machines; and a characterization of the most efficient processes in them as those that minimize differences of driving forces and can be run in reverse. Lazare’s work could provide these resources because of its choice of a dissipative ontology of inelastic collisions among hard bodies. This historically ill-fated choice meant that Lazare’s machines were analogous to Sadi’s heat engines in their key aspects: they are built from essentially dissipative processes. Lazare’s strategies for controlling dissipation and optimizing his machines were transferrable to the analogous problems Sadi found in heat engines. The unanswerable historical question is whether Sadi would have sought a general theory of heat engines at all or found these general theoretical devices without the template provided in analogy by the prior work of Lazare. (shrink)

The cultural, economic and political crisis affecting the European Union (EU) today is manifested in the political community’s lack of enthusiasm and cohesion. An effort to reverse this situation – foster ‘EU identity’ – was the creation of EU citizenship. Citizen- ship implies a people and a polity. But EU citizens already belong to national polities. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship can overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on (...) the body of laws that members of the post- national polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy, by contrast, think that EU citizens should form a mixed commonwealth, with political belonging based on national citizenship. I will argue in favour of the second option, and submit an analogical reading of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist EU citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity in a ‘mixed’ polity. Its main challenge is how to keep the diverse, mixed polity together. (shrink)

Structural analogies connect Williamson’s epistemology and action theory: for example, action is the direction-of-fit mirror image of knowledge, and knowledge stands to belief as action stands to intention. These structural analogies, for Williamson, are meant to illuminate more generally how ‘mirrors’ reversing direction of fit should be understood as connecting the spectrum of our cognitive and practically oriented mental states. This paper has two central aims, one negative and the other positive. The negative aim is to highlight some intractable problems (...) with Williamson’s preferred analogical picture, which links the cognitive and the practical through the nexus of direction-of-fit mirroring. The positive aim of the paper is to propose a better alternative. In particular, we show that an achievement-theoretic proposal captures what is in common across the range of attitudes that exhibit the kind of structure that knowledge-belief, action-desire/intention do, while at the same time avoiding the problems shown to face Williamson’s proposed picture. Moreover, we draw attention to several key theoretical benefits of embracing our proposed achievement-theoretic picture, including some of the key benefits of the knowledge-first programme that Williamson’s own analogies were designed to secure. (shrink)

Reverse mathematics is a program in the foundations of mathematics. It provides an elegant classification in which the majority of theorems of ordinary mathematics fall into only five categories, based on the “big five” logical systems. Recently, a lot of effort has been directed toward finding exceptional theorems, that is, those which fall outside the big five. The so-called reverse mathematics zoo is a collection of such exceptional theorems. It was previously shown that a number of uniform versions (...) of the zoo theorems, that is, where a functional computes the objects stated to exist, fall in the third big five category, arithmetical comprehension, inside Kohlenbach’s higher-order reverse mathematics. In this paper, we extend and refine these previous results. In particular, we establish analogous results for recent additions to the reverse mathematics zoo, thus establishing that the latter disappear at the uniform level. Furthermore, we show that the aforementioned equivalences can be proved using only intuitionistic logic. Perhaps most surprisingly, these explicit equivalences are extracted from nonstandard equivalences in Nelson’s internal set theory, and we show that the nonstandard equivalence can be recovered from the explicit ones. Finally, the following zoo theorems are studied in this paper: Π10G, FIP, 1-GEN, OPT, AMT, SADS, AST, NCS, and KPT. (shrink)

While the coffee house as a space of political deliberation has been a common feature across the globe, there are few historical cases in which one can analyze the role of such face-to-face political deliberation under totalitarian moments in heretofore democratic states. Of the analogous cases of democratic reversal, India is one of the most important and under-researched. In 1975, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was convicted of corrupt election practices. Rather than concede to the high court ruling, she suspended (...) the constitution and installed herself as India’s sole political authority. The Indian Coffee House in New Delhi became the key site of resistance to the Emergency. The totalitarian moment pushed contentious politics into the Coffee House, initially galvanizing it: even the older members of Indira Gandhi's Congress Party, who were active participants in India's Freedom Movement, were key participants in coffee house deliberations. Eventually, however, Indian Coffee House was bulldozed and political deliberation crushed. The space of the coffee house may foster political deliberation among different viewpoints, but when interaction is concentrated in one such space, it becomes easier for the state and its agents to suppress oppositional politics and more difficult for both establishment and oppositional politics themselves to retain a diversified public sphere character. While coffee houses and analogous institutions are not adequate substitutes for other forms of democratic politics, therefore, they can encourage expression when other avenues are closed off and nourish the memory of a democratic political culture for the future. (shrink)

How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work (...) of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art. (shrink)

The analogy between artificial selection of domestic varieties and natural selection in nature was a vital element of Darwin's argument in his Origin of Species. Ever since, the image of breeders creating new varieties by artificial selection has served as a convincing illustration of how the theory works. In this paper I argue that we need to reconsider our understanding of Darwin's analogy. Contrary to what is often assumed, nineteenth-century animal breeding practices constituted a highly controversial field that (...) was fraught with difficulties. It was only with considerable effort that Darwin forged his analogy, and he only succeeded by downplaying the importance of two other breeding techniques - crossing of varieties and inbreeding - that many breeders deemed essential to obtain new varieties. Part of the explanation for Darwin's gloss on breeding practices, I shall argue, was that the methods of his main informants, the breeders of fancy pigeons, were not representative of what went on in the breeding world at large. Darwin seems to have been eager to take the pigeon fanciers at their word, however, as it was only their methods that provided him with the perfect analogy with natural selection. Thus while his studies of domestic varieties were important for the development of the concept of natural selection, the reverse was also true: Darwin's comprehension of breeding practices was moulded by his understanding of the working of natural selection in nature. Historical studies of domestic breeding practices in the eighteenth and nineteenth century confirm that, besides selection, the techniques of inbreeding and crossing were much more important than Darwin's interpretation allowed for. And they still are today. This calls for a reconsideration of the pedagogic use of Darwin's analogy too. (shrink)

Since USA constitutional precedent established in 1976, adolescents have increasingly been afforded the right to access contraception without first obtaining parental consent or authorisation. There is general agreement this ethically permissible. However, long-acting reversible contraception methods have only recently been prescribed to the adolescent population. They are currently the most effective forms of contraception available and have high compliance and satisfaction rates. Yet unlike other contraceptives, LARCs are associated with special procedural risks because they must be inserted and removed by (...) trained healthcare providers. It is unclear whether the unique invasive nature of LARC changes the traditional ethical calculus of permitting adolescent decision-making in the realm of contraception. To answer this question, we review the risk–benefit profile of adolescent LARC use. Traditional justifications for permitting adolescent contraception decision-making authority are then considered in the context of LARCs. Finally, analogous reasoning is used to evaluate potential differences between permitting adolescents to consent for LARC procedures versus for emergency and pregnancy termination procedures. Ultimately, we argue that the invasive nature of LARCs does not override adolescents’ unique and compelling need for safe and effective forms of contraception. In fact, LARCs may oftentimes be in the best interest of adolescent patients who wish to prevent unintended pregnancy. We advocate for the specific enumeration of adolescents’ ability to consent to both LARC insertion and removal procedures within state policies. Given the provider-dependent nature of LARCs and the stigma regarding adolescent sexuality, special political and procedural safeguards to protect adolescent autonomy are warranted. (shrink)

The structuralist theory of truth approximation essen-tially deals with truth approximation by theory revision for a fixed domain. However, variable domains can also be taken into account, where the main changes concern domain extensions and restrictions. In this paper I will present a coherent set of definitions of “more truth-likeness”, “empirical progress” and “truth approximation” due to a revision of the domain of intended applications. This set of definitions seems to be the natural counterpart of the basic definitions of similar (...) notions as far as theory revision is concerned. The formal aspects of theory revision strongly suggest an analogy between truth approximation and design research, for example, drug research. Whereas a new drug may be better for a certain disease than an old one, a certain drug may be better for another disease than for the original target disease, a phenomenon which was nicely captured by the title of a study by Rein Vos [1991]: Drugs Looking for Diseases. Similarly, truth approximation may not only take the shape of theory revision but also of domain revision, naturally suggesting the phenomenon of “Theories looking for domains”. However, whereas Vos documented his title with a number of examples, so far, apart from plausible cases of “truth accumulation by domain extension”, I did not find clear-cut empirical instantiations of the analogy, only, as such, very interesting, non-empirical examples. (shrink)

The debate on “cognitive enhancement” has moved from discussions about enhancement in adults to enhancement in children and adolescents. Similar to positions expressed in the adult context, some have argued that pediatric cognitive enhancement is acceptable and even laudable. However, the implications differ between the adult and the pediatric contexts. For example, in the debate over cognitive enhancement in adults, i.e., those who have legal majority, respect for autonomy demands that personal preferences not be overridden in absence of strong arguments (...) because competent adults are in the best position to recognize and protect their own interests. However, the concepts of best interest and autonomy provide a different picture in the case of pediatric enhancement. In the context of decision-making involving minors, it is assumed that the parents are in the best position to promote and protect the interests of their children and this is chiefly why they are granted the authority to make decisions on their behalf. However, we argue in favor of guarding the physical integrity of children from intrusive medical interventions without medical need and with clear and detrimental effects. We also support leaving open other legitimate life trajectory and career choices, as this is in the best interest of the child, even if they are less in line with the expectations of parents or success in educational settings. In addition, parental decision-making in favor of cognitive enhancement suffers from a lack of information about cognitive enhancers and potential biases. Thus, bearing in mind these issues and the development of volitional capacities of children, we argue that pediatric enhancement is not a morally acceptable practice and “inevitability” can be curbed with clear and fair rules that establish duties of state representatives, physicians, and public institutions. We conclude by canvassing evidence-based policy options that could protect the open future of minors and define the parameters of parental decision-making analogous to the cases of nicotine and alcohol. (shrink)

Every philosophical mode has a unique conceptual system. Qi has consistently been a fundamental part of ancient Chinese philosophy, and its significance is obvious. Guided by the idea of re-evaluating all values, Yan Fu, who was deeply influenced by Western philosophy and logic, used reverse analogical interpretation to present a new explanation of the traditional Chinese concept of qi. Qi thus evolved into basic physical particles. Yan’s philosophical effort has great significance: The logical ambiguity that had haunted qi was (...) overcome. However, qi gradually evolved into a particular existence as it was Westernized. It completely lost its internal flavor as indigenous Chinese philosophy. Its previous philosophical abstraction and universality diminished and at the same time it was not Westernized into the pure concept of Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the conciliatory-steadfast debate occurring within social epistemology in regards to the phenomenon of peer disagreement. I will argue, because the conciliatory perspective al-lows us to understand argumentation pragmatically—as a method of problem-solving within a community rather than as a method for obtaining the truth—that in most cases, we should not simply agree to disagree.

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their functionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adaptations, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In particular, (...) the analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an opportunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would suggest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to implement novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engineering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engineering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to suggest how the kantian conception of aesthetic experience of nature can illuminate some demands posed by the actual ecological consciousness. Main topics of our exposition would be the reversible analogy Kant supposes between art and nature, the kantian concept of a "technic of nature", the recognised priority of aesthetic experience of natural beauty within kantian Aesthetics and the function that she plays in the whole architectonics of the Critique of Judgment, namely making (...) possible the transition from aesthetic judgment of nature to the teleological appreciation and representation of nature as artist and as a great system of ends.O objetivo deste ensaio é propor uma interpretação daquilo que para muitos intérpretes constitui o enigma e a dificuldade maior da terceira Crítica de Kant: o fato de o filósofo remeter para a mesma faculdade do espírito e para o mesmo princípio transcendental de apreciação o fenômeno da arte humana e os fenômenos da natureza organizada - a estética e a teleologia. Na leitura que propomos, tentamos perceber a fecundidade dessa estranha associação precisamente para permitir pensar alguns dos problemas que coloca atualmente a racionalidade ecológica, não aquela que visa excluir o homem da natureza como seu inimigo, mas uma consciência ecológica que defenda uma natureza viva com homens sensíveis, com seres humanos tais que não pensam já a sua relação com a natureza como sendo uma relação de meros "senhores e possuidores" frente a um objeto inerte e destituído de valor e de significação por si mesmo, mas que são capazes de contemplar e apreciar a natureza como valiosa por si mesma, de reconhecê-la como um sistema de sistemas finalizados e de colaborar na sua preservação, que têm até perante ela genuínos sentimentos de admiração pela sua beleza, de respeito pela sua sublimidade e de gratidão pela sua exuberância e favores. Em suma, propomo-nos mostrar a nova atitude perante a natureza que se deixa pensar a partir da Crítica do Juízo, considerada esta obra na sua complexidade sistemática. (shrink)

We determine the computational complexity of the Hahn-Banach Extension Theorem. To do so, we investigate some basic connections between reverse mathematics and computable analysis. In particular, we use Weak König's Lemma within the framework of computable analysis to classify incomputable functions of low complexity. By defining the multivalued function Sep and a natural notion of reducibility for multivalued functions, we obtain a computational counterpart of the subsystem of second-order arithmetic WKL0. We study analogies and differences between WKL0 and the (...) class of Sep-computable multivalued functions. Extending work of Brattka, we show that a natural multivalued function associated with the Hahn-Banach Extension Theorem is Sep-complete. (shrink)

Goncharov and Peretyat'kin independently gave necessary and sufficient conditions for when a set of types of a complete theory is the type spectrum of some homogeneous model of. Their result can be stated as a principle of second order arithmetic, which is called the Homogeneous Model Theorem (HMT), and analyzed from the points of view of computability theory and reverse mathematics. Previous computability theoretic results by Lange suggested a close connection between HMT and the Atomic Model Theorem (AMT), which (...) states that every complete atomic theory has an atomic model. The authors show that HMT and AMT are indeed equivalent in the sense of reverse mathematics, as well as in a strong computability theoretic sense and do the same for an analogous result of Peretyat'kin giving necessary and sufficient conditions for when a set of types is the type spectrum of some model. (shrink)

The stable Ramsey's theorem for pairs has been the subject of numerous investigations in mathematical logic. We introduce a weaker form of it by restricting from the class of all stable colorings to subclasses of it that are nonnull in a certain effective measure-theoretic sense. We show that the sets that can compute infinite homogeneous sets for nonnull many computable stable colorings and the sets that can compute infinite homogeneous sets for all computable stable colorings agree below $\emptyset'$ but not (...) in general. We also answer the analogs of two well-known questions about the stable Ramsey's theorem by showing that our weaker principle does not imply COH or WKL 0 in the context of reverse mathematics. (shrink)

I examine the treatment of metaphor by medieval logicians and how it stemmed from their reception of classical texts in logic, grammar, and rhetoric. I consider the relation of the word 'metaphor' to the notions of translatio and transumptio, and show that it is not always synonymous with these. I also show that in the context of commentaries on the Sophistical Refutations metaphor was subsumed under equivocation. In turn, it was linked with the notion of analogy not so much (...) in the Greek sense of a similarity between two proportions or relations as in the new medieval sense of being said secundum prius et posterius. Whether or not analogy could be reduced to metaphor, or the reverse, depended on the controversial issue of the number of acts of imposition needed to produce an equivocal term. A spectrum of views is canvassed, including those found in the logic commentaries of John Duns Scotus. (shrink)

We show that the maximal linear extension theorem for well partial orders is equivalent over RCA0 to ATR0. Analogously, the maximal chain theorem for well partial orders is equivalent to ATR0 over RCA0.

Introduction. Flesh and its reversibility ; Defining the baroque ; 'Good looking' ; A cinema of baroque flesh -- 1. Flesh, cinema and the baroque : the aesthetics of reversibility. Baroque vision and painting the flesh ; Baroque flesh ; Analogous embodiments : the film's body ; Baroque vision and cinema ; Summation : face to face-feeling baroque deixis -- 2. Knots of sensation : co-extensive space and a cinema of the passions. Synaesthesia, phenomenology, and the senses ; Cinesthesia and (...) the Bel composto ; A passionate baroque : emotion, excess, and co-extensive space ; Assault and absorption : cruel baroque ; Summation : beside oneself -- 3. Baroque skin/semiotics. Chiasm : language and experience ; Baroque poetic language and the seventeenth-century infinite ; Baroque luxury ; Skin-deep : baroque texturology ; Tickles : baroque wit ; Summation : cine-mimesis -- 4. One hand films the other : baroque haptics. Touching-touched ; Haptic visuality and the baroque ; Baroque haptics and cinema ; Analogical assemblages : Baroque databases ; Summation: TEXXTURE -- Conclusion : or the baroque 'Beauty of the act'. (shrink)

Classical logic is usually interpreted as the logic of propositions. But from Boole's original development up to modern categorical logic, there has always been the alternative interpretation of classical logic as the logic of subsets of any given (nonempty) universe set. Partitions on a universe set are dual to subsets of a universe set in the sense of the reverse-the-arrows category-theoretic duality--which is reflected in the duality between quotient objects and subobjects throughout algebra. Hence the idea arises of a (...) dual logic of partitions. That dual logic is described here. Partition logic is at the same mathematical level as subset logic since models for both are constructed from (partitions on or subsets of) arbitrary unstructured sets with no ordering relations, compatibility or accessibility relations, or topologies on the sets. Just as Boole developed logical finite probability theory as a quantitative treatment of subset logic, applying the analogous mathematical steps to partition logic yields a logical notion of entropy so that information theory can be refounded on partition logic. But the biggest application is that when partition logic and the accompanying logical information theory are "lifted" to complex vector spaces, then the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics is obtained. Partition logic models indefiniteness (i.e., numerical attributes on a set become more definite as the inverse-image partition becomes more refined) while subset logic models the definiteness of classical physics (an entity either definitely has a property or definitely does not). Hence partition logic provides the backstory so the old idea of "objective indefiniteness" in QM can be fleshed out to a full interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Composition as identity, as I understand it, is a theory of the composite structure of reality. The theory’s underlying logic is irreducibly plural; its fundamental primitive is a generalized identity relation that takes either plural or singular arguments. Strong versions of the theory that incorporate a generalized version of the indiscernibility of identicals are incompatible with the framework of plural logic, and should be rejected. Weak versions of the theory that are based on the idea that composition is merely analogous (...) to identity are too weak to be interesting, lacking in metaphysical consequence. I defend a moderate version according to which composition is a kind of identity, and argue that the difference is metaphysically substantial, not merely terminological. I then consider whether the notion of generalized identity, though fundamental, can be elucidated in modal terms by reverse engineering Hume’s Dictum. Unfortunately, for realists about possible worlds, such as myself,... (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s (1962) “Freedom and Resentment” has provoked a wide range of responses, both positive and negative, and an equally wide range of interpretations. In particular, beginning with Gary Watson, some have seen Strawson as suggesting a point about the “order of explanation” concerning moral responsibility: it is not that it is appropriate to hold agents responsible because they are morally responsible, rather, it is ... well, something else. Such claims are often developed in different ways, but one thing remains (...) constant: they meant to be incompatible with libertarian theories of moral responsibility. The overarching theme of this paper is that extant developments of “the reversal” face a dilemma: in order to make the proposals plausibly anti-libertarian, they must be made to be implausible on other grounds. I canvas different attempts to articulate a “Strawsonian reversal”, and argue that none is fit for the purposes for which it is intended. I conclude by suggesting a way of clarifying the intended thesis: an analogy with the concept of funniness. The result: proponents of the “reversal” need to accept the difficult result that if we blamed small children, they would be blameworthy, or instead explain how their view escapes this result, while still being a view on which our blaming practices “fix the facts” of moral responsibility. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in debates about trust and trustworthiness is that the evaluative norms of principal interest on the trustor’s side of a cooperative exchange regulate trusting attitudes and performances whereas those on the trustee’s side regulate dispositions to respond to trust. The aim here will be to highlight some unnoticed problems with this asymmetrical picture – and in particular, how it elides certain key evaluative norms on both the trustor’s and trustee’s side the satisfaction of which are critical to (...) successful cooperative exchanges – and to show that a symmetrical, ‘achievement-first’ approach to theorising about trust and trustworthiness (and their relation to each other) has important advantages by comparison. The view I develop is guided by a structural analogy with practical reasoning. Just as practical reasoning is working as it should only when there is realisation (knowledge and action) of states (belief and intention) with reverse directions of fits (mind-to-world and world-to-mind), likewise, cooperation between trustor and trustee is functioning as it should only when there is an analogous kind of realisation on both sides of the cooperative exchange – viz., when the trustor ‘matches’ her achievement in trusting (an achievement in fitting reliance to reciprocity) with the trustee’s achievement in responding to trust (an achievement in fitting reciprocity to reliance). An upshot of viewing cooperation between trustor and trustee as exhibiting achievement-theoretic structure is that we will be better positioned to subsume trustworthiness (and its cognates on the trustee’s side), like trust, under a wider suite of evaluative norms that regulate attempts, dispositions, and achievements symmetrically on both sides of a cooperative exchange, with ‘matching achievements’ as the gold standard. (shrink)

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their func- tionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adapta- tions, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. (...) In particular, the analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an oppor- tunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would sug- gest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to imple- ment novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engi- neering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engi- neering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)

Today, mechanisms and mechanistic explanation are very popular in philosophy of science and are deemed a welcome alternative to laws of nature and deductive‐nomological explanation. Starting from Mitchell's pragmatic notion of laws, I cast doubt on their status as a genuine alternative. I argue that (1) all complex‐systems mechanisms ontologically must rely on stable regularities, while (2) the reverse need not hold. Analogously, (3) models of mechanisms must incorporate pragmatic laws, while (4) such laws themselves need not always refer (...) to underlying mechanisms. Finally, I show that Mitchell's account is more encompassing than the mechanistic account *Received August 2008; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, B‐9000 Belgium; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud (...) adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

This paper first investigates logical characterizations of different structures of opposition that extend the square of opposition in a way or in another. Blanché’s hexagon of opposition is based on three disjoint sets. There are at least two meaningful cubes of opposition, proposed respectively by two of the authors and by Moretti, and pioneered by philosophers such as J. N. Keynes, W. E. Johnson, for the former, and H. Reichenbach for the latter. These cubes exhibit four and six squares of (...) opposition respectively. We clarify the differences between these two cubes, and discuss their gradual extensions, as well as the one of the hexagon when vertices are no longer two-valued. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the use of these structures of opposition for discussing the comparison of two items. Comparing two items usually involves a set of relevant attributes whose values are compared, and may be expressed in terms of different modalities such as identity, similarity, difference, opposition, analogy. Recently, J.-Y. Béziau has proposed an “analogical hexagon” that organizes the relations linking these modalities. Elementary comparisons may be a matter of degree, attributes may not have the same importance. The paper studies in which ways the structure of the hexagon may be preserved in such gradual extensions. As another illustration of the graded hexagon, we start with the hexagon of equality and inequality due to R. Blanché and extend it with fuzzy equality and fuzzy inequality. Besides, the cube induced by a tetra-partition can account for the comparison of two items in terms of preference, reversed preference, indifference and non-comparability even if these notions are a matter of degree. The other cube, which organizes the relations between the different weighted qualitative aggregation modes, is more relevant for the attribute-based comparison of items in terms of similarity. (shrink)

Shapiro and Sober claim that Walsh, Ariew, Lewens, and Matthen give a mistaken, a priori defense of natural selection and drift as epiphenomenal. Contrary to Shapiro and Sober’s claims, we first argue that WALM’s explanatory doctrine does not require a defense of epiphenomenalism. We then defend WALM’s explanatory doctrine by arguing that the explanations provided by the modern genetical theory of natural selection are ‘autonomous-statistical explanations’ analogous to Galton’s explanation of reversion to mediocrity and an explanation of the diffusion ofgases. (...) We then argue that whereas Sober’s theory of forces is an adequate description of Darwin’s theory, WALM’s explanatory doctrine is required to understand how themodern genetical theory of natural selection explains large-scale statistical regularities. 1 Introduction2 Shapiro and Sober’s ‘Epiphenomenalism Do’s and Don’ts’3 WALM’s Explanatory Doctrine4 Galton’s Autonomous-Statistical Explanation5 A Second Example: The Statistical Explanation of the Diffusion of Gases6 Distinguishing Two Theories of Evolution by Natural Selection7 A Possible Objection: Are Statistical Laws Sufficient for Explanation?8 Conclusion. (shrink)

We investigate the context of discovery of two significant achievements of twentieth century biochemistry: the chemiosmotic mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation and the dark reaction of photosynthesis. The pursuit of these problems involved discovery strategies such as the transfer, recombination and reversal of previous causal and mechanistic knowledge in biochemistry. We study the operation and scope of these strategies by careful historical analysis, reaching a number of systematic conclusions: even basic strategies can illuminate “hard cases” of scientific discovery that go far (...) beyond simple extrapolation or analogy; the causal–mechanistic approach to discovery permits a middle course between the extremes of a completely substrate-neutral and a completely domain-specific view of scientific discovery; the existing literature on mechanism discovery underemphasizes the role of combinatorial approaches in defining and exploring search spaces of possible problem solutions; there is a subtle interplay between a fine-grained mechanistic and a more coarse-grained causal level of analysis, and both are needed to make discovery processes intelligible. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

We investigate the context of discovery of two significant achievements of twentieth century biochemistry: the chemiosmotic mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation and the dark reaction of photosynthesis. The pursuit of these problems involved discovery strategies such as the transfer, recombination and reversal of previous causal and mechanistic knowledge in biochemistry. We study the operation and scope of these strategies by careful historical analysis, reaching a number of systematic conclusions: even basic strategies can illuminate “hard cases” of scientific discovery that go far (...) beyond simple extrapolation or analogy; the causal–mechanistic approach to discovery permits a middle course between the extremes of a completely substrate-neutral and a completely domain-specific view of scientific discovery; the existing literature on mechanism discovery underemphasizes the role of combinatorial approaches in defining and exploring search spaces of possible problem solutions; there is a subtle interplay between a fine-grained mechanistic and a more coarse-grained causal level of analysis, and both are needed to make discovery processes intelligible. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard tried to argue against what she called the ‘privacy’ of reasons, appealing to Wittgenstein's argument against the possibility of a private language. In recent work she continues to endorse Wittgenstein's perspective on the normativity of meaning, although she now emphasizes that her own argument was only meant to be analogous to the private language argument. The purpose of the present paper is to show that the Wittgensteinian perspective is not only not useful in (...) support of Korsgaard's general project, but that it is positively inimical to it, in two ways. First, Wittgenstein opposes views on which principled or rule-following behavior requires that one be guided by anything like a mental representation of a rule or principle. But for Korsgaard, human action essentially requires this. Second, Wittgenstein systematically attempts to de-emphasize the importance of the first-personal perspective, and to emphasize the social functions even of concepts that might seem deployed primarily from that perspective: for example, concepts of sensations and intentions. This is the reverse of Korsgaard's emphasis. The paper also argues, however, that the private language argument does have some implications for a theory of rationality and reasons. (shrink)

Philosophical traditions often bear the seeds of their own destruction.Their seminal insights are achieved in part by ignoring or distorting certain aspects of human experience. Insights and mistakes grow from the same roots. In transitional periods, this dialectic leads to strange reversals in allegiance and to unexpected and even unnoticed shifts in philosophical doctrine. Classical empiricism presents an example of this when one shifts attention from its treatment of epistemological questions to problems of humanaction, or to the relation of knowledge (...) and action. The empiricist analysisof knowledge in terms of the succession and conjoining of ideas and impressions in the mind leaves the mind itself a passive spectator that undergoes its contents. On this view, the human subject lacks any distinctive spontaneity or power of initiative. The mind's internal processes are conceived ofon analogy with Newtonian mechanics and are distinguished by their law-likeregularity. The subject is not, and cannot conceive itself as being, a kindof agency. Historically, the consequences of this are evident in Berkeley's difficulties regarding ‘active spirit’, of which we have ‘notions’ but not perceptions, and in the often remarked upon disparities between Parts I and III of Hume's Treatise. (shrink)

Note: Sections at a more advanced level are indicated by ∞. Preface ix Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 I Nicolaus Copernicus: The Loss of Centrality 3 1 Ptolemy and Copernicus 3 2 A Clash of Two Worldviews 4 2.1 The geocentric worldview 5 2.2 Aristotle’s cosmology 5 2.3 Ptolemy’s geocentrism 9 2.4 A philosophical aside: Outlook 14 2.5 Shaking the presuppositions: Some medieval developments 17 3 The Heliocentric Worldview 20 3.1 Nicolaus Copernicus 21 3.2 The explanation of the seasons 25 3.3 (...) Copernicus and the Copernican turn 28 3.3.1 A philosophical aside: From empirical adequacy to theoretical validity 32 3.4 Copernicus consolidated: Kepler and Galileo 32 4 Copernicus was not a Scientifi c Revolutionary 37 4.1 The Copernican method 39 4.2 The relativity of motion 42 5 The Transition to Newton 43 5.1 On hypotheses 45 6 Some Philosophical Lessons 47 6.1 The loss of centrality 48 6.2 Was Copernicus a realist? 51 6.2.1 Lessons for instrumentalism and realism 52 6.3 Modern realism 55 6.4 The underdetermination of theories by evidence 58 6.4.1 The Duhem--Quine thesis 59 ∞ 6.4.2 The power of constraints 61 ∞ 6.5 Theories, models, and laws 64 ∞ 6.5.1 Theories and models 64 ∞ 6.5.2 Laws of nature, laws of science 68 ∞ 6.5.3 Philosophical views of laws 69 ∞ 6.5.3.1 The inference view 69 ∞ 6.5.3.2 The regularity view 70 ∞ 6.5.3.3 The necessitarian view 73 ∞ 6.5.3.4 The structural view 75 7 Copernicus and Scientifi c Revolutions 77 8 The Anthropic Principle: A Reversal of the Copernican Turn? 83 Reading List 87 Essay Questions 91 II Charles Darwin: The Loss of Rational Design 93 1 Darwin and Copernicus 93 2 Views of Organic Life 94 2.1 Teleology 94 2.1.1 The Great Chain of Being 97 2.1.2 Design arguments 99 2.1.3 Jean Baptiste Lamarck 104 3 Fossil Discoveries 106 3.1 Of bones and skeletons 108 3.2 The antiquity of man 110 4 Darwin’s Revolution 112 4.1 The Darwinian view of life 114 4.1.1 Principles of evolution 116 4.2 The descent of man 119 5 Philosophical Matters 124 5.1 Philosophical presuppositions: Mechanical worldview, determinism, materialism 125 5.2 From biology to the philosophy of mind 129 5.2.1 Empiricism 129 5.2.2 Philosophy of mind 132 5.2.3 Emergent minds 134 5.3 The loss of rational design 136 5.4 Intelligent design 139 6 A Question of Method 143 6.1 Darwinian inferences 143 6.2 Philosophical empiricism 147 6.3 Some principles of elimination 149 ∞ 6.4 Essential features of eliminative induction 150 6.5 Falsifi ability or testability? 155 6.6 Explanation and prediction 157 ∞ 6.7 Some models of scientifi c explanation 159 ∞ 6.7.1 Hempel’s models 160 ∞ 6.7.2 Functional models 161 ∞ 6.7.3 Causal models 163 6.7.3.1 A counterfactual-interventionist account 163 6.7.3.2 A conditional model of causation 165 ∞ 6.7.4 Structural explanations 169 6.8 A brief return to realism 172 6.9 Darwin and scientifi c revolutions 174 6.9.1 Philosophical consequences 176 Reading List 177 Essay Questions 183 III Sigmund Freud: The Loss of Transparency 185 1 Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud 185 2 Some Views of Humankind 187 2.1 Enlightenment views of human nature 188 2.2 Nietzsche’s view of human nature 190 3 Scientism and the Freudian Model of Personality 191 3.1 Freud’s model of the mind 192 3.1.1 A summary of psychoanalytic theory 192 3.1.2 Analogy with physics 195 3.1.3 Freud as an Enlightenment thinker 200 3.1.4 The scientifi c status of the Freudian model 202 3.1.4.1 Freud’s methods 202 ∞ 3.1.4.2 The method of eliminative induction, again 205 3.1.5 Freud stands between the empirical and the hermeneutic models 208 3.1.6 The role of mind in the social world 209 4 The Social Sciences beyond Freud 210 4.1 Two standard models of the social sciences -- some history 210 4.1.1 The naturalistic model 211 4.1.2 The hermeneutic model 213 4.2 Essential features of social science models 218 4.2.1 Essential features of the naturalistic model 218 4.2.2 Essential features of the hermeneutic model 221 4.3 Questions of methodology 224 ∞ 4.3.1 What is Verstehen? 225 ∞ 4.3.2 Weber’s methodology of ideal types 229 ∞ 4.3.3 Verstehen and objectivity 234 ∞ 4.4 Causation in the social sciences 236 ∞ 4.4.1 Weber on causation 236 ∞ 4.4.2 On the existence of social laws 239 4.4.3 Explanation and prediction in the social sciences 242 4.4.4 Underdetermination 243 4.4.5 Realism and relativism 244 ∞ 4.4.6 Reductionism and functionalism 248 5 Evolution and the Social Sciences 253 5.1 Sociobiology -- the fourth revolution? 254 5.2 Evolutionary psychology 257 6 Freud and Revolutions in Thought 261 6.1 Revolutions in thought vs. revolutions in science 263 Reading List 263 Essay Questions 269 Name Index 271 Subject Index 274. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that men should take primary responsibility for protecting against pregnancy. Male long-acting reversible contraceptives are currently in development, and, once approved, should be used as the standard method for avoiding pregnancy. Since women assume the risk of pregnancy when they engage in penis-in-vagina sex, men should do their utmost to ensure that their ejaculations are responsible, otherwise women shoulder a double burden of pregnancy risk plus contraceptive responsibility. Changing the expectations regarding responsibility for contraception would (...) render penis-in-vagina sex more equitable, and could lead to a shift in the discourse around abortion access. I describe the sex asymmetries of contraceptive responsibility and of pregnancy-related risk, and offer arguments in favour of men taking primary responsibility for contraception. My arguments centre on: analogies between contraception and vaccination, and unwanted pregnancy and disease; a veil-of-ignorance approach, in which I contend that if a person were not told their sex, they would find a society in which men were expected to acquire and use effective contraceptives the fairest arrangement for everyone. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable (and non-human) model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test (ACT) as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

Meanings are construed by analogy with offices. But in contrast with similar views, offices are seen as "entities." In the final analysis all offices are reduced to that of stating facts. If the latter thesis were adequately defended the book would mark another reversal of philosophical thinking. But the author limits himself to reviving, restating, and modifying earlier positivist attempts to reduce all meaning to description.--A. P. D. M.

Cohn's (2013) theory of “Visual Narrative Grammar” argues that sequential images take on categorical roles in a narrative structure, which organizes them into hierarchic constituents analogous to the organization of syntactic categories in sentences. This theory proposes that narrative categories, like syntactic categories, can be identified through diagnostic tests that reveal tendencies for their distribution throughout a sequence. This paper describes four experiments testing these diagnostics to provide support for the validity of these narrative categories. In Experiment 1, participants reconstructed (...) unordered panels of a comic strip into an order that makes sense. Experiment 2 measured viewing times to panels in sequences where the order of panels was reversed. In Experiment 3, participants again reconstructed strips but also deleted a panel from the sequence. Finally, in Experiment 4 participants identified where a panel had been deleted from a comic strip and rated that strip's coherence. Overall, categories had consistent distributional tendencies within experiments and complementary tendencies across experiments. These results point toward an interaction between categorical roles and a global narrative structure. (shrink)

In a boldfaced reversal of current British trends, Findlay argues cogently that ethics cannot be sharply distinguished from meta-ethics. Reviving Brentano's theory of intentionality, and elaborating a doctrine of belief and action that acknowledges much debt to Peirce, he attempts to show how valuation is implicit in personal thinking and action and yet strives for an ideal of impersonality. Findlay claims most of reasoning, including evaluation, proceeds by analogical extension of key concepts. The search for the ideal is traced through (...) values of welfare, justice, and duty. Most interesting is Findlay's development of Peirce's doctrine of synechism. The book closes with a discussion of God as the teleological ideal, and includes an appendix on "The Structure of the Kingdom of Ends."--R. C. N. (shrink)

Anaphoric deflationism is a kind of prosententialist account of the use of “true.” It holds that “true” is an expressive operator and not a predicate. In particular, “is true” is explained as a “prosentence.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: As pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their semantic content from previously introduced sentences. So, if Jim says, “The candidate is going to win the election,” and Bill replies (...) “that’s true,” the real meaning of Bill’s statement is “It is true that the candidate is going to win the election.” This kind of prosententialist deflationism around the use of “true,” especially in Robert Brandom’s version, is an explanation given in terms of anaphora. The prosentence is an anaphoric dependent of the sentence providing its content. Båve (Philosophical Studies, 145, 297-310. 2009) argued that the anaphoric account is not as general as prosententialists claim, and that the analogy between prosentences and pronouns is explanatorily idle because it does not do any real explanatory work. The two criticisms are connected: The lack of unity within the anaphoric theory can be used to show its poor explanatory value. The plurality of uses of “is true” exceeds the anaphoric account indeed. Therefore, prosententialism is just a superficial re-description and the real work is done by means of more general semantic terms, namely “semantic equivalence and consequence” between “p” and ““p” is true.” I analyze Båve’s arguments and highlight that he fails to acknowledge the importance of a pragmatic and expressive dimension explained by the anaphoric account, a dimension that semantic “equivalence” and “consequence” are not capable of explaining. I then show that the anaphoric account can actually explain semantic equivalence and consequence, and this is crucial because equivalence and consequence do not explain anaphoric dependence. This reverses the allegation of generality: The anaphoric account is more general. Again, the cases typically used to defend prosententialism, if correctly described, show a unitary structure: They are all versions of lazy anaphoric dependence. Therefore, the unifying principle performing the explanation here is lazy anaphora. (shrink)

The prologue of the Sophistici elenchi is as close an Aristotelian text gets to dealing with language as a subject matter in its own right, only in reverse. Language and its features bear consideration to the extent that they account for some major predicaments discursive reasoning is prone to, both as a separate and as a common endeavour. That being said, the linguistic pitfalls that trick us into thinking that whatever is the case for words and word-compounds is also (...) the case for the things and facts linguistic items stand for reveal as much about good linguistic habits and sound argumentation as they themselves are revealed by the principles and rules our argumentation goes by. In this connection, Aristotle resorted to a curious (or not so curious) analogy between words and counters which played a major role in explaining why language is such a powerful source of illusion and deception. As it happens, Aristotle accounting analogy is a case in point for showcasing the level of sophistication medieval Latin literature on fallacies achieved as early as the first half of the twelfth century. As a matter of fact, Western commentators managed to build compelling cases both in favour of and against the understanding that was to become and still is the standard story – which, of course, speaks volumes about their exegetical proficiency and technical expertise. On the one hand, trusting implicitly Boethius’ translation and well aware of his views on disputational hazards as opposed to computational reliability, they usually understood Aristotle’s comparison as if it was an analogy in name only. On the other hand, despite Boethius’ translation put them at a considerable disadvantage, Latin commentators were able to construe Aristotle’s analogy as bringing together two sets of symbolic variables (words and counters) that are neither entirely free nor entirely bound – which expose them to subtle but critical shifts in value and meaning. (shrink)

Neuroscience has made enormous progress in understanding the brain and its various neuro-sensory and neuro-cognitive functions. However, despite all progress, the model of the brain as well as its ontological characterization remain unclear. The aim in this first paper is the discussion of an empirically plausible model of the brain with the subsequent claim of a neuro-ecological model. Whitehead claimed that he inversed or reversed the Kantian notion of the subject by putting it back into the ecological context of the (...) world, the so-called reformist subjectivist principle. Based on empirical evidence about the experience-dependence of the brain’s spontaneous activity, I argue for an analogous inversion or reversion with regard to the model of brain: empirical evidence is well compatible with a neuro-ecological model which extends beyond and integrates both Humean neuro-sensory and Kantian neuro-cognitive models. I conclude that a neuro-ecological and process-based model of brain and its relationship to the world may offer a novel model of brain that carries major ontological implications as they shall be discussed in the second paper. (shrink)

In chapter one I will try to reconstruct a plot, or a hidden agenda, in the discussion in ethics between the beginning of the twentieth century and 1958, the year of a decisive turning point in ethics, both Anglo-Saxon and Continental, and strangely enough also the year of the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of post-Tridentine Catholicism, and perhaps something else. My hypothesis will be that there are two similar starting points for the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental (...) twentieth-century discussion, the philosophies of Henry Sidgwick and Friedrich Nietzsche, both expressions of some kind of ethical scepticism, and that a third, somewhat analogous starting-point could be found in Émile Durkheim, the proponent of the dream of the morale laïque. I will discuss how far the diagnosis formulated by Karl-Otto Apel of a kind of ‘parallel convergence' between existentialism and analytic philosophy, based on the shared division of facts and values that eventually justified two kinds of 'decisionism' is useful in making sense of the agenda of the discussion. In the second chapter I will discuss the reasons for two parallel U-turns around 1958 which brought back traditional schools of normative ethics, 'deontologism' and utilitarianism, as well as the reasons for criticism to both schools from the heterogeneous alignment of virtue ethics. In the third chapter I will discuss the remarkable phenomenon of the emergence, starting with the Sixties or the early Seventies, of ‘applied’ ethics. I examine the reasons, both theoretical and political, for the revival, the point to which applied ethics may look as a grand return of a casuistic and natural law way of thinking, or in Alan Donagan’s words a case of “reverse subversion” of the modern secular world by traditional Scholastic ways of thinking, and the difficult coexistence between general normative ethics and procedures for settling issues in a ‘reasonable’ way while dissent on issues of principle is as alive as ever. Then I try to draw a provisional moral. My suggestions are that (i) casuistry is more alive than ever; (ii) natural law thinking is more alive than ever; (iii) moral dilemmas never arise; (iv) moral dissent is treatable, with the right strategy; (v) practical philosophy does not need the same degree of exactness as the theoretical sciences but this is no obstacle to its working in practice. (shrink)

This paper argues that the famous passage that compares Kant’s efforts to reform metaphysics with his transcendental idealism to the earlier Copernican revolution in astronomy has a more systematic significance than many recognize. By examining the totality of Kant’s references to Copernicus, one can see that Kant’s analogy points to more than just a similar reversal of perspective. By situating Kant’s comments about Copernicus in relation to his understanding of the logic implicit in the great revolutions in mathematics and (...) natural science, this paper argues that Kant’s appeal to the Copernican revolution in astronomy as a forebear to his own transcendental project indicates that his attempt to revolutionize metaphysics by setting it on the secure path of the sciences demands a shift in how we think of the proper object of metaphysics. (shrink)