In this article I deal with a problem concerning the ‘divisions of nature’ in Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 41. These ‘divisions’ are five categories that describe how creatures differ from one another and God in natural, physical ways. Later, Maximus discusses the way that the human person may follow Christ to mediate between these divisions. This becomes problematic however as the ascetic practice associated with this mediating power occurs within a sphere we usually define as ‘ethical’. In conflating these (...) physical and ethical dimensions it becomes unclear how our actions can overcome and unite the physical differences described in Maximus’ divisions of nature’. In this article I demonstrate how this problem may be overcome by using Maximus’ own logic of division and unity within this very Ambiguum. It is shown that Maximus does not see these two spheres of ‘physical’ and ‘ethical’ as separate. The ethical is part of the natural trajectory of the physical. Maximus is simply talking about the natural world and the way in which it moves towards its Creator. I build upon Tollefsen’s work on universals and Cvetković’s on circle and radii analogy in order to support this position. Finally, I suggest that we ought to think of Maximus’ ‘divisions of nature’ in this Ambiguum rather as ‘divisions and unity of nature’, since physical differences also promise the possibility of movement of all creation toward unity with God. (shrink)

This paper pursues a question about the spatial relations between the three types of matter posited in Margaret Cavendish’s metaphysics. It examines the doctrine of complete blending and a distinctive argument against atomism, looking for grounds on which Cavendish can reject the existence of spatial regions composed of only one or two types of matter. It establishes, through that examination, that Cavendish operates with a causal conception of parts of nature and a dynamic notion of division. While the (...) possibility of unmixed spatial regions is found to be consistent with both the doctrine of complete blending and Cavendish’s anti-atomism by themselves, it is finally ruled out by a consideration of her theory of place. In fact, the geometrical question of the spatial relations between types of matter that drives the paper is ultimately exposed as illicitly mathematical from the perspective of Cavendish’s metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter rejects Equal Division, focusing on Hillel Steiner’s formulation of the view. First, further explanation of why one might take Equal Division to follow from Equal Original Claims is provided. Then, David Miller’s objection is introduced, according to which there is no defensible metric by which resource shares can be made commensurate, given the fact of reasonable value pluralism. The chapter argues that what the metric problem really shows, is that Equal Division possesses insufficient impartiality to (...) satisfy the equal original claims that motivate the view in the first place. This case is made by critiquing the three principal metrics proposed to amalgamate individual valuations of natural resources and thereby render Equal Division both coherent and defensible; namely, economic value, opportunity cost, and ecological space. The chapter concludes that to respect Equal Original Claims, the better approach will be to formulate a Common Ownership conception of justice for natural resources. (shrink)

The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open one. (...) In this paper, we show that two unconsidered dimensions would have to be taken into account. First, DCL studies miss the existence of distinct levels of epistemic objectives organizing the research process. Indeed, the scientific field is structured as a system of hierarchical, interconnected practices which are defined both by their inherent purposes and by various superposed external functions. Second, I criticize the absence of ontological considerations, since the epistemological significance of pluralism is highly dependent on the nature of the object under study. Because of these missing dimensions, current DCL models might have a limited usefulness to identify good practices of research governance. (shrink)

The division of cognitive labor is fundamental to all cultures. Adults have a strong sense of how knowledge is clustered in the world around them and use that sense to access additional information, defer to relevant experts, and ground their own incomplete understandings. One prominent way of clustering knowledge is by disciplines similar to those that comprise the natural and social sciences. Seven studies explored an emerging sense of these discipline‐based ways of clustering of knowledge. Even 5‐year‐olds could cluster (...) knowledge in a manner roughly corresponding to the departments of natural and social sciences in a university, doing so without any explicit awareness of those academic disciplines. But this awareness is fragile early on and competes with other ways of clustering knowledge. Over the next few years, children come to see discipline‐based clusters as having a privileged status, one that may be linked to increasingly sophisticated assumptions about essences for natural kinds. Possible mechanisms for this developmental shift are examined. (shrink)

We further investigate a divisibility relation on the set of BN ultrafilters on the set of natural numbers. We single out prime ultrafilters (divisible only by 1 and themselves) and establish a hierarchy in which a position of every ultrafilter depends on the set of prime ultrafilters it is divisible by. We also construct ultrafilters with many immediate successors in this hierarchy and find positions of products of ultrafilters.

This article considers whether any interpretation of the idea of equal claims to the natural world can resolve the Canyon Dilemma (i.e. can justify protecting the Grand Canyon but not a small canyon from mining by a poor generation). It first considers and ultimately rejects the idea of subjecting natural resource rights to an intergenerational equal division. It then demonstrates that a pluralist theory of environmental justice committed to both respect for the separateness of persons and to the collective (...) good can justify a type of intergenerational non-absolute equal division of natural resource rights that can navigate the Canyon Dilemma. (shrink)

Peasants of the northeastern Pará cultivate cassava (manioc esculenta) using shifting cultivation. This paper discusses some factors in support of cassava production, even though it has some negative environmental impacts. These factors are the importance of cassava in the region's history, dietary traditions, and the cooperative labor systems employed in its cultivation and processing.

Aquinas accepts that (i) some kinds of voluntary action are (qua voluntary) “basic,” not divisible into (non-fictional) further kinds; (ii) a concrete individual action may belong to more than one basic kind; (iii) the basic kinds to which it belongs are determined by the agent’s intentions qua performing the action; (iv) some intentions may stand to others as means to ends; (v) there can be concrete individual actions in which the agent’s intended means are disordered with respect to the ends; (...) (vi) such actions are morally wrong; (vii) whether a given intention is disordered as means to a given end is determined solely by the natures of the agent and of the intended means or ends. Together, these propositions entail that, pace many analytic philosophers, concrete individual actions can have a moral wrongness that consists neither in expectation of disutility nor in violation of the pure logic of practical reason. (shrink)

A Dedekind-finite set is said to be divisible by a natural number n if it can be partitioned into pieces of size n. We study several aspects of this notion, as well as the stronger notion of being partitionable into n pieces of equal size. Among our results are that the divisors of a Dedekind-finite set can consistently be any set of natural numbers, that a Dedekind-finite power of 2 cannot be divisible by 3, and that a Dedekind-finite set can (...) be congruent modulo 3, to all of 0, 1, and 2 simultaneously. (shrink)

Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective-taking should depend on their expectations about the (...) other's allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource-rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective-taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade-off between expected costs and benefits of perspective-taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director–matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for “known unknowns” in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective-taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply “mindblind”; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource-rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective-taking under processing constraints. (shrink)

This paper analyzes classical concepts of division of labour and offers some contemporary theoretical model which includes causes and effects of it. For Smith, the main cause is a tendency of human nature to exchange and the main effect is a progress of the country. For Marx, the fundamental cause is historical development of productive forces and effects are accumulation of capital on the one side but also an alienation of working class on the other. Spencer considers as (...) the main cause specialization of functions in generally, which consequence is integration of society. For Durkheim, causes are social density and volume, and its effect or function is new interconnection in society known as term organic solidarity. Weber derives division of labour from his theory of rational economic actions, and its most important effect is development of occupational structure. (shrink)

In this paper I formulate the thesis of the Division of Epistemic Labor as a thesis of epistemic dependence, illustrate several ways in which individual subjects are epistemically dependent on one or more of the members of their community in the process of knowledge acquisition, and draw conclusions about the cognitively distributed nature of some knowledge acquisition.

One of the main features of the contemporary environmental crisis is that no one has a clear picture of what is taking place. Environmental problems are real enough but they bring home the inadequacy of our knowledge. How does the natural world relate to the social world? Why do we continue to have such a poor understanding? How can ecological knowledge be made to relate to our understanding of human society? Reconstructing Nature argues that the division of labor (...) is a key but neglected factor underlying people's inability to adequately understand and relate to the natural world. The argument extends Marx's theory of alienation to account for inadequate knowledge and therefore inadequate concern for nature. Using recent developments in "critical realist" philosophy, the book aims to find ways of reorganizing knowledge in the light of ecological consciousness. It also corrects the emphasis of much environmental literature by focusing on production rather than consumption. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: La Philosophie de la nature de Hegel élabore une théorie complexe et systématique du monde naturel, qui est passée presque inaperçue dans la littérature secondaire. Selon cette théorie, la nature passe progressivement d'une division originale entre ses deux éléments constitutifs, la pensée et la matière, à leur unification finale, par une séquence rationnellement nécessaire d'étapes dans le processus. Cette progression naturelle présente une structure identique à celle de la progression que Hegel discerne parmi lesformes de la (...) conscience subjective. Une comparaison attentive entre les formes de la conscience et les étapes du développement naturelpeut dès lors servir à élucider cette théorie de la nature et à la dégager des longues discussions sur la science contemporaine auxquelles Hegel l'a inutilement associée. (shrink)

In the Philebus Socrates presents his division of the kinds of pleasures and pains to an interlocutor who confesses himself incapable of employing the dialectical method of division that this task ideally requires and is committed to defending a hedonist theory of value. These two features of his interlocutor affect the way in which Socrates presents his accounts of pleasure and pain. The philosophical reader needs to rethink the accounts of pleasure and pain to produce an account that (...) is free from these limitations. In this paper I sketch the outlines of such an account, based on material that Socrates provides throughout the dialogue. I argue that there are two fundamental, mutually irreducible types of pain and pleasure: those produced by the disruption and restoration of a natural harmony, and those involving the representation of oneself as in a good or bad state. I then produce an account of pleasure and pain as such, which applies to both of these types: pleasure and pain are the cognition of oneself as in a good or bad state. (shrink)

Some competition was associated with all European voyages of discovery, whether considered in an intellectual or a nautical sense, but the character of the competition became confessional as the contest between states over resources to be exploited gave way to disputation between denominations over how souls might best be saved. This happened when, in the late sixteenth century, Protestant publicists began to disparage the colonial endeavours that the Spanish and Portuguese authorities had been engaged upon for more than a century, (...) and when they resolved to start the colonial process all over again, with a view to making the Atlantic World a Protestant rather than a Catholic space. This was to be achieved both by releasing what remained of the Native American population in Central and South America from Spanish tyranny, and by establishing Protestant colonies to evangelise the native populations in extensive areas of America to which the Iberians had no more than titular claims. A comparison between French and English colonial undertakings in the West Indies, and between the literatures associated with these endeavours over the course of the seventeenth century, establishes that these Protestant ambitions proved as elusive in practice as they had been myopic in theory. The conclusion seeks to explain why colonial efforts in which Catholic religious orders were involved proved more capable of linking scientific investigations with missionary concerns than was possible in colonies that were self consciously Protestant. (shrink)

My letter of invitation to this seminar expresses the thought that “it will be very useful to have someone from outside the field help us see ourselves.” Given my interests in what you might call the fact of literary study, I was naturally attracted by the invitation to look at literary study as a discipline or profession but also suspicious of the invitation. I thought: Do professionals really want to be helped to see themselves by outsiders? This is an invitation (...) to get a group of people sore at me, and it will only result in the group’s having an occasion not to see itself, since any member of it can easily dismiss anything I say as uninformed. But the invitation goes on to give the title for this session as “The Nature and Function of Literary Study: As Others See Us.” Reading that, I thought: That is different. That identifies me as an other to the “academic and professional concerns” of the field—hence, not just outside but intimately outside, as if my position were an alternative to yours. And how could I not be better informed about being other to you than you are?But of course I know that there is no single unified “you” to which I am other, that some of you, perhaps most, have other others than philosophy and see your practice not against philosophy but against history or criticism or literary theory. So I should perhaps say that I am not exactly single or unified myself, that I am also other to the Anglo-American profession of philosophy, to which at the same time I belong. A way of expressing my otherness to this profession of philosophy is simply to say that I take you as also among my others, that I recognize the study of literature to be an alternative to what I do—a path I might have taken, might still irregularly be taking—to occupy a relation to the way I think, that for most of the members of my profession would be occupied by a profession of logic or science. I will not try here to account theoretically for the intimate differences that may make philosophy and literature alternative studies, which means that I will not here systematically try taking the perspective of an other. But I will be bearing in mind its certain messages and rumors that have lately been coming my way from the field of literary studies. You have, for example, not kept it secret that you have been worrying, as a profession, and sometimes in the form of conducting arguments about the obligation to literary theory as part of literary study, nor secret that these arguments sometimes take on the color or texture of strong statements of, or against, something called deconstruction. I will try to say something about these poorly kept secrets. Stanley Cavell, professor of philosophy at Harvard University, is the author of many works, including Must We Mean What We Say?, The Senses of “Walden,” The Claim of Reason, and, most recently, Themes Out of School. He has been chosen by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters to receive the 1985 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for Criticism. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Politics as Opposed to What?,” appears in the September 1982 issue. (shrink)

Psychologists have used experimental methods to study language for more than a century. However, only with the recent availability of large-scale linguistic databases has a more complete picture begun to emerge of how language is actually used, and what information is available as input to language acquisition. Analyses of such “big data” have resulted in reappraisals of key assumptions about the nature of language. As an example, we focus on corpus-based research that has shed new light on the arbitrariness (...) of the sign: the longstanding assumption that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary. The results reveal a systematic relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning, which is stronger for early acquired words. Moreover, the analyses further uncover a systematic relationship between words and their lexical categories—nouns and verbs sound differently from each other—affecting how we learn new words and use them in sentences. Together, these results point to a division of labor between arbitrariness and systematicity in sound-meaning mappings. We conclude by arguing in favor of including “big data” analyses into the language scientist's methodological toolbox. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose a version of the description theory of reference –for short, descriptivism– on natural kind terms. This version is grounded on some proposals of descriptivists, such as Searle and Strawson, about proper names, which will be extended to natural kind terms. According to Searle and Strawson the reference of a proper name is determined by a sufficient number of the descriptions that speakers associate with the name, but among the sorts of descriptions admitted by these authors (...) are those in which the average speaker defers the reference of a term to other speakers. In this regard, descriptivism can accept Putnam’s thesis of the division of linguistic labour and claim that some of the descriptions associated by non-experts have the function of deferring the reference of natural kind terms to their reference in the use by experts. Thus, descriptivism can maintain that the reference of a natural kind term is determined by a sufficient number of the descriptions that experts concerning a natural kind associate with the term. I will argue that this version of descriptivism, which grants more weight to social links than to historical links, can explain better than Kripke’s theory the reference of the use of natural kind terms by the average speaker. (shrink)

Clayton and Stevens argue that political liberals should engage with the religiously unreasonable by offering religious responses and showing that their religious views are mistaken, instead of refusing to engage with them. Yet they recognize that political liberals will face a dilemma due to such religious responses: either their responses will alienate certain reasonable citizens, or their engagements will appear disingenuous. Thus, there should be a division of justificatory labour. The duty of engagement should be delegated to religious citizens. (...) In this comment, I will argue that the division of justificatory labour is indefensible. This dilemma can be avoided if politicians and political philosophers correctly use conjecture, a form of discourse that involves non-public reason. As a conditional response, conjecture avoids alienating any reasonable citizens. Also, if conjecture is given in a sincere and open-minded manner, then the problem of disingenuousness can be overcome. My comment concludes that while the engagement of politicians and political philosophers does not necessarily jeopardize overlapping consensus, they should be permitted, or perhaps even required, to engage with the religiously unreasonable due to the natural duty of justice. (shrink)

From a phenomenological perspective, skin is an important boundary. My model here is the psychology of interpersonal relations . It is the behaviour of O that is visible from the perspective of P, the perceiver. Whether or not one is justified in going beyond the evidence available is a matter of some controversy in psychological circles e.g. between behaviourists and gestalt psychologists . Here the skin is an important boundary, at least in the visual modality. The divergence in perspective between (...) actor and observer is due to the fact that they occupy two different points in space/time . There is less of a divergence in perspective between speaker and listener since they could both be one and the same person . Skinner , in a pun on his own name, observed that in speech skin is not at all an important boundary. The implications for social psychology of this asymmetry between vision and speech are explored more fully . An attempt is made to identify when the skin is and when it is not a significant boundary. The history of psychology is briefly reviewed in the light of this distinction. (shrink)

Division of labour is a marked feature of multicellular organisms. Margulis proposed that the ancestors of metazoans had only one microtubule organizing center (MTOC), so they could not move and divide simultaneously. Selection for simultaneous movement and cell division had driven the division of labour between cells. However, no evidence or explanation for this assumption was provided. Why could the unicellular ancetors not have multiple MTOCs? The gain and loss of three possible strategies are discussed. It was (...) found that the advantage of one or two MTOC per cell is environment-dependent. Unicellular organisms with only one MTOC per cell are favored only in resource-limited environments without strong predatory pressure. If division of labour occurring in a bicellular organism just makes simultaneous movement and cell division possible, the possibility of its fixation by natural selection is very low because a somatic cell performing the function of an MTOC is obviously wasting resources. Evolutionary biologists should search for other selective forces for division of labour in cells. (shrink)

In their justification of individual entitlements, libertarians appeal to the concept of self-ownership. This paper argues that taking into account the division of labour in society calls for a fundamental reassessment of the normative implications of self-ownership. How should the benefits from division of labour—in other words, how should the co-operative surplus—be distributed? On the assumption that the parties to the division of labour are interdependent, and that this interdependence is mutual and of the same degree, I (...) argue for an equal distribution of the co-operative surplus. In form, my argument bears similarities to the left-libertarian position that calls for an equal distribution of natural resources. Despite its radically egalitarian implications, an equal distribution of the co-operative surplus remains a libertarian principle. (shrink)

In 'Yeogi (禮記)', the Chinese scriptures of Confucianism, they recoded the solar calendar of modern viewpoints. According to the ancient document, the 24 solar terms was one of seasonal divisions in a year. The regularly change of the four seasons play an important part in the national economic project. For a national economy depended on agriculture in East Asia of ancient times, the administration to pay no regard to the change of the season was directly connected to the fall of (...) the nation. And then the legislator must enact laws to reflect the change of the season. According to the 'Wolryeong (月令)' in 'Yeogi (禮記)', there is recoded national regulations to suit with the each twelve momth. The first month of spring is the prime of the year (February). The month shows sign of new livingthings. The ruler take order to protect the first breath of spring and ought to put a ban on the military training and labor mobilization. The reasons are to safeguard the new life and not to interrupt the preparation for farming. Confucian attach value to the nature within a human’s way of life. Therefore the norm of human do correlate closely with the principle of nature. The rule of Wuju (宇宙) was not a simple concept of the natural phenomenon and Cheon (天) was not the Almighty for himself. Cheon was just the existence of virtue and moral influence in the confidence of man. And Ji (地) was the Mother of all things. In this space man had to manage the world in sympathy with the process of cheonJi (天地); Cheonsi (天時), JIri (地利), Inhwa (人和). (shrink)

The general form of solution to the problem of reconciling the standpoint of the collectivity with the standpoint of the individual is through the design of institutions, which penetrate and in part reconstruct their individual members, by producing differentiation within the self between public and private roles, and further differentiation subordinate to these roles. In a sense, the aim is to externalize through social institutions the most impartial requirements of the impersonal standpoint, but our support of those institutions depends on (...) an internal differentiation, which exploits the natural complexity of the self. (shrink)

The article offers a new interpretation of the technique and its evolution. The ideas about the technique of Aristotle, F. Bacon, P. Engelmeir, N.Berdyaev are analyzed, as well as the understanding of nature, on the basis of which the technique is comprehended and conceptualized. The author's hypothesis is that it is necessary to distinguish between two fundamentally different understandings of technology and the lines of its development: one, where technology is understood as engineering and conceptualized within the framework of (...) the first nature, and the other, technology as technology, conceptualized within the framework of the idea of the second nature. In addition, the author shows that in the twentieth century there is a convergence of both lines of technology development, entailing a synthesis of engineering and technology. The atomic project is given as an illustration. On the basis of the proposed ideas, an explanation of the peculiar explosion of the development of technology in the XIX and XX centuries and the emergence of technoprime is outlined. To analyze the features of the second nature, the work of Dmitry Efremenko is considered, who suggests the genesis of megamachines, distinguishing between their two main types and outlining the third. Another component of the second nature is technology, in which, in addition to the sequence of operations and the conditions that ensure them, the author highlights the division of labor, attitudes to economy, standardization and quality of products, research and optimization or restructuring of production activities. In conclusion, the article points out three consequences of the synthesis of engineering and technology, as well as the crisis of technology in modernity: the need to revise ideas about nature, technology and the modern project, as well as the importance of studying the second nature. (shrink)

The Encyclopädie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften contains what is rightly called the system of Hegel's philosophy, his other treatises being, in the main, more detailed developments of certain sections of the Encyclopädie. For him the body of philosophical knowledge consists of three main divisions, Logic, Nature-philosophy and the Philosophy of Spirit, forming the supreme triad of the Dialectic and continuous with each other in the dialectical movement of thought. The Philosophy of Nature, however, has been held suspect even by (...) followers of Hegel who adhere to the doctrine of Absolute Idealism; in fact, by some of his most ardent disciples. For the development of the view by both contemporary and later thinkers has led to a position according to which Hegel's excursion into Nature-philosophy appears inconsistent with his own idealism. Whether the alleged inconsistency is supposed to affect the Philosophy of Spirit also is not clear, but it does, at least, throw doubt upon the claim of the second science of the Encyclopædia to be a genuine branch of philosophy. The view which leads to this condemnation of the Naturphilosophie was first voiced by Schelling, but it follows also from what will be called, in the sequel, the 'Bradleian' version of Absolutism, though this should not be taken to imply that Bradley was responsible for the statement of it which follows or that he voiced the objection to Hegel's philosophy here considered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits by Rocco PezzimentiAdam CarringtonPEZZIMENTI, Rocco. The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits. Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2021. 207 pp. Paper, $22.00Rocco Pezzimenti's The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits is an ambitious book. A professor at LUMSA, Rome, he seeks to (...) consider anew the nature, structure, and purposes of democracy as well as the society in which this form of government best operates. He sees this task as needed because, he argues, contemporary democracies face new challenges that threaten their legitimacy and their capacity to fulfill their just and needed purposes. He notes that democracies are not "infallible," either morally or in their ability to maintain themselves, and thus need conscious understanding and prudent maintenance.The subtitle establishes the three main themes by which he diagnoses and addresses democracy's trials. Pezzimenti orders his argument most through the lens of limits. While present in all spheres and regimes, popular government in particular partakes of limitation, since "mutual limitation... is the basis of our democracies." Limits for Pezzimenti stem from distinct elements of a society competing for finite power ordered toward action. Many of our political and social problems, both past and present, stem from denying limitations or misordering their interactions. The presentism that tempts democracy must be tempered by the limits the past places on it. Institutions are one helpful means for this interaction, which helps guard against a "utopianism which wants to solve everything immediately, deceiving itself that it can perform miracles." Law itself involves limits, placing boundaries on the action of private persons and public entities. So does pluralism and "polyarchy," whereby we recognize the limits particular persons and communities place on politics' universalism as well as how politics restrains these other elements from descending into intolerant, selfish particularity. Important to this point is Pezzimenti's discussion of sovereignty, which must not be reduced to a mere question of who rules and where but to the question of rightly pursuing a common good respectful of individual rights. True freedom inheres in the proper cohering of these elements.Pezzimenti turns to the distribution of powers within a community as part of the discussion of limits. He argues that "the traditional tripartition, theorized by Polybius and on to Montesquieu, today appears certainly insufficient." To define all political power as legislative, executive, and judicial, then to distribute them among competing institutions, does not fully account for the contemporary political landscape. Moreover, those [End Page 361] "classic" powers themselves need to be rethought to meet today's concerns. Legislative power must account for claims that its representative systems either are oligarchic in practice or lead to crass populism, and that they fail to account for group identities as opposed to class ones. The executive must evolve in pursuit of a better "efficiency and efficacy"—including speed of response to problems—that requires a better relationship with the modern bureaucracy, which he describes as "the other face of the executive." The judicial power must focus on a renewed impartiality, especially in relation to the additional powers Pezzimenti thinks need to be named and then tamed. The new powers that he says we must recognize include the press, mass media, technology, and more. Here, Pezzimenti categorizes as powers the functions of government (making, enforcing, and adjudication of the law) alongside avenues or means for exercising political influence, if not outright control. These other forces have distorted democracy's needed limits partly because law and custom have not adequately accounted for their evolving role in power.These issues lead to the last challenge, that of representation. The problem of representation threatens democracy's legitimacy, since this form of government is grounded more than any other in the idea that "power must be the expression of the community." Yet even here the issue of limits orders the discussion. The unaccounted-for new powers described above remove too many limitations either on crass populism or encroaching rule of elites. The former can abuse individual rights, which he says "are not negotiable," based on oppressive whims... (shrink)

Perhaps the most basic network in modern life is the division of labor. It certainly rates alongside family, school, and town. That inexorably leads to a discussion of how resources are allocated within this division, who exercizes power, and what happens when the network meets a seemingly natural or unnatural end. For networks that may appear extremely stable can come to abrupt or scheduled conclusions, when a company goes bankrupt or a school cohort breaks up. This article briefly (...) examines the history of the division of labor, with particular reference to culture and to its internationalization, concluding with a brief discussion of how short-term networks can lead to the exploitation of workers and have a devastating ecological impact. (shrink)

This essay takes issue with a common interpretation of Book II of Plato’s Republic as anticipating the modern theory of division of labour, first promoted by Adam Smith. It is argued that, far from anticipating Adam Smith, Plato developed original reflections which, though naturally shaped by the economic reality of his time, reveal a concern for fundamental issues of economic thought: the value of labour, the nature of economic interdependence in a political association, the relation between economic behaviour (...) and justice. However, despite having recognized some of the fundamental forces behind human economic behaviour, Plato ends up with an envisioned ideal state in which those forces are given no scope, for he makes no room for economic competitiveness and technological advancement. (shrink)

I use the theory of the division of labor as a case-study in the logic of social explanation and to test the explanatory power of a new Aristotelian model for social theory. The classical political economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx argue that the divisions of labor is both efficient and natural. I claim that this explanation suffers from a two-fold reductionism: the moral dimension of the division of labor is reduced to technical efficiency; and the customary (...) and stipulated dimensions of the division of labor are reduced to nature. This reductionism collapses two important Aristotelian distinctions: that between moral reason and technical reason ; and that between nature , custom , and deliberate stipulation . I revise these concepts in the light of modern natural, social and philosophical sciences into a framework for social theory: I show that, in human conduct, technical reason always presupposes moral reason; and I show that every social institution is the joint product of nature, custom, and stipulation: just as custom presupposes nature, so stipulation presupposes custom. I then use this framework to criticize Aristotle as well as classical political economy. By transcending the positivist dichotomy of ends and means, I restore moral reason to supremacy over technique. By transcending the Sophistic dichotomy between nature and convention, I restore custom to its rightful place at the center of social theory. (shrink)

The paper examines a specific approach to the idea of the just price. The approach takes its cue from a basic insight about the nature of exchange, namely, that the latter occurs when both parties to the exchange stand to gain something from it. The distributive question that arises from this observation is how, or according to which principle, we ought to divide such gains. The paper rejects two intuitive answers. The first is that the just price is that (...) at which the gains from exchange are equally distributed between the parties. The second is that the just price is the price at which the party that is worse off prior to the transaction gains as much as possible from it. The problem with the former is that it condones exploitation when one of the two parties is vulnerable. The problem with the latter is that it cannot be plausibly generalized to all transactions. The paper then offers a novel alternative that both preserves the intuitive appeal of the approaches that have been criticized and is able to avoid their weaknesses. This can be achieved by accepting an eclectic distributional ethic with a sufficientarian core. (shrink)

In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant accounts for the possibility of an acting-at-a-distance gravitational force, demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter, and derives analogues to Newtonian laws of motion. The work is his major statement in philosophy of science, and was especially influential in German-speaking countries in the nineteenth century. However, this complex text has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. The chapters of this Critical Guide clarify the accounts of matter, motion, the mathematization of nature, (...) space, and natural laws exhibited in the Metaphysical Foundations; elucidate the relationship between its metaphysics of nature and Kant's critical philosophy; and describe the historical context for Kant's account of natural science. The volume will be an invaluable resource for understanding one of Kant's most difficult works, and will set the agenda for future scholarship on Kant's philosophy of science. (shrink)

In 1934 Jaśkowski and Gentzen independently published their groundbreaking works on Natural Deduction. The aim of this paper is to provide some criteria for division of the diversity of existing systems on some natural subcategories and to show that despite the differences all these systems are descendants of original systems of Jaśkowski and Gentzen. Three criteria are discussed:The kind of items which are building-blocks of the proof.The format of proof.The kind of rules.The first leads to the division of (...) ND into two main classes: F-systems working on formulas and S-systems working on sequents. The second distinguishes between T-systems with tree-proofs and L-systems with linear proofs. Finally, the third leads to several minor divisions in the main categories. (shrink)

I argue that by considering Kant’s engagement with previous theorists of natural right, we can gain a clearer understanding of how he transformed the discipline from its foundations. To do this, I focus my analysis on Kant’s (critical) reception of two models of natural right with which he was very familiar: one from Alexander Baumgarten’s Elements of First Practical Philosophy [Initia philosophiae practicae primae], the other from Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law [Ius naturae]. The Initia served as a basis for Kant’s (...) lectures on moral philosophy for over three decades and may thus be considered as having played an important role in shaping his practical philosophy as a whole. Achenwall’s Ius naturae was the textbook that Kant employed in his lectures on natural right for over two decades. I argue that Kant distances himself from previous models of natural right in three main regards: the identification of moral laws with laws of nature, the normative connection between the principles of right and a natural end, and the place of God as the author of moral laws. I then briefly discuss what Kant retains of Baumgarten’s and Achenwall’s models of natural right. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals preserves the view that a rational doctrine of right belongs to a broader systematic doctrine that comprehends the entire system of duties. I address the question of the division of the Sittenlehre into two branches and claim that, whereas Kant did not consider Baumgarten’s answer to the problem of distinguishing juridical from ethical principles to be satisfactory, he found a key piece of his own resolution in Achenwall’s Ius naturae, namely the definition of right as a power to coerce. (shrink)

In June 22-27,1970, an International Working Symposium on Pragmatics of Natural Languages took place in Jerusalem under the auspices of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science.! Some thirty philosophers, logicians, linguists, and psychologists from Israel, U.S.A., West-Germany, England, Belgium, France, Scotland, and Denmark met in seven formal and a number of informal sessions in order to discuss some ofthe (...) problems around the use and acquisition oflanguage which in the eyes of an increasing number of scholars have been left under treated in the recent upsurge ofinterest in theoretical linguistics and philos ophy of language. More specifically, during the formal sessions the following topics were discussed: The validity of the syntactics-seman tics-pragmatics trichotomy The present state of the competence-performance issue Logic and linguistics The New Rhetoric Speech acts Language acquisition. The participants in the Symposium distributed among themselves re prints and preprints of relevant material, partly in advance of the meeting, partly at its beginning. Each session was introduced by one or two modera tors, and summaries of each day's proceedings were prepared and distri buted the next day. The participants were invited to submit papers after the symposium, written under its impact. The eleven essays published here are the result. (shrink)

This article explores the effect of women’s movement into the labor market on the gender segregation of work, using the Current Population Survey from 1972 to 1993. The author includes as working those respondents who were “keeping house” and codes keeping house as an occupation. The results show higher estimates of gender segregation, and slightly steeper declines over time, than were seen in previous studies. Analysis of one-year longitudinal changes reveals less movement out of female-dominated occupations when keeping house is (...) included as an occupation. Finally, a decomposition of the segregation trend shows that the movement of women away from keeping house contributed as much to the overall decline in gender segregation as did the desegregation of paid occupations. The author concludes that the movement of women’s work from the household to the labor market has been a driving force in the changing nature of gender inequality. (shrink)

Land use planning, based in either traditional liberalist philosophy or the emerging pragmatist philosophy formalizes an anthropocentric, reductionist division within itself: between nature (land) and society (use), ignoring the socially constructed character of both terms. Representations of nature become political issues mediated through the planning system, with the various actants and their networks attempting to exert power over others in order to influence the outcome. Based on a theoretical understanding of, by deconstructing the different representations of (...) class='Hi'>nature/the environment and identifying the discourses and narratives invoked by participants in land use planning decisions, we can better understand how nature continues to be exploited by humans in their own interests. (shrink)

Cartesian epistemology comprises three main divisions: an a priori theory, discussed in Chs. 1–3, a psychological theory of error explanations in judgment induced by features of our sense experience discussed in Chs. 4, 5 and 7, and a theory of natural reasons, discussed here. The theory of natural reasons, based on Descartes's notion of natural inclinations, is expressed here in terms of a series of warrant principles of which there are two main kinds: those that warrant action and those that (...) warrant claims for what is true. This chapter traces Descartes's epistemically ambivalent attitude to cognitive dispositions from the early treatment in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind through to the final treatment in The Passions of the Soul. The chapter focuses special attention on the appearance of one kind of natural reason, reasons of truth, in the proof of the external world in Meditation VI and the striking absence of same in the proof of the external world in the Principles of Philosophy II. The chapter also considers whether natural reasons apply to particular aspects of corporeal things, concluding with a discussion of the Cartesian Circle. (shrink)

We discuss McMillan et al. (2005) paper devoted to study brain activity during comprehension of sentences with generalized quantifiers. According to the authors their results verify a particular computational model of natural language quantifier comprehension posited by several linguists and logicians (e. g. see van Benthem, 1986). We challenge this statement by invoking the computational difference between first-order quantifiers and divisibility quantifiers (e. g. see Mostowski, 1998). Moreover, we suggest other studies on quantifier comprehension, which can throw more light on (...) the role of working memory in processing quantifiers. (shrink)

Children may be viewed as public goods whereby both parents receive equal genetic benefits yet one parent often invests more heavily than the other. We introduce a microeconomic framework for understanding household investment decisions to address questions concerning conflicts of interest over types and amount of work effort among married men and women. Although gains and costs of marriage may not be spread equally among marriage partners, marriage is still a favorable, efficient outcome under a wide range of conditions. This (...) bioeconomic framework subsumes both cooperative and conflictive views on the sexual division of labor. We test hypotheses concerning marriage markets, assortative mating, and men’s labor motivations among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia and find that: (1) men and women both value work effort in marital partners, (2) marital labor contributions are complementary, (3) work effort is correlated between spouses, (4) total production is correlated with total reproduction, and (5) better hunters have higher fitness gains within marital unions. (shrink)