Epistemic instrumentalists face a puzzle. In brief, the puzzle is that if the reason there is to believe in accord with the evidence depends, as the instrumentalist says it does, on agents’ idiosyncratic interests, then there is no reason to expect that this reason is universal. Here, I identify and explain two strategies instrumentalists have used to try and solve this puzzle. I then argue that we should find these strategies wanting. Faced with the failure of these strategies, I (...) articulate a heretofore neglected solution on behalf of instrumentalism. (shrink)

During the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the utility of the house sparrow to humankind was a contentious topic. In Britain, numerous actors from various backgrounds including natural history, acclimatisation, agriculture and economic ornithology converged on the bird, as contemporaries sought to calculate its economic cost and benefit to growers. Periodicals and newspapers provided an accessible and anonymous means of expression, through which the debate raged for over 50 years. By the end of the century, sparrows had been cast as (...) detrimental to agriculture. Yet consensus was not achieved through new scientific methods, instruments, or changes in practice. This study instead argues that the rise and fall of scientific disciplines and movements paved the way for consensus on “the sparrow question.” The decline of natural history and acclimatisation stifled a raging debate, while the rising science of economic ornithology sought to align itself with agricultural interests: the latter overwhelmingly hostile to sparrows. (shrink)

As human activity continues to change the global climate, serious harms befall and will increasingly continue to befall the world's most vulnerable people. Whether one measures human development by...

Additional experiments show that P-consciousness and A consciousness can be empirically dissociated for the theoretically so phisticated observer. Phenomenal consciousness can have several degrees that are indirectly measurable.

Global health research is most often spent in a context of international collaboration, particularly North-South. The particular context of this type of partnership (power, money, distance, norms, training, etc.) can lead to important issues in the use of the data collected. This case study enables the reader to reflect on this particular issue and the actions that could be taken to deal with it.

Dans les Mémorables, Socrate exhorte ses compagnons à vivre kata dunamin. Or il est possible de distinguer deux emplois assez différents de cette expression ; en effet, la dunamis que l’on doit respecter et en fonction de laquelle l’on doit vivre désigne tantôt les ressources matérielles, tantôt la compétence technique dans un domaine précis. Le premier emploi concerne le régime de vie de chacun, l’aide aux amis et les offrandes aux dieux, alors que le second emploi est directement lié au (...) thème de la connaissance de soi.In the Memorabilia, Socrates urges his companions to live kata dunamin. This expression can be used in two very different ways. Sometimes the dunamis that we must respect and in accordance to which we must lead our lives refers to material resources, and sometimes it refers to expert knowledge in a specific field. The first usage concerns our way of life, our assistance to our friends and our offerings to the gods. The second usage ties in directly with the theme of self-knowledge. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage rare et magistral, l’auteur, qui est un contemplatif cistercien, livre le fruit de quarante années de réflexion. Il s’appuie, du côté de l’Occident, sur les Pères et Docteurs de l’église les plus autorisés, tel saint Thomas, et, du côté de l’Orient, sur les maîtres révérés, comme Cankara et Ramakrishna. Le sous-titre de l’ouvrage dit bien le but de l’auteur : après avoir étudié le non-dualisme hindou – l’homme doit réaliser sa vraie nature par la compréhension intime qu’il (...) ne fait qu’un avec le Tout –, il pourra répondre à la question qui anime tout l’ouvrage : peut-on envisager légitimement un « non-dualisme « chrétien? Un livre qui compte dans les conversations qui se sont établies depuis plus de cinquante ans entre Orient et Occident. (shrink)

In the Sophist, Plato presents the possibility of the separation of things in relation to each other based on the communion (koinōnia) of logos. In this study, I discuss the linguistic communion revealed in the dialogue by illuminating its three fundamental aspects: (1) Articulation of letters in names as communion on the syntactic level, (2) Predication of names in logoi as communion on the semantic level, (3) Homologoi of logoi as the ultimate communion of language. I thus conclude that these (...) three linguistic aspects are interdependent. (shrink)

In a world of ever-growing specialization, the issue of complexity attracts a good amount of attention from cross-disciplinary points of view. Charles S. Peirce’s thought may help not only to shoulder once again philosophical responsibility which has been largely abdicated by much of 20th century philosophy, but also to tackle some of the most stubborn contemporary problems. The founder of pragmatism identified one century ago most of these problems, and he also mapped out some paths that may be followed to (...) overcome the poverty of contemporary scientistic reductionism. One of these paths is related with the issue of complexity that lies at the heart of all his conception. Along this line, the aim of this article is to describe what Peirce can teach about complexity to contemporary researchers from different scientific backgrounds. The article is divided in three sections: 1) a brief presentation of Peirce, stressing his personal authority as a scientist philosopher; 2) the theory of categories as the heart of complexity according to Peirce and, finally, 3) some consequences of Peirce’s notion of complexity in relation with abduction and creativity, semiosis, cross-disciplinarity and communication. (shrink)

The limited objectives of this paper are to show that A), what seem to be merely superficial incoherencies in Rorty’s preferred pragmatism [according to which, “the only constraints on inquiry are conversational ones”] really are not but B), along with every assertion of Rorty’s defining his system and its consequences, belie an intrinsic incoherency resulting from that system’s intended conflation of “correspondence truth” and “pragmatic truth.” Then C), I shall argue that should we ask of a philosophy that denies to (...) its own statements of purported fact correspondence truth what use it is, the answer has to be, “Worse than no use at all”---at least, if like Rorty’s preferred pragmatism it demonstrably concludes in the conceptual annihilation of all inquiry. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Dieu sans l’être in 1982, Jean-Luc Marion’s various pronouncements on the status and meaning of esse in Aquinas have excited a good deal of interest and controversy among Thomists. Marion’s evolving understanding of Thomistic metaphysics in general, and of Thomistic analogy in particular, has been commended for its openness to correction even as it has been criticized for what many still regard as its residual deficiencies. All such criticisms, however, neglect to take account of the (...) phenomenological provenance of Marion’s concerns, and to this extent they risk misunderstanding them. Ironically, Marion’s phenomenological approach to Aquinas intends to safeguard precisely what his Thomist critics think he has jettisoned: namely, our ability to speak about God in a way that says something meaningful—or perhaps better, reveals something meaningful—about God to us. The apophatic language Marionuses to make this point should be taken as a reminder to his fellow Christians who rightfully desire to speak of God about the danger that is involved in doing so. If we interpret Aquinas’s use of the divine names according to the phenomenological horizon of distance and thus think the various names of God “according to truly theological determinations,” Marion suggests, we can avoid the danger of lapsing into a conceptual idolatry of univocal predication that occludes their phenomenological disclosiveness. (shrink)

There are two divergent testimonies concerning the definition of the telos of human life by the Stoic Zeno, one by Diogenes Laertius and one by Stobaeus. Now, these tes­timonies do not confirm each other exactly, because the first one asserts that the telos is “to live in agreement with nature” (long formula), while the second defines it as “to live in accordance (to oneself)” (short formula). The author first investigates the sources, and then challenges the philosophical interpretation of both formulas (...) presented by Joseph Moreau and, from the criticism of this interpretation, tries to establish the legitimacy of Diogenes Laetius’ testimony, in other words the attribution of the long formula to Zeno. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Initial compass bearings Accord and the harmony between language and reality Rules of inference and logical machinery Formulations and explanations of rules by examples Interpretations, fitting and grammar Further misunderstandings.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT IS THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIANITY, BUT IT HAS NOT RECEIVED MUCH ATTENTION IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, IN PART BECAUSE IT TENDS TO BE KNOWN ONLY IN AN UNREFLECTIVE VERSION FULL OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. I PRESENT AN ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF THE DOCTRINE, TAKEN FROM AQUINAS, ARGUE THAT IT IS A COGENT AND CONSISTENT ACCOUNT, AND SHOW THAT IT DOES NOT SUFFER FROM THE PROBLEMS OF THE UNREFLECTIVE VERSION.

The argument is that Bildung has occupied Habermas from the earliest writings. In these writings he criticizes the idea of being educated as an expression of innate abilities and emphasizes instead the significance of the social conditions of the upbringing. This is the subject of the first section. The second section provides a presentation of the ideology-critical analysis of Bildung found in Habermas’s doctoral thesis on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The basic critique is that the ideal of (...) individual Bildung is too tightly connected to economic and political dominance, but still the ideal contains some truth. The third section maps his relatively sparse comments regarding Bildung in the subsequent decades. Significant here is Knowledge and Human Interest, where he works himself out of the philosophy of consciousness framework towards the Theory of communicative action. This becomes the communicative approach, which becomes the framework of Habermas’ discussion of Bildung, both in relation to philosophical ethics – discourse ethics – and in more specific discussions, such as what is the role of the university in modern society. Finally just a few words on the political philosophy and the philosophy of law, which Habermas presents in Between Facts and Norms, where he once again allows Bildung have a positive normative significance, but now in a collective communicative perspective. (shrink)

Following some preliminary intuitions, a view attributing a specific level to sensation in a two levels model of mind is promoted. Some opinions deny the specificity of sensation by claiming either that it is physical or again by implying that it is completely cognitive. Meinong's definition of sensation as a simple perceptual representation originating from peripheric stimulation is reconstructed. France Veber's promotion of the hitting function with its attachment to sensation is derived from this definition by his teacher. Veber ambiguously (...) extends the hitting function to the higher cognitive level. Although he underlines their importance, just like Meinong he does not acknowledge sensations' autonomous level. (shrink)

“There is not, nor has there ever been, ideology,” write Deleuze and Guatter. This sybiiline aphorism is surely true: an ideology is never more than rationalizing and justifying behavior, which convinces no one but the already convinced and amuses or bores the others. It is thus a small thing in comparison with the random wandering of thought throughout history and the arbitrariness of cultures, “nurtures: “ since Nietzsche, or a certain aspect of Nietzsche, taught us to be in despair of (...) the Truth, we can no longer impute this wandering and this arbitrariness to the distortion of who knows what natural light by ideology. (shrink)