' But, although such a being (a purely intellectual being) might perhaps be conceived to exist, and although, in studying our internal frame, ...

Dispositions are related to conditionals. Typically a fragile glass will break if struck with force. But possession of the disposition does not entail the corresponding simple (subjunctive or counterfactual) conditional. The phenomena of finks and antidotes show that an object may possess the disposition without the conditional being true. Finks and antidotes may be thought of as exceptions to the straightforward relation between disposition and conditional. The existence of these phenomena are easy to demonstrate at the macro-level. But do they (...) exist at the fundamental level also? While fundamental finkish dispositions may be excluded fairly straightforwardly, the existence of fundamental antidotes is more open. Nonetheless I conclude that the phenomenon is likely to be less widespread than at the macro level and that fundamental antidotes may be eliminable. According to the dispositional essentialist, the laws of nature can be explained by taking natural properties to be essentially dispositional. This account can be extended to show that the existence of finks and antidotes explains ceteris paribus laws. Consequently the existence or otherwise of fundamental finks and antidotes sheds some light on the question of whether fundamental laws may also be ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

I present an argument that encapsulates the view that theory is underdetermined by evidence. I show that if we accept Williamson's equation of evidence and knowledge, then this argument is question-begging. I examine ways of defenders of underdetermination may avoid this criticism. I also relate this argument and my critique to van Fraassen's constructive empiricism.

The first obstacle that confronts the student of induction is that of defining the subject matter. One initial point is to note that much of the relevant subject matter goes under the description ‘the theory of confirmation’. The distinction is primarily that the study of induction concerns inference, i.e. cases where one takes the conclusion to be established by the evidence, whereas confirmation concerns the weight of evidence, which one may take to be something like the credibility of a hypothesis (...) in the light of the evidence. Discussions of confirmation often concern incremental confirmation, i.e. cases where the evidence is taken to increase the credibility of some hypothesis, even if not sufficiently to warrant inferring the truth of that hypothesis. However, some uses of ‘confirmation’ clearly refer to absolute confirmation, cases where the credibility of the hypothesis in the light of the evidence exceeds some (high) threshold. One may ask whether inductive inference corresponds to the case of absolute confirmation for some suitable threshold. I shall discuss inference and confirmation together, though it should be noted that some approaches eschew inference altogether. For example, the Bayesian takes scientific reasoning to be a matter of adjusting credences in propositions in the light of evidence, and says nothing about unqualified belief in a proposition. However, if we are interested in inductive knowledge then we must consider inference, since only then do we have a detached proposition that is the possible content of a mental state of knowing. A more pressing question concerns which inferences (or allegedly confirmatory relations) should be classed as inductive. A natural and straightforward approach is to define induction as encompassing any form of reasoning that extrapolates from one population to another, usually from a sample of a population to the whole population. For example, one might note that all observations of the position of some planet fall on an ellipse that has the Sun at one of its foci; from this one concludes that all the positions that planet takes fall on this ellipse (i.e.. (shrink)

The usual, comparative, conception of inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes it to be ampliative. In this paper I propose a conception of IBE ('Holmesian inference') that takes it to be a species of eliminative induction and hence not ampliative. This avoids several problems for comparative IBE (for example, how could it be reliable enough to generate knowledge?). My account of Holmesian inference raises the suspicion that it could never be applied, on the grounds that scientific hypotheses are inevitably (...) underdetermined by the evidence (i.e. are inevitably ampliative). I argue that this concern may be resisted by acknowledging, as Timothy Williamson has shown, that all knowledge is evidence. The latter suggests an approach to resisting scepticism different from those (e.g. the reliabilist approach) that embrace fallibilism. (shrink)

The term ‘Orthodox Christian medicine’ has become so customary among believers in Russia that the concept behind it is rarely questioned. However, it is worth articulating both for the sake of the profession and for the benefit of patients whether such a phrase is at all meaningful and if so what exactly it stands for. The following analysis, based on a public lecture, draws on the personal experience and reflections of a practicing GP and cardiologist who is also the Chairman (...) of the Society of Orthodox Christian Physicians of Russia. (shrink)

Resumo Neste artigo, o autor apresenta uma ideia original de “subjectividade”, na medida em que esta se desenvolve, no contexto da recém-fundada fenomenologia transcendental, designada por “fenomenologia generativa”. Esta figura da subjectividade é caracterizada por dois aspectos fundamentais : por um lado a “vibração” ou “oscilação” entre o “eu” e o “exterior” ; uma dimensão quadrupla de “transcendência”. Palavras-chave : alteridade, imaginação, mundo, self, subjectividade, transcendênciaIn this article I would like to put forward an original figure of “subjectivity” in so (...) far as it is developed in the context of a newly founded transcendental phenomenology called “generative phenomenology”. This figure of subjectivity is characterized by two fundamental aspects : the “vibration” or “oscillation” between the “self” and the “exterior” on the one hand and the quadruple dimension of “transcendence” on the other. Keywords : alterity, imagination, self, subjectivity, transcendence, world. (shrink)

Arguing About Science is an outstanding, engaging introduction to the essential topics in philosophy of science, edited by two leading experts in the field. This exciting and innovative anthology contains a selection of classic and contemporary readings that examine a broad range of issues, from classic problems such as scientific reasoning; causation; and scientific realism, to more recent topics such as science and race; forensic science; and the scientific status of medicine. The editors bring together some of the most influential (...) contributions of famous philosophers in the field, including John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper, as well as more recent extracts from philosophers and scientists such as Ian Hacking, Stephen Jay Gould, Bas van Fraassen, Nancy Cartwright, and John Worrall. The anthology is organised into nine clear sections: science, non science and pseudo-science race, gender and science scientific reasoning scientific explanation laws and causation science and medicine probability and forensic science risk, uncertainty and science policy scientific realism and anti-realism. The articles chosen are clear, interesting, and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they provide an overview of the debate, as well as suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Fractal versus fragment -- From proto-modernity to pseudo-modernity. Kant and his descendants -- The politics of re-presentation. a collection of fractals -- Epilogue or after the end -- From sophisticated meaninglessness to sophisticated primitivism -- The state of mindlessness. the rise of the pseudo-modern world -- Ideologies of the non-world. the post-colonial and the subaltern.

The author opens with a general discussion of religion & the beginnings of Law. Each subsequent chapter discusses topics such as: Origin of Laws, Inherited Education, Rulers & Leaders, Evolution, Tyranny, Taxation, & many others. A very readable text, which invokes additional thought on a variety of topics.

The advent of functional imaging has reinforced the attempts to define dreaming as a sleep state-dependent phenomenon. PET scans revealed major differences between nonREM sleep and REM sleep. However, because dreaming occurs throughout sleep, the common features of the two sleep states, rather than the differences, could help define the prerequisite for the occurrence of dreams. [Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Solms; Revonsuo; Vertes & Eastman].

Each human being is a co-creator of the world and when a human being dies the world he co-created is thereby annihilated. The main authors discussed are Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and David Hume.

The rise of modernity in the 19th century can, among other things, be vividly illustrated by the phenomenal advance of medical profession and, in particular, surgery as its most radical form. In the 20th century, the doctor has already been steadily associated with the phenomenon of power. Medical experiments on human subjects are generally recognized as one of the most extreme manifestations of this discursive nexus. Despite considerable amount of historical research, predominantly dealing with the experiences of Nazi medicine and (...) its patients in concentration camps and some other disciplinary institutions, as well as somewhat gloomy attraction providing for unabated fascination on the part of trivial literature, such experiments have not yet become an established literary topos. The elusive nature of this phenomenon which belongs to the kern of post-war anxiety, but is rarely addressed to, allows me to attest to the fact that human experiments, especially those conducted in Nazi concentration camps, have become a cultural «exclusion zone». Nonetheless, there is a whole range of texts in which attempts has been made to overcome the cultural taboo and to give voice to the victims of human vivisection. Two of them – Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Suspicion and Marcel Beyers The Flying Foxes – are analyzed in this paper against the backdrop of the so called «intellectual witness» – a concept proposed by Geoffrey Hartman and meaning a distanced witnessing, mostly on behalf of younger generations or, as in case with Dürrenmatt, of those who stayed aside of the World War II. In both novels, the narrative structures of intellectual witnessing serve to surmount the metaphorizing tendency which turns the reality of human experiments into tropes corroborating the author’s idea or concept. Combining documentary elements with the elements of trivial fiction, Dürrenmatt and Beyer make significant strides in deconstructing the naïve «over-identifying» with the victims, as well as their overt fictionalization. As a result, they manage to open the possibility of witness beyond the perspective of eyewitnesses, and at the same time subjugate this rearticulation of the past to the demands of the present situation that facilitates it. This perilous duality reveals the ethical double bind which seems to be inherent to the most reactualizations of utterly traumatic historical experiences, such as human experimentation, transformed into «exclusion zones» and then voiced through intellectual witness and other forms of «secondary witness». In order to become an object of witnessing, those traumatic experiences must correspond to the anxieties of the present originating from them. While triggering the reactualization process, such anxieties, however, also subject the experience of concrete victims to the desiderata of a traumatized «(intellectual) witness» and, in such a way, misuse the tragedy as a means of the witness’s coming to terms with his or her own trauma. (shrink)

In his paper the author establishes some arguments against the thesis of professor Walter Schweidler. The later defends the anti-representationalist claim that not every kind of knowledge is to evaluate on its truth and falsehood. The author maintains the opposite thesis that the all knowledge including the one about social premises of any kind of science may be evaluated (although not eventually proved) on their truth or falseness.

Eduard Hanslick Eduard Hanslick was a Prague-born Austrian aesthetic theorist, music critic, and the first professor of aesthetics and history of music at the University of Vienna, who is commonly considered the founder of musical formalism in aesthetics. His seminal treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen of 1854 is one of the most … Continue reading Hanslick, Eduard →.

During the Danish cartoons controversy in 2005–2006, a group of ambassadors to Denmark representing eleven predominantly Muslim countries requested a meeting with the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to protest against the cartoons. Rasmussen interpreted their viewpoint as one of demanding limits to freedom of speech and he ignored their request for a meeting. Drawing on this case study, the article argues that it is an appropriate, and potentially effective, moral criticism of anyone who is in a position of (...) political power—taking into account reasonable constraints of feasibility and practicality—that they have refused to receive information, ideas, or opinions from individuals, or their representatives, with dissenting viewpoints. The article also articulates one possible theoretical ground for such a moral criticism: that they could be violating a fundamental moral right of people to submit information, ideas, or opinions to those who wield power over them and to be meaningfully heard—a right which can span state borders. (shrink)