Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 27-29.

Focuses on the arguments that show the externalism of mental content. Discussion on the principle of knowledge identification; Account of basic self-knowledge; Interpretations of sentence content; Skepticism of knowledge content.

Reviews goodman's claims about representation, Expression and identity of works of art. Claims that the underlying nominalist logic effectively prohibits our understanding of these notions (pace goodman) and leaves everything which is of specific artistic and aesthetic interest out of account.

We discuss the concept of spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry in super-conductors and superfluids and, in particular, the circumstances under which the absolute phase of a superfluid can be physically meaningful and experimentally relevant. We argue that the study of this question pushes us toward the frontiers of what we understand about the quantum measurement process, and underline the need for a new theoretical framework that keeps pace with modern technological capabilities.

This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation.

In a target article that appeared in this journal, Thomas Stoffregen 2000 questions the possibility of ecological event perception research. This paper describes an experiments performed to examine the perception of the disappearance of gap-crossing affordances, a variety of event as defined by Chemero 2000. We found that subjects reliably perceive both gap-crossing affordances and the disappearance of gap-crossing affordances. Our findings provide empirical evidence in favor of understanding events as changes in the layout of affordances, shoring up event perception (...) research in ecological psychology. (shrink)

The development of a framework for coding argumentations schemes in the transcripts of classroom dialogical deliberations on controversial, socioscientific topics is described. Arriving at a coding framework involved resolving a number of complex issues and challenges that are discussed in order to create practical remedies. The description of the development process is based on audio recordings and written exchanges between the authors as they attempted to resolve differences in the interpretation and application of argumentation schemes . These deliberations address theoretical (...) and practical concerns for adapting notions of argumentation schemes to the practical context of analyzing authentic classroom interactions. The framework was developed to accommodate research and curriculum development in school science education. A practical framework for analyzing argumentation in authentic classroom contexts is proposed and implications for science education and argumentation theory are raised. (shrink)

Presents the intellectual milieu of mid-Tang China, particularly the conservative defense of literary pursuits and cultural tradition in the face of political and social uncertainty.

INTRODUCTION The Translation Over eighty years ago Solomon Schechter published a second version of Abot de Rabbi Nathan1 ...

Sidgwick famously claimed that an argument in favour of utilitarianism might be provided by demonstrating that a set of defensible philosophical intuitions undergird it. This paper focuses on those philosophical intuitions. It aims to show which specific intuitions Sidgwick endorsed, and to shed light on their mutual connections. It argues against many rival interpretations that Sidgwick maintained that six philosophical intuitions constitute the self-evident grounds for utilitarianism, and that those intuitions appear to be specifications of a negative principle of universalization (...) (according to which differential treatments must be based on reasonable grounds alone). In addition, this paper attempts to show how the intuitions function in the overall argument for utilitarianism. The suggestion is that the intuitions are the main positive part of the argument for the view, which includes Sidgwick's rejection of common-sense morality and its philosophical counterpart, dogmatic intuitionism. The paper concludes by arguing that some of Sidgwick's intuitions fail to meet the conditions for self-evidence which Sidgwick himself established and applied to the rules of common-sense morality. (shrink)

J.D. Collier sees Putnam as arguing that metaphysical realism is false.' He sees the argument as proceeding from the background assumption that metaphysical realism has the consequence that truth is 'radically non-epistemic', so that 'an [epistemically] ideal theory could be radically wrong about the world' [3, p. 413]. But, according to Collier, Putnam argues that 'an ideal theory satisfying all of our methodological and theoretical constraints cannot be false' [3, p. 413]. Collier attempts to defend metaphysical realism against this Putnamian (...) attack by distinguishing 'between our ability to state a theory and our ability to conceive its possibility' [3, p. 413]. I will show that this defence is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Few aspects of social behavior tell us more about a culture than those practices that involve the roles it assigns to models and copies. Under interpretation, such conduct reveals its attitudes toward authority and antiquity, its sense of identity and regard for security, and the relative importance that it attached to imitation and invention. To varying degrees, all societies display these concerns, but in none were they so firmly grounded in a considered theory of the relation between prototype and derivative (...) as they were in Byzantium. An example from the domain of law will illustrate, though not explain, this cultural difference. As against the Roman tradition in which the use of copies as evidence in court was prohibited, at least from the tenth century on Byzantine tribunals accepted the legitimacy of certified copies of documents. The very word used for an official copy—ison, meaning equal— suggests the conceptual distinction between it and the terms copie, Kopie, kopiya, and so on, in modern languages, all derived from the Latin word for abundance. (shrink)

Agamben’s self-professed epigonism underwrites his entire project, serving as an even more fundamental methodological concept than the signature, paradigm, and archeology. In Infancy and History, Agamben maintains that transcendental experience is no longer a viable source of philosophical insight; philosophers go astray referring their thinking back to an authentic yet esoteric experience that, itself unspeakable, grounds positive philosophical assertions. Neither mysterious nor ineffable, the experience founding philosophy is the completely patent, non-latent, experience of language’s pure exteriority. Rather than “deconstructing” metaphysics (...) by exposing its hidden contradictions, philosophy must “deconfabulate,” telling fables about philosophy to undo its enchantments, since it is through the fable that the spell of silence, which itself originates in fable, can be broken. This “epigonal” method, which follows after the tradition rather than seeking a new grounding, is itself justified through Agamben’s account, in The End of the Poem, of the Italian, as opposed to Germanic, physiognomy and of a specifically Italian relation to language going back to Dante. To be Italian is to embrace the “deadness” of one’s own language, rejecting the myth of the resurrection of the original potencies of a dead classical language through a living, modern language. (shrink)

The first of its kind in English, _The Anthology of the Works of Ugo Spirito_ offers an account of the complex intellectual life of one of the most original and controversial Italian thinkers of the past century.

Covering scientific, legal, ethical, historical, theological and public policy aspects of human embryo research, the cases for and against are put strongly and clearly. Scientific evidence is cogently presented by leading embryologists.

Evolutionäre Fortschritte, die nicht zum Menschen führen, etwa die Entwicklung der Elefanten, der Wale oder die künftige Evolution des Menschen, die jenseits der menschlichen Kultur stattfinden, müssen gleichwertig mit kulturellen Fortschritten eingestuft werden, damit die Kultur selbst weiterentwickelt werden kann. Angesichts modernster Forschungsergebnisse, die Großartiges in der Kultur und in der Natur nicht zu kurz kommen lassen, bietet diese Arbeit u.a. neue, ausführliche und sorgfältige Definitionen von «Fortschritt» und «Kultur». Bei der Beschreibung und Bewertung von kulturellen Fortschritten wird eine globale, (...) nicht-eurozentrische Perspektive angewendet, woraus ein neues Bild von der Entwicklung der Menschheit Konturen annimmt. (shrink)