In the early 12th century, a Jewish community first settled in the medieval city of Erfurt (Thuringia). The synagogue, the mikvah (ritual bath), and several private dwellings of this community are preserved until today. A room in one of the private houses formerly inhabited by Jews has a wooden beam ceiling, dating from 1244, which is colourfully painted with tendrils, leaves and blossoms. This ceiling was added to the room together with other extensive refurbishments: the former door in the eastern (...) wall was replaced with a built-in cupboard, a new door as well as a recess for an oil lamp were added to the northern wall, and the room received an oriel window. Furthermore, the ceiling shows the remains of suspensions for lamps, and traces of shelves are still visible on the walls. As an ensemble, these alterations suggest that the chamber was converted into a prayer room in the mid-13th century. As the only preserved example of a medieval Jewish private room for prayer, it constitutes an important source for understanding Jewish piety in the German-speaking lands. (shrink)

This paper examines the efforts of contractualists to develop an alternative to aggregation to govern our duty not to harm (duty to rescue) others. I conclude that many of the moral principles articulated in the literature seem to reduce to aggregation by a different name. Those that do not are viable only as long as they are limited to a handful of oddball cases at the margins of social life. If extended to run-of-the-mill conduct that accounts for virtually all unintended (...) (in the sense of undesired) harm to others—noncriminal activities that impose some risk of harm on others—they would rule out all action. Moreover, because such conduct poses an irreducible conflict between freedom of action and freedom from expected harm, it can be regulated only by principles that accept the necessity of making precisely the sorts of interpersonal trade-offs that contractualism is foundationally committed to reject: trade-offs in which the numbers count, such that a risk of serious harm to one person can be justified by small benefits to the many. (shrink)

Manley and Wasserman (2008) have provided a convincing case against analyses of dispositions in terms of one conditional, and a very interesting positive proposal that links any disposition to a ‘suitable proportion’ of a particular set of precise conditionals. I focus on their positive proposal and ask just how precise those conditionals are to be. I argue that, contrary to what Manley and Wasserman imply in their paper, they must be maximally specific, describing in their antecedents complete centred worlds. This (...) suggests a natural semantics for dispositional expressions, which I briefly explore to argue that it lacks uniformity. I end by suggesting a variation on Manley and Wasserman's view which would preserve uniformity, though at the cost of some new puzzling questions. (shrink)

"Advocates of the evolutionary analogy claim that mechanisms governing scientific change are analogous to those at work in organic evolution - above all, natural selection. By referring to the works of the most influential proponents of evolutionary analogies (Toulmin, Campbell, Hull and, most notably, Kuhn) the authors discuss whether and to what extent their use of the analogy is appropriate. A careful and often illuminating perusal of the theoretical scope of the terms employed, as well as of the varying contexts (...) within which the analogy is appealed to in contemporary debates, leads to the conclusion that such general theories of selective processes are either too sketchy or eventually not persuasive, if not altogether based on flawed views of evolutionary biology. By clarifying what is at stake, the analysis carried out in the book sheds new light on one of the dominant theories of scientific progress. It also invites criticism, of course - but that is the very fuel of philosophical confrontation." - Stefano Gattei, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca "This book presents a serious challenge to those, like David Hull, who seek to model scientific change as an evolutionary process. The authors point out that although there are similarities between the processes of scientific change and organic evolution, the dissimilarities present formidable difficulties to construing the relation as anything more than a weak analogy. Their argument employs what they call a 'type hierarchical' approach that promises to be a powerful tool for the classification of similarities between theories in all fields." - Michael Bradie, Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University "This is a most interesting discussion of the analogy between biological and scientific change. Particularly commendable is the close attention paid to the thinking of the late David Hull and his pathbreaking work on this issue." - Michael Ruse, History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University. (shrink)

I consider the contrast between Leibniz's relational concept of spacetime and Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. I suggest that there are two interpretations of Leibniz's view, which I call L1 and L2. L1 amounts to saying that there is no real inertial structure to spacetime, whereas in general relativity the inertial structure is dynamical or real in Lande's sense ; i.e., it can be ‘kicked’ and ‘kicks back,’ causing gravitational effects. If there is no real inertial structure to (...) space-time then, as Weyl points out, the concept of the relative motive of several bodies has no more foundation than the concept of absolute motion for a single body. Thus, L1 seems to be untenable. L2 is a more sophisticated view which rejects the geometrical aspect of Newtonian space-time as a container for events, but accepts the existence of a real structure which determines the inertial properties of matter. (shrink)

A one-of-a-kind reference to the international vocabulary of the humanities This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that (...) influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages—English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities. (shrink)

This would have been a better book if Sampson had argued his main point, the usefulness of the Simonian principle as an explanation of the evolution, structure, and acquisition of language, on its own merits, instead of making it subsidiary to his attack on ‘limited-minders’ (e.g., Noam Chomsky). The energy he has spent on the attack he might then have been willing and able to employ in developing his argument at reasonable length and detail. He might then have found that (...) argument faulty, or even wrong. Underdeveloped as it is, however, his point about the Simonian principle does seem to have thepossibility of some significance in understanding the empirical issues of this book (and the dichotomy of ‘limited’ and ‘creative’ minds is certainly not one of these).What Sampson has done inMaking Sense has the appearance of science, and theoretical linguistics, and therefore it is somewhat puzzling to find the conclusions that the human mind cannot be scientifically studied (p. 10), and that theoretical linguistics is a “mirage” (p. 210). His statement that It may still seem worthwhile to some to work out the exact implications for present-day linguistic structure of the fact that languages are evolved systems, but I cannot see that there is much glamour or, indeed, much substance in this task (p. 210) would surely be surprising to a geneticist or ethologist. We hope his apparent misunderstanding on this point will not lead him to give up his profession, in which he seems willing and able to make a significant contribution.What in particular is required is a clear indication of how the Simonian principle imposes itself in the ontogenesis of language. Consider Chomsky's example of the rule for forming questions in English. For sentence (1) below, children able to deal with such examples would give (2) but not (3) as the corresponding question (Chomsky, 1975, p. 31).The man who is tall is in the room.Is the man who is tall in the room?*Is the man who tall is in the room?Now compare Sampson's evolutionary explanation for the structure-dependence of rules which is illustrated in (1)-(3): “once a behavior-pattern has become thoroughly established, it will tend to be treated as a fixed given when used as a constituent of a more complex, later-learned behavior-pattern” (p. 183). In order for this to account for Chomsky's example it would have to be the case that children learn relative clauses before they learn questions, which simply isn't true.In conclusion, we wish not to seem unaware of the problems with the position Sampson is attacking, or unaware of the sometimes dogmatic way it too has been presented. Chomsky's hypothesis of innate linguistic ideas seems, fundamentally, to derive from the claimed rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of limited and degenerate data. Chomsky appears to have been unwilling to argue these points directly or to show their relation to others, for which he has argued, for example, the implausibility of some abstract constraint's having been learned (cf. 1971, pp. 22–44; 1975, pp. 30–33; 1980, pp. 35–52). And almost from his first invoking of rationalism in support of his linguistic method, Chomsky has himself resorted to an unnecessarily polemical attack on empiricism (cf. 1965, p. 58, n. 33). The innateness issue is just not clear or simple enough to justify so much animus, or even conviction. (shrink)

Bioethics education now takes place outside universities as well as within them. How should clinicians, ethics committee members, and policymakers be taught the ethics they need, and how may their progress best be evaluated?

[Anne:] “I can't, I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”“I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say,” said Marilla.“Weren't you? Well did you ever try to imagine you were in the depths of despair?”” No, I didn't.”“Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you (...) can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel.”—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.Emotion, as a “suprarational” property, transcends rationality in that it can be thought of as a group, contextual rather than as a solely individual trait, and thus is a higher order property, as the above quote suggests. This proposal arises from a metatheoretical analysis of models available to broach questions of emotion. I use metatheoretical in the sense of both the context of theory production and the theory of theory. From the first arose the idea that emotion, through the use of irrationality, has surfaced as a working equivalent to inexplicability or rational relativity, and can be modelled more adequately as suprarational, with a unique nature in its own right. The latter led me to propose that the concept of emotion as contextual, a higher order group level property, is possible and tentatively profitable. (shrink)

A partire dall’analisi di alcuni passi del Timeo, il testo propone lo studio delle cause e dei tipi di infermità che affliggono la salute umana al fine di mostrare che la maniera in cui il filosofo concepisce le malattie è una chiave per approfondire l’antropologia e l’etica dell’ultimo Platone. Presupposto della ricerca è la visione olistica che caratterizza il Timeo, in cui la condizione umana influenza il livello socio-politico e il livello cosmico, i quali, a loro volta, condizionano e sono (...) condizionati dalla presenza dell’uomo. Per finalizzare lo studio abbiamo circoscritto l’analisi ai passi 69c-90c del Timeo. Starting with the analysis of some Timaeus passages, the text proposes the study of the causes and of the types of infirmity that afflict human health in order to demonstrate that the way the philosopher conceives illnesses is a key to get a deeper knowledge of the anthropology and ethics of the last Plato. Premise of the research is the holistic vision that characterizes the Timaeus, in which the human condition affects the socio political level and the cosmic level which, in their turn, affect and are affected by the human presence. To finalize the study, we analyzed the pages 69c-90c of the Timaeus. A partire dall’analisi di alcuni passi del Timeo, il testo propone lo studio delle cause e dei tipi di infermità che affliggono la salute umana al fine di mostrare che la maniera in cui il filosofo concepisce le malattie è una chiave per approfondire l’antropologia e l’etica dell’ultimo Platone. Presupposto della ricerca è la visione olistica che caratterizza il Timeo, in cui la condizione umana influenza il livello socio-politico e il livello cosmico, i quali, a loro volta, condizionano e sono condizionati dalla presenza dell’uomo. Per finalizzare lo studio abbiamo circoscritto l’analisi ai passi 69c-90c del Timeo. (shrink)

When The Emperor of All Maladies was published in late 2010, I knew it would be near the top of my stack of books to read. Since I am a PhD student in the History of Science and Medicine, reading a notable book on the history of cancer and its treatments is a must. Sadly, at the time of its publication, my mother had just died unexpectedly at age 82 of a disease for which she had never received a prior (...) diagnosis: cancer, or acute myelogenous leukemia, to be exact. From diagnosis to death took a mere six days. So I hesitated to take this in-depth look at cancer, a disease that left my family and me stunned and grieving from such a sudden loss. I reasoned, however, that the approach of the book would be detached and scientific, perhaps similar to the tone of the academic tomes that I tackle each week. I began to read. (shrink)

This paper compares Tocqueville's concept of democracy to the social and political evolution of Brazil. It draws attention to the different points of departure which marked the establishment of American and Brazilian societies, through the works of authors such as Laura de Mello e Souza, Gilberto Freyre, Florestan Fernandes, Celso Furtado, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. It notes that, despite conditions being more favourable for the formation of a democratic society in the United States than in Brazil, subsequent to the (...) founding periods a certain coming together occurred in the process of formation of the two societies. The 'similarity of differences' between American and Brazilian societies becomes clear as soon as one brings together the roles played by the three constituent ethnic groups of these societies, which, by their simple existence, link difference to inequality. (shrink)

This article investigates the subject of pilgrimage and change, regarding the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela from a pilgrim's perspective. Two aspects of change are being looked at more closely: 1. The inner transformation of today's pilgrims during their pilgrimage, as well as the factors leading to their transformation, and 2. The occurance of recent structural changes of the pilgrimage and their background. These changes also reflect the tensions between pilgrimage and tourism, and the pilgrims and the politics of pilgrimage (...) respectively. (shrink)

We are within nature and culture, conditioned simultaneously by genes and meanings. This form of our self-understanding is the result of fundamental modifications that happened in modern philosophical anthropology and of the impact of the natural Science. In modern philosophy three types of approaches to the human situation were constituted at different times: the idealist, the naturalist, and the culturalist, and the problem of whether humanity is natural (biological) or cultural has begun to take precedence over the issue of human (...) supernatural roots. Both approaches are presented, their presuppositions discussed, and arguments in favor of a version of the culturalist approach. Only the culturalist approach allows us to understand our own self-constitution and, in particular, our self-reflectivity, as well as the naturalist attempts to ignore them and immerse ourselves in nature. (shrink)

The series, founded in 1970, publishes works which either combine studies in the history of philosophy with a systematic approach or bring together systematic studies with reconstructions from the history of philosophy. Monographs are published in English as well as in German. The founding editors are Erhard Scheibe (editor until 1991), Günther Patzig (until 1999) and Wolfgang Wieland (until 2003). From 1990 to 2007, the series had been co-edited by Jürgen Mittelstraß.

ABSTRACTDeveloping strategies to reduce inequities in health requires an understanding of how inequities occur, determining the salient factors in their production, and deciding which ones are most amenable to change. The recognition of several principles regarding the manifestations and genesis of inequities can help to decide on strategies. In making decisions, it is important to consider whether the aim is to reduce disparities in the occurrence of ill health or to reduce disparities in the severity of ill health. Evidence shows (...) that the major impact on equity of health services, particularly regarding their potential to reduce severity, is attributable to the strength of primary care resources and services in communities and countries. Virtually every influence on the genesis of inequities is determined by the political context in which policy is made. The issue of health services is not different in this regard from other types of strategies.There is no longer any doubt about the pervasive influence of social factors on health. Almost two centuries of descriptive research provides convincing evidence of associations between social structures and relationships and health status in all countries and in all societies; if there is anything new from more recent research, it is that the association is not limited to differences between the lowest social strata and other social strata. Rather, the association is noted throughout the social spectrum. That is, there is a social gradient in health such that, for many if not most manifestations of ill health, the lower the social stratum, the worse the health.The challenge for the future is to understand why this is the case, to create a consensus that these inequalities are unnecessary and unacceptable, and to devise strategies that are both effective and possible. This paper will focus on the first of these aims, in a context that facilitates attention to the second and third aims. (shrink)

It is usually supposed that, with his dichotomy paradox, Zeno gave birth to the modern so-called supertask debate – the debate of whether carrying out an infinite sequence of actions or operations...

This paper investigates why women in their first year enter philosophy at a representative level but their participation falls subsequently thereafter. Using data gathered from women students that are currently enrolled in a philosophy department at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand, the paper provides a set of recommendations for changing this pattern in women’s participation and how one particular department responded to these recommendations. In addition, the paper raises several reflective questions concerning the data gathered from women students, including (...) why a number of women describe their experience in the philosophy department as being no different than that of their male counterparts. (shrink)