Our decision-theoretic states are not luminous. We are imperfectly reliable at identifying our own credences, utilities and available acts, and thus can never be more than imperfectly reliable at identifying the prescriptions of decision theory. The lack of luminosity affords decision theory a remarkable opportunity — to issue guidance on the basis of epistemically inaccessible facts. We show how a decision theory can guarantee action in accordance with contingent truths about which an agent is arbitrarily uncertain. It may seem that (...) such advantages would require dubiously adverting to externalist facts that go beyond the internalism of traditional decision theory, but this is not so. Using only the standard repertoire of decision-theoretic tools, we show how to modify existing decision theories to take advantage of this opportunity. These improved decision theories require agents to maximize conditional expected utility — expected utility conditional upon an agent’s actual decision situation. We call such modified decision theories ‘self-confident’. These self-confident decision theories have a distinct advantage over standard decision theories: their prescriptions are better. (shrink)

In his essay “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin argued that only certain types of strikes can be considered revolutionary, while others—i.e., most bread and butter, or “political” strikes—tacitly rely on the violent logics of the state. This paper suggests, however, that by reading Benjamin against himself and applying his discussion of “pure means” to those “political” strikes, the extent to which even these basic collective actions represent effective “strategies of resistance” becomes evident. This framework requires an interdisciplinary approach (...) to radical labor studies, combining political theory with history in order to identify and analyze past instances of joyful community-building during strikes. Relying also on a historical case study—the 1926 miners’ lockout in South Wales—and Benjamin’s own writings on the discipline of history, this paper contends that strikes, and the “alternative communities” they encourage workers and their families to build, present enormous revolutionary potential. When theory and history are studied together, and when we pay close attention to the actual tactics of solidarity that make up strike actions, this potential is uncovered. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

El objetivo general de este artículo es interrogar el lugar de la crítica a la idea de progreso en la filosofía de Walter Benjamin, argumentando que las raíces de su pensamiento político podrían encontrarse en el misticismo cabalista. La intención principal es determinar, siguiendo a Benjamin, algunas de las principales características de la creencia en el progreso como problema y su relación con una determinada normatividad histórica. Este recorrido permitirá elucidar la relación que, según el autor, mantendría una (...) comprensión procesualista y lineal de la historia con una actitud político-intelectual apoyada en el conformismo y la indiferencia. Por último, se propone considerar la original interpretación sobre la temporalidad que aparece en una vertiente del misticismo judío, el cabalismo de Isaac Luria de Safed, actualizada en forma heterodoxa por Benjamin, que permitiría comprender desde un nuevo punto de vista, conforme a la argumentación presentada, el vínculo temporal que supone la idea de tradición y rememoración en el materialismo histórico benjaminiano. (shrink)

Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) discuss the ethical concerns associated with employing what they term conversational artificial intelligence as therapist substitutes. Given their apprehensions, they...

Shadow of the Other is a discussion of how the individual has two sorts of relationships with an "other"--other individuals. The first regards the other as a s work apart is her brilliant utilization of a systematic dialectical approach to her subject, always maintaining the delicate balance between opposing tensions: masculinity and femininity, subjectivity and objectivity, passivity and activity, love and aggression, fantasy and reality, modernism and postmodernism, the intrapsychic and the intersubjective. Benjamin s work apart is her brilliant (...) utilization of a systematic dialectical approach to her subject, always maintaining the delicate balance between opposing other as a mental repository fo unwanted characteristics cast from the self. Jessica benjamin shows the implications of this dual relationship for male/female hierarchy and offers a possibility for balancing the two. This book continues the author's well-known explorations of the themes of intersubjectivity and gender, taking up issues at the forefront of contemporary debates in feminist theory and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Some proponents of mechanistic explanation downplay the significance of how-possibly explanations. We argue that developing accounts of mechanisms that could explain a phenomenon is an important aspect of scientific reasoning, one that involves imagination. Although appeals to imagination may seem to obscure the process of reasoning, we illustrate how, by examining diagrams we can gain insights into the construction of mechanistic explanations.

Timbre is that property of a sound that distinguishes it other than pitch and loudness, for instance the distinctive sound quality of a violin or flute. While the term is obscure, the concept has played an important, implicit role in recent philosophy of sound. Philosophers have debated whether to identify sounds with properties of waves, events, or objects. Many of the intuitive considerations in this debate apply most clearly to timbre qualities. Two prominent forms of timbre physicalism have emerged: one (...) identifying timbre with the spectral composition of proximal waves; the second identifying timbre with the mechanical vibrations at a sound source. I demonstrate that the first possibility is conceptually unsatisfying, while the second fails to meet the standards of rigor established by the color physicalism literature. One response to these worries might be to adopt a more modest, non-reductive realism about timbre, such as the ecological view of J. J. Gibson. (shrink)

SummaryMarc'antonio de Dominis is well known to historians as a figure in the political and religious culture of early modern Britain and Europe. This article contends that he was also a major theorist of civil power: his critique of Catholic scholastic political thought is compelling and his account of divine right kingship sheds light on conceptual problems that troubled a range of early modern thinkers. De Dominis dismantled the scholastic theory of political power on its own terms, insisting that Almain, (...) Bellarmine, Suárez and others could not distinguish, as they sought to, between the potestas politica in general and the rule of particular princes. By this insight de Dominis could vindicate royal authority against the deposing pretensions of the Pope, the main objective of James I's supporters during the Allegiance Controversy, but his own positive account of how to think about power ran into theoretical trouble which he evidently perceived himself. If the potestas politica cannot be abstracted from a specific regime, and if the prince's absolute sovereignty depends on this fact, can politics be understood only at the level of the particular and contingent? The article closes by setting Thomas Hobbes—well versed in Jacobean polemic—in the context of this question. (shrink)

Though much philosophical and theological debate centres on various aspects of religious life, the very definition of a religious life in any given tradition is often unclear. This paper focuses on Christianity and asks, what does it mean to be a Christian? Kierkegaard‟s authorship offers an insightful conception of Christian being. An ontological account of being in „correct relation‟ and an ethical imperative to imitate Christ and love one‟s neighbour constitute Kierkegaard‟s idea of what it means to be a Christian. (...) This paper will also discuss whether Kierkegaard over-emphasises the individual aspect of religious life at the expense of the communal aspect. What will be affirmed throughout is that Kierkegaard‟s ontological and ethical conception of Christian being illuminates the issue today as it did for 19th century Danish religion. (shrink)

The article scrutinises the semantics of canonical property designators of the forms ‘the property of being F’ and ‘F-ness’. First it is argued that, as their form suggests, the former are definite definitions, albeit of a special sort. Secondly, the prima facie plausible classification of the latter as proper names (which is often met in philosophical writings) is rejected. The semantics of such terms is developed and it is shown how its proper understanding yields important consequences about the concepts expressed (...) by these terms. (shrink)

In this issue, contributors engage Timothy Murphy’s proposal for irreligious bioethics over against religious bioethics. Two essays take opposing sides in the debate, while a third seeks middle ground. Another essay questions the meaning of the words “religion,” “irreligion,” and “secular.” The final essay examines the religious nature of human existence and its implications for the debate.

Bioconvergence is a growing area within the evolving bioeconomy that seeks out synergistic opportunities at the intersection of engineering and the life sciences (Greenbaum 2023). One example is th...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 126-127 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment T. J. Hochstrasser. Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 246. Cloth, $54.95. In a worthy addition to Cambridge's Ideas in Context series, T. J. Hochstrasser undertakes an excavation. His aim is to provide a description, and to (...) demonstrate the importance within the German Frühaufklärung, of a largely forgotten philosophical approach: eclecticism. Hochstrasser argues that the triumph of Wolffian rationalism in the Protestant universities in the middle of the eighteenth century occluded the importance of eclecticism for Kant, who in turn occluded it for everyone afterward. But the price of forgetting eclecticism is high. Not only are we left with no account--or a skewed account--of the development of German thought from the first stirrings of the Enlightenment to the emergence of the Critical philosophy, but our understanding of the development of the historiography of philosophy is badly compromised. For among their many accomplishments--in natural jurisprudence, in university reform--the eclectics were the first critical historians of philosophy, their distinctive genres being historically aware treatises on natural law and Whig histories of natural jurisprudence. Hochstrasser's study traces the development of eclecticism, from the work of its founders, Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, through a devolution in the hands of Thomasius's later disciples, to the eventual oblivion in the middle of the eighteenth century. This review will focus on the beginning of this narrative, as Pufendorf is the leading figure in the book.Eclecticism began with Pufendorf's attempt, in his mature work on natural law, to reconcile his conflicting inheritances from Grotius and Hobbes without simply endorsing the work of either. He was impressed both by Grotius's explanation of the law of nations in terms of human sociability--but also by Hobbes's criticisms of Grotius, rooted in the latter's analysis of the state of nature. At the same time, he wished to reject Grotius's method of induction from sociological observation and Hobbes's minimally constrained voluntarism. Contributing further to his perplexity was his increasing disaffection from the geometric approach he had adopted in his Elementa Jurisprudentiae Universalis.The way out of this impasse, Hochstrasser contends, was revealed to Pufendorf in correspondence with Hermann Conring, the leading constitutional lawyer of his time, and Johann Böcler, Grotius's most erudite commentator. Böcler chastised Pufendorf for his neglect of history, and both of Pufendorf's correspondents pointed out his need for some non-Hobbesian criterion by which he could validate his first principles, whatever they turned out to be. Stung particularly by Böcler's remarks, Pufendorf returned to the Stoics and there discovered a via media between Hobbes's pessimism and Grotius's optimism: a synthesis anticipating Kant's doctrine of "unsocial sociability." For the purposes of Hochstrasser's study, the key aspects of Pufendorf's solution are these: first, it avoids mere voluntarism; second, it does this by means of a moral epistemology that sharply distinguishes natural law [End Page 126] from moral theology; finally, the validating criterion for Pufendorf's first principles is located in critical appropriation of the history of moral philosophy. These were to be hallmarks of Pufendorf's school.On the first and second points, Hochstrasser seems to me substantively correct, though I think he misunderstands the nature of Pufendorf's escape from mere voluntarism and thereby underplays the religious dimensions of Pufendorf's theory. Among recent Anglo-American commentators on Pufendorf, only Robert Adams has in my view properly construed Pufendorf's thought: that it involves a command theory of obligation proper, but posits the natural advantageousness of some hierarchies as a buttress against mere voluntarism. Hochstrasser is thus right to insist, against Leibniz, that Pufendorf's account of obligation is coherent. But he is wrong to suggest that "there was nothing in Pufendorf's theory... to oblige him to introduce fear of punishment by a superior... " (105). He is... (shrink)

Medical trainees should learn from the actions of Nazi physicians to inform a more just contemporary practice by examining the subtle assumptions, or moral orientations, that led to such heinous actions. One important moral orientation that still informs contemporary medical practice is the moral orientation of elimination in response to suffering patients. We propose that the moral orientation of presence, described by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, provides a more fitting response to suffering patients, in spite of the significant barriers to enacting (...) such a moral orientation for contemporary trainees. (shrink)

Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other than an Anarchist, I am sure I should have no difficulty in disputing the argument. And does not this very fact, after all, furnish in itself the best of all reasons why I should be an Anarchist – namely, the impossibility (...) of discovering any good reason for being anything else? To show the invalidity of the claims of State Socialism, Nationalism, Communism, Single taxism, the prevailing capitalism, and all the numerous forms of Archism existing or proposed, is at the same blow to show the validity of the claims of Anarchism. Archism once denied, only Anarchism can be affirmed. That is a matter of logic. (shrink)

Lorsque commença en 1933 la dispersion des savants allemands, il n’y avait aucun domaine dont la connaissance familière aurait pu leur conférer un prestige exclusif. Pourtant, les regards de l’Europe étaient tournés vers eux, et il s’y lisait plus que de la sympathie. C’étaient des regards interrogateurs, comme les font naître des gens qui ont été confrontés à un danger inhabituel,..