I discuss donald davidson's argument for the psycho-Physical identity theory and contend that it fails: it relies on an implausible account of mental and physical events. Davidson proposes a linguistic test for determining whether a given event is mental or physical. I argue that the assumptions that are necessary for employing such a criterion of the mental are either false or presuppose the truth of the identity theory.

It’s no wonder descriptions of riding often resemble the words of Asian mystics and Jedi knights: The ride causes your senses to open completely. You experience only the present, the now. Readers who prefer revving a Harley to meditating in a Zen garden know that biking is just as contemplative as chanting in the lotus position. Here, philosopher-bikers explore this seeming dichotomy, expounding on intriguing questions such as: Why are the motorcycles the real stars of Easy Rider? What would Marx (...) and Foucault say about Harley riders’ tight leather garb? What’s it like to live a dual life as a philosophy professor who wrenches his own 1965 Electra Glide? Would Jesus hang out in a biker bar or a coffeehouse? And more importantly, would He ride a Harley or a Honda? These witty, provocative essays give readers and riders a new appreciation of what it means to become one with the road. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bernard Harrison THE TRUTH ABOUT METAPHOR GOTTLOB frece introduced into philosophy two doctrines whose subsequent influence, on analytic philosophers at least, has been momentous. One is the doctrine that to understand a sentence is to know how to set about establishing die trudi-value of an assertion couched in those words. The other is the doctrine that a word has meaning only in the context of a sentence. These (...) doctrines make it hard to understand metaphor. They create difficulties, especially, for any theory of metaphor which assumes the intelligibility of talk about two kinds of meaning, literal and metaphorical. Frege's doctrines allow only one kind of meaning: one connected essentially with the issue of truth and falsity. But it is only when we take them literally that metaphorical sentences acquire a truth value: usually false. Two obvious suggestions offer ways of getting around this. The first is the suggestion diat metaphors are condensed or disguised similes: true or (sometimes) false statements about similarity. The second is the suggestion that a term used in a metaphorical context just has a different literal meaning from the one it has in a sentence intended to be taken literally. Neither is very plausible. The first reduces a metaphorical comparison, "Man is a wolf," to a literal statement of similarity, "Men are like wolves." But what similarity, exactly, is the statement supposed to be asserting? Perhaps that men prey upon one anodier, as wolves are supposed to do. But dien "prey" can only be meant metaphorically, at which point die puzzle revives. As Goodman says of die attempt to find a simile in the metaphorical assertion diat a picture is sad, "What die simile says in effect is that person and picture are alike in being sad, die one literally and the odier metaphorically. Instead of metaphor reducing to simile, simile reduces to metaphor; or radier, the difference between simile and metaphor is negligible." ' 38 Bernard Harrison39 An equally fatal objection to the second suggestion is diat it is only ifwe take die terms which compose a metaphor in their plain everyday senses that they compose a metaphor. As R. M. J. Dammann puts it, "IfGod is a rock in a different sense from that in which Gibraltar is one, then both are really, literally, rocks, just as what one buys in a sweetshop is rock, though a dissatisfied customer might call it such metaphorically."2 It cannot, in odier words, be literally true diat die process of understanding a metaphor involves changing the sense ofits constituent expressions, odierwise metaphor would evaporate in die reader's grasp into literality. What this suggests is diat what makes a sentence metaphorical is not any change in the meaning of its constituent expressions, but the way in which those expressions, with dieir plain everyday meanings, are combined in the sentence. What we need, perhaps, ifwe are to begin to understand metaphor, is not a dieory ofmetaphorical meaning, but an account of what it is to assert metaphorically: an account, diat is, which would operate at the level of die sentence rather than at diat of die word. But this returns us to Frege's two doctrines. If the meaning of a word is to be wholly identified with die contribution it makes to die determination of a truth value for each sentence in which it occurs, dien it is difficult to see how the constituents of a sentence could determine anything odier than a plain, literal meaning for the sentence as a whole. What I shall try to show in this essay is that this difficulty can be overcome : that we can give a satisfactory account of the semantic mechanisms of metaphor without giving up either of Frege's doctrines. As Frege thought, understanding a sentence is knowing how to set about establishing the truth or falsity ofassertions couched in diose words. But to say what, exacdy, someone knows in knowing diat demands, I shall argue, a more complicated story than Fregeans have supposed. First, diough, I want to consider a more radical strategy dian mine for squaring Frege's doctrines with our experience of metaphor, proposed by Donald Davidson.3 Davidson holds widi Frege that the... (shrink)

This book addresses the breach within contemporary philosophy with a newly conceived foundationalism. It shows that dramatic discord has arisen between its two dominant branches. The Anglo-American branch generally takes its departure from logic and from natural science, while the Continental branch generally takes its departure from art and from the great traditional questions. However, they share this common negative feature: each side denies the view that philosophy issues from a central foundation. The book gives brief distillations of six major (...) Anglo-American figures: Carnap, James, Quine, Davidson and Kripke; as well as six major Continental figures: Husserl (the only foundationalist), Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Gadamer, and Sallis. In each, the author discovers a hidden foundation called ruling image that animates the philosopher's thought. (shrink)

Our global community desperately needs overt awakening to an age of reason and faith. Reasonable Faith for a Post-Secular Age meets this need by interpreting faith not in terms of belief in propositions but in terms of living surrender to having been seized by agape for every Face, including one's own. Virtually all faith traditions, from Buddhism to Humanism to Wiccan, are rooted in agape and therefore share considerable spiritual and ethical common ground (a truth long veiled). In contrast to (...) ethically feckless secular rationality--over which a devastating, global social Darwinism currently runs roughshod--faith qua living surrender to agape grounds moral realism, awakens us to love for all creatures, and inspires struggles for justice. Inspired by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and Christian spirituality, Greenway engages, on the one hand, intellectuals like Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Rorty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jeffery Stout, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams, and, on the other, contemporary debates over consciousness, free will, evil, and metaethics. He details the character of secular rationality's devastating scission from moral reality and clarifies the promise of understanding faith and spirituality in terms of agape. (shrink)

In ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,’ Williams is mistaken in thinking that I accused him of thinking that that we can describe the world ‘as it is anyway’ without using concepts. Our real disagreement is over whether it makes sense to think that the concepts of physics do this. The central issue is this: the notion of ‘absoluteness’ is defined using at least one semantical notion (‘convergence’). If Williams' view is to work, I argue, at least one semantical notion needs (...) to be absolute. But Williams himself concedes that semantical notions cannot be reduced to physical ones, and the ‘absolute conception’ is supposed to be given in terms of primary qualities alone. (shrink)

Sustainability is typically viewed as consisting of three forces, economic, social, and ecological, in tension with one another. In this paper, we address the dangers posed to societal sustainability. The concern being addressed is the very survival of societies where the rights of individuals, personal and collective freedoms, an independent judiciary and media, and democracy, despite its messiness, are highly valued. We argue that, as a result of various technological innovations, a range of dysfunctional impacts are threatening social and political (...) stability. For instance, robotics and automation are replacing human labor and decision-making in a range of industries; search engines, monetized through advertising, have access to, and track, our interests and preferences; social media, in connecting us to one another often know more about us than we ourselves do, enabling them to profit in ways which may not coincide with our well-being; online retailers have not only acquired the ability to track and predict our buying choices, but also they can squeeze vendors based on their outsize bargaining power; and, in general, virtual technologies have changed both the way we think and our sense of self. With the rising deployment of the Internet of Things, and developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence, the threats to individual freedoms and rights, societal cohesion and harmony, employment and economic well-being, and trust in democracy are being ratcheted up. This paper lauds the benefits and addresses the harm wrought by the high tech giants in Information and Communication Technologies. The search for rapidly growing revenues drives firms to accelerate product innovation without fully investigating the entire gamut of their impacts. As greater wealth accrues to the leaders of tech firms, inequalities within firms and societies are widening, creating social tensions and political ferment. We explore the ethical nature of the challenge employing a simple utilitarian calculus, complemented by approaches rooted in rights, justice, and the common good. Various options to address the challenges posed by ICTs are considered and evaluated. We argue that regulation may do little more than slow down the damage to society, particularly since societal values and political preferences vary internationally. Firms need to establish ethical standards, imbuing the upholders of these standards with sufficient authority, while creating a culture of morality. User involvement and activism, and shareholders’ concerns for the sustainability of societies on whose continued prosperity they depend, are imperative to humanity’s ability to decide the future direction of technology. (shrink)

« Un événement », écrit Milan Kundera, « n’est-il pas d’autant plus important et chargé de significations qu’il dépend d’un plus grand nombre de hasards? Seul le hasard peut nous apparaître comme un message. Ce qui arrive par nécessité, ce qui est attendu et se répète quotidiennement, n’est que chose muette. Seul le hasard est parlant. On tente d’y lire comme les gitanes lisent au fond d’une tasse dans les figures qu’a dessinées le marc de café ». L’événement, d’autant plus (...) improbable qu’il... (shrink)

For some decades, the concept of human dignity has been widely discussed in bioethical literature. Some authors think that this concept is central to questions of respect for human beings, whereas others are very critical of it. It should be noted that, in these debates, dignity is one component of a long-lasting and widespread conceptual construct used to support a stance on the ethical question of the moral status of an action or being. This construct has been used from Modernity (...) onward to condemn slavery and torture as violations of human dignity. In spelling it out, we can come to a better understanding of what “dignity” means and become aware that there exists a quite useful place for this notion in our ethical thought, albeit a modest one. (shrink)

In this research, the authors present a model that demonstrates that motivating managers to change unpopular or irresponsible corporate behavior may be required when the stakeholders desire such a change. Using agency theory, they then test part of the model and demonstrate why it may be necessary for an organized protest to impact on share prices before managers choose to change the behavior. Investors' reactions to announcements of product boycotts and stock divestitures made over the 23-year period 1969-1991 were examined. (...) Announcements about boycotts were associated with significant negative market reactions, whereas divestiture announcements resulted in no significant market responses. From a pure stock market perspective, boycotts appear to be a more effective tool in influencing managers to change a company's behavior. (shrink)

« Je me joignis à Hegel sans nulle difficulté, ayant coutume d'être hégélien avant lui » : Alain retrouve, admiratif, en Hegel, l'exemplaire réunion méthodologique du concept et de l'expérience, et — quant au contenu, surtout de la philosophie de l'esprit — l'application non moins exemplaire du grand principe selon lequel l'inférieur porte et règle le supérieur, qui l'éclairé et l'explique. — A tel point que, en récusant la politique de Hegel, Alain va s'employer à sauver de lui-même un hégélianisme (...) auquel il a été et reste un incomparable éveilleur. « Sehr unbedenklich schloss ich mich an Hegel darum an, weil ich sonst vor Hegel hegelisch war » : höchst bewundernd findet Alain bei Hegel die musterhafte methodologische Vereinigung des Begriffs mit der Erfahrung, und — rücksichtlich des Inhaltes, vornehmlich der Geistesphilosophie — die ebenso musterhafte Anwendung des grossen Grundsatzes, nach welchem das Untere das Obere trägt und regelt, aber durch dasselbe erläutert und erklärt wird, wieder. — So sehr, dass Alain — indem er die Hegeische Staatstheorie ablehnt — sich darum bemüht, solch einen Hegelianismus von sich selbst zu retten, zu dessen Studium er unvergleichbarerweise noch heute den Sinn erweckt. (shrink)

Play resides at the heart of the Platonic dialogues, shaping their insights as well as informing their style. "The Play of the Platonic Dialogues" traces the prominent role of play, both as a general philosophical characteristic and as influencing the treatment of key issues. The nature of the forms, of the city, of virtue, of the soul and its immortality - these and others have been shaped by play. This book shows how Platonic playfulness is joined with the deepest seriousness (...) throughout the dialogues. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century cultural milieu in which Darwin lived and worked, it was generally assumed that art and religion enjoyed a close relationship. While differing in their view of religion in many respects, common to all the major proponents of the Naturphilosophie that had infiltrated the cultural milieu of both German and English nineteenth century scientists1 was their tendency to sublate the earlier, eighteenth century, Idealist conceptual thought of the Absolute by what they labeled “the intuition and feeling for (...) the Infinite.”2 Experienced as an organic, all-comprehensive reality, the totality of Nature was said along quasi-pantheistic lines to be a manifestation of the infinite Absolute, God, or... (shrink)

LE "COSMOS" ET LE "LOGOS" : LA QUESTION DE LA LIBERTE. LE "SALUT" : FOI, TRANSCENDANCE ET BONHEUR VERITABLE. LES MODELES HUMAINS D'OUVERTURE A L'AU-DELA ASSIGNES A L'ACTION. "L'HUMANISME": LES HUMANITES, LES HOMMES ET LA PERSONNE. LES "LUMIERES" : LE PROGRES DES SAVOIRS ET LA RAISON UNIVERSELLE. LE "PROGRES" : TRANSFORMATION, DEVELOPPEMENT OU IDEAL MORAL?. "L'HISTOIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE" : AMELIORATION OU DECLIN.?. LE PARADOXE DU RELATIVISME.

These three books consider the nature and evolutionary context of the individual and collective behavior of modern humans. Moffett’s The Human Swarm and Christakis’ Blue­print focus on the “big picture.” What, if anything, is distinctive about the ways groups of modern humans behave? What do modern human societies have in common that distin­guishes them from aggregations of non-human organisms? Wrangham’s The Goodness Par­adox focuses more narrowly on aggression, and the enigma that modern humans seem to be individually relatively docile, but (...) collectively capable of planning and executing highly aggressive activities. I was intrigued and educated by all three books. (shrink)

In this essay, I will not challenge these observations, which I consider well-founded. Rather, I will claim that the works of Heidegger and of another careful student of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, even if they have not provided an adequate politics, have substantially renovated the problem of politics. They have done so in two ways. First, they have destroyed, in Heidegger’s sense, the metaphysical base which has dominated political thought since Plato. Second, they have provided insights into and clues pointing toward elements (...) which any defensible politics must embody. In so doing they show a way to retrieve and renovate what is sound in the political thought which developed under the sway of metaphysics. (shrink)

L’article propose d’abord une version simplifiée d’une ontologie universelle, conçue comme un cadre général de description du monde matériel et mental. Il examine les notions d’entité, de propriété, de relation et de temporalité et leurs développements conjoints en termes de rapport entre les parties et le tout ou encore d’émergence d’une entité nouvelle. Il illustre ensuite les principes précédents en ce qui concerne la science économique, dont les entités de base sont les agents, les biens et les institutions. Il insiste (...) sur le couplage que cette dernière réalise entre leurs propriétés physiques ou psychologiques et le raisonnement qu’elle propose en termes d’équilibre et plus récemment d’apprentissage. Classification JEL : A12. (shrink)

The anonymous set of astronomical tables preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 10262, is the first set of displaced tables to be found in a medieval Latin text. These tables are a reworking of the standard Alfonsine tables and yield the same results. However, the mean motions are defined differently, the presentation of the tables is unprecedented, and some new functions are introduced for computing true planetary longitudes. The absence of any instructions as well as unusual technical (...) terms in the headings make it difficult to appreciate the cleverness that went into the construction of these tables that are extant in a unique copy. In this article we provide a detailed analysis of these tables and their underlying parameters. The displaced tables are typical of a pervasive tendency in Islamic science to provide extensive and elegant numerical tables for the convenience of practitioners. The underlying astronomical theory is neither questioned nor affected.Edward S. Kennedy. (shrink)

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Le pluriel, est celui de la race humaine vivante à travers ses cultures sur le dehors de la Raison la faculté du tout mondialisé mais qui n'en maîtrise pas l'existence alors que le multiple dans ce tout, est ce dont la Raison des sciences maîtrise l'objectivité. Cette double face de la Raison du tout mais charnelle est relative au Même qui se répète non identique à soi, mais solidaire de soi comme science et philosophie hors du cercle vicieux nietzschéen de (...) la vérité. Le vieux Logos, parler et penser est exemplaire de cette dualité que la mondialisation coupe en deux sans le disjoindre ; je ne parle qu'une langue singulière qui m'élève à l'Universel parmi la pluralité des langues. Et la Raison maîtrise par la linguistique la particularité de chaque langue dans leur multiplicité. Cette finitude du tout déplace celle du sujet vers sa naissance particulière pour les sciences, singulière pour le parler."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

L’ornement n’existe pas en soi, il est ontologiquement dépendant d’une réalité (artistique ou non) antérieure à lui – mais de nombreux ornements sont détachables de leur support. La secondarité de l’ornement explique sa propension à pulluler. L’ornement entretient ainsi avec l’œuvre ornée un rapport ambigu : il tend à l’affaiblir (par sa prolifération) non moins qu’à la construire (par le liant ou l’éclat qu’il lui donne). En musique et dans l’art oratoire notamment, l’ornement est essentiel. Dans tous les cas, l’ornement (...) vise à présenter l’œuvre ; dans certains cas même, l’ornement vaut pour lui-même, comme pure jubilation de la vie et « manifestation de soi » sans destinataire. (shrink)

J’appelle « présentation esthétique » le fait, pour un artiste, de présenter certaines conditions ou certains moyens de son art dans les formes même de son art, de manière sensible (« esthétique ») et non pas discursive. Dans certaines œuvres, le musicien présente esthétiquement certains instruments de musique : l’instrument n’est plus seulement au service de la musique, il est mis en avant pour lui-même. La musique devient alors l’instrument de son instrument. J’analyse de ce point de vue les Six (...) Concerts à plusieurs instruments de Jean-Sébastien Bach et la série des seize Sequenze de Luciano Berio. Mais la distinction entre « utiliser » simplement un instrument et le « présenter » n’est pas simple. Il est difficile d’utiliser un instrument sans le présenter au moins tendanciellement, et impossible de le présenter sans l’utiliser. L’attention esthétique de l’auditeur a aussi sa part dans ce processus. (shrink)