J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the (...) history of the field of argumentation theory and various related disciplines. It illuminates the central debates and presents core ideas in four main areas: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Argument Theory and Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. (shrink)

The history of note?taking has only begun to be written. On the one hand, the basic functions of selecting, summarizing, storing and sorting information garnered from reading, listening, observing and thinking can be identified in most literate contexts in some form or other. On the other hand, Renaissance humanists emphasized with unprecedented success the virtues of stockpiling notes on large scales and for the long term, thanks to the availability of paper and a new abundance of books, but also to (...) their ability to transmit their own keen motivation to avoid any future loss of learning. We continue to share many early modern ideals for insuring the collection and retrievability of information and have built on early modern practices that facilitate the accumulation and the organization of information, including collaborative work and the use of rearrangeable slips. (shrink)

This paper draws out and connects two neglected issues in Kant’s conception of a priori knowledge. Both concern topics that have been important to contemporary epistemology and to formal epistemology in particular: knowability and luminosity. Does Kant commit to some form of knowability principle according to which certain necessary truths are in principle knowable to beings like us? Does Kant commit to some form of luminosity principle according to which, if a subject knows a priori, then they can know that (...) they know a priori? I defend affirmative answers to both of these questions, and by considering the special kind of modality involved in Kant’s conceptions of possible experience and the essential completability of metaphysics, I argue that his combination of knowability and luminosity principles leads Kant into difficulty. (shrink)

Against a view currently popular in the literature, it is argued that Kant was not a niıve realist about perceptual experience. Naive realism entails that perceptual experience is object-dependent in a very strong sense. In the first half of the paper, I explain what this claim amounts to and I undermine the evidence that has been marshalled in support of attributing it to Kant. In the second half of the paper, I explore in some detail Kant’s account of hallucination and (...) argue that no such account is available to someone who thinks that veridical perceptual experience is object-dependent in the naive realist sense. Kant’s theory provides for a remarkably sophisticated, bottom-up explanation of the phenomenal character of hallucinatory episodes and is crucial for gaining a proper understanding of his model of the mind and its place in nature. (shrink)

Predicates of personal taste (fun, tasty) and epistemic modals (might, must) share a similar analytical difficulty in determining whose taste or knowledge is being expressed. Accordingly, they have parallel behavior in attitude reports and in a certain kind of disagreement. On the other hand, they differ in how freely they can be linked to a contextually salient individual, with epistemic modals being much more restricted in this respect. I propose an account of both classes using Lasersohn’s (Linguistics and Philosophy 28: (...) 643–686, 2005) “judge” parameter, at the same time arguing for crucial changes to Lasersohn’s view in order to allow the extension to epistemic modals and address empirical problems faced by his account. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an interpretation of Kant’s theory of perceptual error based on his remarks in the Anthropology. Both hallucination and illusion, I argue, are for Kant species of experience and therefore require the standard co-operation of sensibility and understanding. I develop my account in a conceptualist framework according to which the two canonical classes of non-veridical experience involve error in the basic sense that how they represent the world as being is not how the world is. In (...) hallucination this is due to the misapplication of categories and in illusion to the misapplication of empirical concepts. Yet there is also room in this framework for a distinction in terms of cognitive functionality between the level of experience, which is merely judgementally structured, and that of judgement proper, which involves the free action of a conscious agent. This distinction enables Kant to allow for the otherwise problematic phenomenon of self-aware non-veridicality. (shrink)

Evidence shows that changes in the architecture, design, and decor of health care facilities can improve patient care and in the long run reduce expenses. These essays detail the state of the research, look inside two hospitals that put some of these innovations into practice, and consider how design fits into the moral mission ofhealth care.

L'auteur compare des extraits de deux comptes-rendus divergeants de l'attitude de Jean II Comnène dans le conflit contre les Hongrois entre 1127 et 1129, par Jean Cinnamus et Nicetas Choniates, afin de tenter d'apporter quelques lumières sur sa carrière.

To many, Jung and Moreno seem to be on opposite sides in their theories and their practices of psychotherapy. Jung defines self as emerging inwardly in an intrapsychic process of individuation; Moreno defines self as enacted outwardly in psychosocial networks of relationships. _Jung and Moreno: Essays on the theatre of human nature_ shows how Jung and Moreno can be creatively combined to understand better and facilitate therapeutic work. Craig E. Stephenson and contributors write about how and why they put (...) together Jung and Moreno. They describe and discuss psychodrama sessions grounded in the fundamentals of Jung’s analytical psychology, as well as dream and fairy tale enactments and individual psychoanalytical sessions in which they employ psychodramatic techniques. The essays retheorize Jungian concepts of transference and complexes in the light of Moreno’s insights. They reframe and deepen traditional psychodramatic techniques by securing them within Jung’s archetypal context. Jung and Moreno challenges our understanding of healing practices and the integration of spontaneous unconscious processes, bringing these two ground breaking practitioners to meet collaboratively in the theatre of human nature. The contributions are original and insightful arguments by nine important thinkers. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychodrama practitioners, drama therapists and students. (shrink)

A novel solution to the knowability paradox is proposed based on Kant’s transcendental epistemology. The ‘paradox’ refers to a simple argument from the moderate claim that all truths are knowable to the extreme claim that all truths are known. It is significant because anti-realists have wanted to maintain knowability but reject omniscience. The core of the proposed solution is to concede realism about epistemic statements while maintaining anti-realism about non-epistemic statements. Transcendental epistemology supports such a view by providing for a (...) sharp distinction between how we come to understand and apply epistemic versus non-epistemic concepts, the former through our capacity for a special kind of reflective self-knowledge Kant calls ‘transcendental apperception’. The proposal is a version of restriction strategy: it solves the paradox by restricting the anti-realist’s knowability principle. Restriction strategies have been a common response to the paradox but previous versions face serious difficulties: either they result in a knowability principle too weak to do the work anti-realists want it to, or they succumb to modified forms of the paradox, or they are ad hoc. It is argued that restricting knowability to non-epistemic statements by conceding realism about epistemic statements avoids all versions of the paradox, leaves enough for the anti-realist attack on classical logic, and, with the help of transcendental epistemology, is principled in a way that remains compatible with a thoroughly anti-realist outlook. (shrink)

Recent trends in the understanding of culture contact, with concepts such as hybridization, cosmopolitanism, and cultural innovation, open up the possibility of a new understanding of human interaction. While the social imaginary is rich with images of conflict resulting from culture contact, images of creativity are far rarer. We propose the creation of an extensive research project to document cultural creativity, starting with obvious examples in the arts, and expanding into all areas of life in order to counteract the present (...) conflictual images and develop a social imaginary with positive “attractor” images that can guide to greater creativity. (shrink)

Various social animal species have been noted to inhibit aggressive attacks when a conspecific displays submission cues. Blair (1993) has suggested that humans possess a functionally similar mechanism which mediates the suppression of aggression in the context of distress cues. He has suggested that this mechanism is a prerequisite for the development of the moral/conventional distinction; the consistently observed distinction in subject's judgments between moral and conventional transgressions. Psychopaths may lack this violence inhibitor. A causal model is developed showing (...) how the lack of this mechanism would explain the core behavioural symptoms associated with the psychopathic disorder. A prediction of such a causal model would be that psychopaths should fail to make the moral/conventional distinction. This prediction was confirmed. The implication of this finding for other theories of morality is discussed. (shrink)

It is often claimed that anti-realism is a form of transcendental idealism or that Kant is an anti-realist. It is also often claimed that anti-realists are committed to some form of knowability principle and that such principles have problematic consequences. It is therefore natural to ask whether Kant is so committed, and if he is, whether this leads him into difficulties. I argue that a standard reading of Kant does indeed have him committed to the claim that all empirical truths (...) are knowable and that this claim entails that there is no empirical truth that is never known. I extend the result to a priori truths and draw some general philosophical lessons from this extension. However, I then propose a re-examination of Kant’s notion of experience according to which he carefully eschews any commitment to empirical knowability. Finally I respond to a remaining problem that stems from a weaker, justified believability principle. (shrink)

This essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, (...) and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often conveyed as a Platonic or Newtonian thinker of the temporal, expressing time as an absolute and continuous repository wherein all objects occur. However, employing themes from his aesthetic writings, what happens when Kantian “sublime” time is reoriented towards a more discontinuous temporal register? This essay employs just such a reading, while also utilising Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), as a methodological device for rethinking both Kantian and object time as neither solely continuous nor discontinuous, but somewhere (...) inbetween these two determinations, in what I term their “ontological ambience.” By doing so I offer a critique of both Kantian orthodoxy and Harmanian OOO, via a comparative analysis of (1) how Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger thematise Kantian temporality, and (2) how Harman develops their subsequent ideas about time. This schema provides post-Kantian philosophy with a provisional model for thinking posthuman time in new and productive ways: as ambient temporalities. (shrink)

Academic and public debate is continuing about whether digital nomadism, a new Internet-enabled phenomenon in which digital workers adopt a neo-nomadic global lifestyle, represents ‘real’ emancipation for knowledge workers—or if it is, instead, the opposite. Based on a field study of digital nomadism, and accepting a pluralist approach to emancipation, we analyse the ‘emancipatory project(s)’ that digital nomads engage in. This analysis, following Weberian idealtypes, employs a tripartite structure: unsatisfactory conditions (what people want to overcome); emancipatory means (actions taken); and (...) emancipatory ends (desired outcomes). We critically compare digital nomadism to the traditional descriptions of emancipatory projects in nation-state contexts, as found in prior literature, using the same analytical framework. Juxtaposing these idealtypes, we discuss similarities and differences and analyse their inherent assumptions, logics and ethical stances. We conclude that digital nomadism generates an emancipation that is very much ‘real’ for digital nomads, whose experience cannot be disregarded, but with a ‘postmodern’ ethos that is at odds with modernity and its ethos originating from the Enlightenment. (shrink)

The status of the advanced potential solution in electromagnetic theory is analyzed and assessed. It is shown that the advanced potential solution does not violate a causality argument and that its existence in electromagnetic theory is on an exactly equal footing with the retarded potential solution. The general potential solution is thus completely symmetric. It is further shown that there is no “one-sidedness” in nature; oscillating electrons and orbiting electrons are just as good at absorbing energy as they are at (...) radiating it. These conclusions are sufficient to invalidate a number of theoretical models. (shrink)

This essay reassesses the relation between Kant and Kripke on the relation between necessity and the a priori. Kripke famously argues against what he takes to be the traditional view that a statement is necessary only if it is a priori, where, very roughly, what it means for a statement to be necessary is that it is true and could not have been false and what it means for a statement to be a priori is that it is knowable independently (...) of experience. Call such a view the Entailment Thesis. Along with many Kant scholars, Kripke thinks that Kant endorses the Entailment Thesis. Thus Kripke and many others take his arguments against the Entailment Thesis to tell against Kant and to mark an important point of disagreement with him. I will argue that this is a mistake. Kant does not endorse the Entailment Thesis that Kripke and many others attribute to him. He does endorse two quite different theses concerning the relation between necessity and the a priori, as he conceives them. One is a matter of definition and the other is a very substantial philosophical thesis indeed—to establish it is the aim of the entire Critique of Pure Reason. But Kripke’s arguments against the Entailment Thesis tell against neither of Kant’s theses, as they involve crucially different conceptions of necessity and the a priori. This superficial lack of disagreement masks deep disagreements, but these result from divergent views regarding matters such as realism, modal epistemology, and philosophical methodology; views which Kant does a lot, and Kripke very little, to argue for. (shrink)

The aim of the Analytic of Concepts is to derive and deduce a set of pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, which play a central role in Kant’s explanation of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition and judgment. This chapter is structured around two questions. First, what is a pure concept of the understanding? Second, what is involved in a deduction of a pure concept of the understanding? In answering the first, we focus on how the categories differ (...) from the pure forms of sensibility and examine whether they are known only to be the pure forms of human thinking or rather the forms of discursive cognition as such. In answering the second, we draw a distinction between the application and the exemplification of the categories and use it to identify different ways of understanding Kant’s project in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. These questions connect because the answer to the first determines how we should understand the kind of entitlement which is to be established in the Deduction. (shrink)

Psychopaths continue to be demonised by the media and estimates suggest that a disturbing percentage of the population has psychopathic tendencies. This timely and controversial new book summarises what we already know about psychopathy and antisocial behavior and puts forward a new case for its cause - with far-reaching implications. Presents the scientific facts of psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Addresses key questions, such as: What is psychopathy? Are there psychopaths amongst us? What is wrong with psychopaths? Is psychopathy due to (...) nature or nurture? And can we treat psychopaths? Reveals the authors' ground-breaking research into whether an underlying abnormality in brain development leaves psychopaths with an inability to feel emotion or fear. The resulting theory could lead to early diagnosis and revolutionize the way society, the media and the state both views and contends with the psychopaths in our midst. (shrink)

In this paper I return to the question of whether intuition is object-dependent. Kant’s account of the imagination appears to suggest that intuition is not object-dependent. On a recent proposal, however, the imagination is a faculty of merely inner intuition, the inner objects of which exist and are present in the way demanded by object-dependence views, such as Lucy Allais’s relational account. I argue against this proposal on both textual and philosophical grounds. It is inconsistent with what Kant says about (...) how the imagination functions and is ultimately incompatible with the relational account it is supposed to support. Kant’s account of the imagination remains a serious obstacle for the view that intuition is object-dependent. (shrink)

In Misconceiving Merit, sociologists Mary Blair-Loy and Erin A. Cech uncover the cultural foundations of a paradox. On one hand, academic science, engineering, and math revere meritocracy, a system that recognizes and rewards those with the greatest talent and dedication. At the same time, women and some racial and sexual minorities remain underrepresented and often feel unwelcome and devalued in STEM. How can academic science, which so highly values meritocracy and objectivity, produce these unequal outcomes? Blair-Loy and Cech (...) studied more than five hundred STEM professors at a top research university to reveal how unequal and unfair outcomes can emerge alongside commitments to objectivity and excellence. The authors find that academic STEM harbors dominant cultural beliefs that not only perpetuate the mistreatment of scientists from underrepresented groups but hinder innovation. Underrepresented groups are often seen as less fully embodying merit compared to equally productive white and Asian heterosexual men, and the negative consequences of this misjudgment persist regardless of professors' actual academic productivity. Misconceiving Merit is filled with insights for higher education administrators working toward greater equity as well as for scientists and engineers striving to change entrenched patterns of inequality in STEM. (shrink)

I discuss three elements of Dennis Schulting’s new book on the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories. First, that Schulting gives a detailed account of the role of each individual category. Second, Schulting’s insistence that the categories nevertheless apply ‘en bloc’. Third, Schulting’s defence of Kant’s so-called reciprocity thesis that subjective unity of consciousness and objectivity in the sense of cognition’s objective purport are necessary conditions for the possibility of one another. I endorse these fascinating (...) but unfashionable claims and sketch my own version of what they amount to, which is quite different to Schulting’s own construal. I point to some fundamental limitations and problems for Schulting’s position and argue that his project needs to be reshaped or at least reconceived in the face of them. Even if Schulting’s argument is sound, it does not provide a deduction, properly speaking, of the categories. (shrink)

Chasing the fading contours if the past. Pursuing points of intersection. Encounters with aging literary figures and surviving witnesses to history. Excavating printed artifacts in the back rooms of used book shops. Locating of equipment lost or discarded. Conversations with Paul Bowles & Mohammed Mrabet, Brion Gysin, "Pauline Réage, Robert Graves, Maurice Girodias, Berthe Cleyrergue, Edouard Roditi, Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky." --Back cover.

Blending western knowledge with eastern wisdom, this book tells how to nurture your child both physically and spiritually through various stages of growth. It explains normal age appropriate behaviour from birth to eight years old and beyond. It also offers practical advice on how to read the signs of tiredness, and different types of crying.

Baumard's thesis that the English Industrial Revolution can be explained by Life History Theory's predictions for psychological development is a progression of much literature in economic and social history. However, the theory suffers from its reliance on increasingly fragile data indicators for “wealth” and its focus on “innovation” as new research begins to explore sectoral dynamics in long run growth.

Simone Weil recognized that there is a problem reconciling the Iove of God/Good with the Iove of neighbor, and she probabIy believed that she never successfully resoIved it. A quotation from her ‘New York Notebook’ sets the probIem niceIy:OnIy God is the good, therefore, onIy He is a worthy object of care, solicitude, anxiety, longing, and efforts of thought. OnIy He is a worthy object of all those movements of the souI which are reIated to some vaIue.From this and other (...) quotes, I construct various arguments showing that one cannot consistently both Iove God and one’s neighbor. The buIk of the paper is taken up with a critical consideration of these arguments. The upshot of this is that there is no pIausibIe way to reject all of these arguments; hence one must tentativeIy conclude that the Iove of God/Good is irreconciIabIe with the Iove of neighbor in Weil’s philosophy. (shrink)