We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel causes. The notion of a mechanistically mediated effect is preferable because it can do all of the required work without appealing to mysterious interlevel causes. When interlevel (...) causes can be translated into mechanistically mediated effects, the posited relationship is intelligible and should raise no special philosophical objections. When they cannot, they are suspect. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against one variety of contextualism about aesthetic predicates such as “beautiful.” Contextualist analyses of these and other predicates have been subject to several challenges surrounding disagreement. Focusing on one kind of contextualism— individualized indexical contextualism —I unpack these various challenges and consider the responses available to the contextualist. The three responses I consider are as follows: giving an alternative analysis of the concept of disagreement ; claiming that speakers suffer from semantic blindness; and claiming that (...) attributions of beauty carry presuppositions of commonality. I will argue that none of the available strategies gives a response which both satisfactorily explains all of the disagreement -data and is plausible independent of significant evidence in favor of contextualism. I conclude that individualized indexical contextualism about the aesthetic is untenable, although this does not rule out alternative contextualist approaches to the aesthetic. (shrink)

This paper develops a theory of how democratic governance is possible. It analyses democracy as a laminated system consisting of three interdependent levels – the political/institutional, the social/interactional, and the psychological/intrapsychic – each of which is necessary for the others to exist. Each level is subject to a regulatory principle that is necessary for it to function appropriately. At the political/institutional level, competing political parties must be governed by the regulatory principle of ‘loser’s consent,’ in which the losing party must (...) agree to cede power to the winning party. At the social/interactional level individuals from opposing political parties must be governed by the regulatory principle of a superordinate identity as citizen, which allows them to transcend their partisan political identities. At the psychological/intrapsychic level individuals must be governed by the regulatory principle of mutuality/thirdness which allows the possibility of an alternative to the binary identities that result from the doer/done-to position. (shrink)

The fundamental tenet of modern empiricism is the view that all non-analytic knowledge is based on experience. Let us call this thesis the principle of empiricism. [1] Contemporary logical empiricism has added [2] to it the maxim that a sentence makes a cognitively meaningful assertion, and thus can be said to be either true or false, only if it is either (1) analytic or self-contradictory or (2) capable, at least in principle, of experiential test. According to this so-called empiricist criterion (...) of cognitive meaning, or of cognitive significance, many of the formulations of traditional metaphysics and large parts of epistemology are devoid of cognitive significance--however rich some of them may be in non-cognitive import by virtue of their emotive appeal or the moral inspiration they offer. Similarly certain doctrines which have been, at one time or another, formulated within empirical science or its border disciplines are so contrived as to be incapable of test by any conceivable evidence; they are therefore qualified as pseudo- [p. 42:] hypotheses, which assert nothing, and which therefore have no explanatory or predictive force whatever. This verdict applies, for example, to the neo-vitalist speculations about entelechies or vital forces, and to the "telefinalist hypothesis" propounded by Lecomte du Noüy. (shrink)

1. The problem. The concept of confirmation of an hypothesis by empirical evidence is of fundamental importance in the methodology of empirical science. For, first of all, a sentence cannot even be considered as expressing an empirical hypothesis at all unless it is theoretically capable of confirmation or disconfirmation, i.e. unless the kind of evidence can be characterized whose occurrence would confirm, or disconfirm, the sentence in question. And secondly, the acceptance or rejection of a sentence which does represent an (...) empirical hypothesis is determined, in scientific procedure, by the degree to which it is confirmed by relevant evidence. (shrink)

This is a translation of the afterword of Legality and Legitimacy, rewritten by Carl Schmitt in 1958 for his collection Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924–1954. In the afterword, Schmitt once again describes the situation in Germany in the early 1930’s, and argues against the influential German lawyers who rejected his interpretation of the Weimar Constitution. He rejects the wide-spread opinion that he wanted a state of emergency in Germany to be introduced, and insists that this book was his (...) final attempt to rescue the presidential republic of Weimar Germany. Schmitt then demonstrates the weakness of legal positivism and specifically stops at the several key points in his argument. First, according to Schmitt, the positivists did not know that legality, an unopposed form of the manifestation of legitimacy, had originally been an essential part of Western rationalism. Second, it is necessary to distinguish between the law and the sanctions because of their different legal statuses. This distinguishing is important because the legislative state was gradually becoming the administrative state. As a result, the governing institutions are more powerful than the parliamentary laws. Any parliamentary decision providing executive bodies relevant authority cannot be executed without an effective parliamentary majority. Thirdly, Schmitt explores the question of the so-called “premiums” for the legal possession of power. The afterword concludes with a brief overview of the situation at the end of the January 1933. The Publication includes the translator’s preface providing an overview of the main provisions of Schmitt's book, Legality and Legitimacy. (shrink)

The fifteen essays in this volume represent the state of the art when it comes to the contemporary study of medieval philosophy of mind. The contributors are well-established scholars in the field who build on their previous work, and most advance an original argument in these essays. The focus is on western Christian philosophers and theologians from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and “the intricacies and varieties of the conceptual relationships among intentionality, cognition, and mental representation” in their thought. As (...) editor Gyula Klima points out, intentionality plays a role in non-cognitive as well as cognitive processes for the medievals. But when these thinkers attempted to explain the.. (shrink)

Jonathan Weisberg claims that certain probability assessments constructed by Jeffrey conditioning resist subsequent revision by a certain type of after-the-fact defeater of the reasons supporting those assessments, and that such conditioning is thus “inherently anti-holistic.” His analysis founders, however, in applying Jeffrey conditioning to a partition for which an essential rigidity condition clearly fails. Applied to an appropriate partition, Jeffrey conditioning is amenable to revision by the sort of after-the-fact defeaters considered by Weisberg in precisely the way that he demands.

The idea of a precautionary principle (or precautionary principles) is beginning to come to the wider attention of the environmental community, governmental agencies, regulatory agencies, and the regulated community. Different precautionary principles have not been specified in detail, and, of course, this is difficult to do. Yet some specification must be done in order to understand it better and, if it is to be used for specific action-guidance, to implement it. Moreover, it is important to understand more about the principle, (...) its background assumptions and its comparison with other principles to which we might subscribe. This paper explores aspects of the PP and its background assumptions and presuppositions, comparing them with those for risk assessment and other statements of the PP. It also briefly indicates how it resembles legal principles in addressing problems of uncertainty. Finally, it recapitulates two possible versions of the PP and suggests an application of it for an emerging threat to the environment and public health. This review suggests the PP has plausible applications and is not the radical principle some have suggested. (shrink)

A mutual fund family incubates a fund when it creates a privately subsidized fund not available to the general investing public. It destroys unsuccessful incubator funds. The few successful funds will report higher incubation returns than the market return in advertisements intended to attract money from individual investors. This practice is currently allowed by the SEC. The evidence is that incubation returns are not a good predictor of subsequent fund performance and likely serve to mislead unsuspecting investors.

Socrates’ daimonion, that numinous “presence” restraining him from error, is prominently featured in Plato’s Apology and plays an important role in several other dialogues.Socrates speaks of it often. It was, he reports, a constant feature of his life. It may also have caused his death because, as we read in the Euthyphro, he talked about the daimon so often that he aroused suspicion and resentment—and was finally indicted for impiety . It may seem a bit scandalous that the patron saint (...) of reason in the western tradition was a daimon-haunted personality. And many commentators tend to deemphasize the daimon, or at least not to fully investigate its role in Plato’s writing. But something essential is missed in this way. Accordingly, this essay focuses on the daimon in the Euthydemus, which is a macabre mystical comedy. Here we see that, while the daimon is a power that sets limits, it willingly associates itself with a mysticism of the limitless and we see how this association bears fruit in Plato’s other dialogues—especially in the notion of the Good. (shrink)

First?year students are still failing at an alarming rate. This is an international issue that universities face and there is currently no clear indication of the cause of the problem as universities move from being elite to providing mass education. This article examines the possible correlation between students? high school performance and first?year performance. The focus is primarily on the students? performance in mathematics and English. National Senior Certificate results as well as academic and mathematics competency results are used to (...) determine any correlations and therefore any predictors. The research is done to determine whether these results are a true reflection of a student?s performance and can be used as selection criteria. The results were disappointing since no correlation was found between students? high school performance and first?year performance. There is an indication, however, that the competency results might be an indicator. The results imply that more research is needed and that the current selection criteria are either not valid or need to be adjusted. (shrink)

Includes a set of papers by a number of well-known figures in philosophical studies both on the environment and on technology which aims to open different pathways in both environmental philosophy and the philosophy of technology.