Dans cet article, nous analysons le passage dit « mathématique » de l’Épinomis. Dans le programme de formation proposé pour les futurs membres du conseil vespéral de vigilance (990c5-991b4), certains interprètes modernes ont cru voir un témoignage capital pour l’histoire des mathématiques grecques anciennes portant sur la question de l’irrationalité. L’analyse du lexique et du mode de composition du texte – un collage maladroit d’expressions reprises aux loci mathematici platoniciens –, la confrontation avec la littérature mathématique conservée et ce que (...) l’on sait de l’histoire de cette discipline avant Euclide montrent que cette interprétation, pourtant largement répandue, est sans fon­dement. En revanche, il est possible de reconstituer une intention philosophique compréhensible et mieux à même de rendre compte de certaines particularités du passage en consultant les commentateurs anciens (Nicomaque de Gérase, Théon de Smyrne, Jamblique de Chalcis, Proclus de Lycie). En privilégiant le passage conclusif sur le « lien » des mathématiques (991d8-992a1), ils identi­fiaient une tout autre question : celle de l’unité des mathématiques, à partir de laquelle le passage mathématique prenait à leurs yeux tout son sens. (shrink)

Fondée sous les auspices du père de notre modernité philosophique Descartes, puis consolidée par des penseurs aussi importants que Leibniz, Bolzano ou Husserl, la mathesis universalis paraît représenter à elle seule l'ambitieux programme du « rationalisme classique ». Des philosophes tels que Husserl, Russell, Heidegger ou Cassirer ont pu s'accorder en ce point. Le développement de la « science moderne » aurait porté ce grand « rêve dogmatique » pour mener vers son terme le destin de la métaphysique occidentale. Pourtant (...) les recherches historiques récentes ont montré que l'idée de « mathématique universelle » existait bien avant Descartes, que ce dernier ne revendiquait d'ailleurs aucune rupture sur ce point et que sa réflexion se situait même assez clairement dans l'héritage des Anciens. Comment dès lors justifier que les Anciens, avec lesquels le programme des Classiques était censé rompre, aient pu déjà se préoccuper de « mathématique universelle »? Plus simplement encore, de quoi se préoccupaient donc ces philosophes sous ce concept? Le regain d'intérêt pour la mathesis universalis à la fin du XIXe siècle n'avait-il pas conduit paradoxalement à la perte de son sens comme problème? Cette étude a pour but de suivre ces questions jusqu'à leur origine et de montrer leur importance dans le dialogue entre mathématique et philosophie. Pages de début Remerciements Introduction La constitution de la « mathématique universelle » comme problème philosophique I. Aristote II. « Mathématique universelle » et théories mathématiques : Aristote, Euclide, Epinomis III. Le moment néo-platonicien Vers la science de l'ordre et de la mesure IV. La renaissance de la mathématique universelle V. La mathesis universalis cartésienne Conclusion Annexe I. La quaestio de scientia mathematica communi Annexe II. Essai bibliographique sur la mathesis universalis chez Descartes etLeibniz Bibliographie Index nominum Pages de fin. (shrink)

Dans La Philosophie de l’algèbre (1962), Jules Vuillemin présente sa démarche comme une manière d’instruire « le problème, si important et si négligé aujourd’hui, de la mathesis universalis dans ses rapports à la philosophie ». Il intitule d’ailleurs la seconde partie du traité « mathématique universelle », titre qu’il reprend pour la conclusion. Présentant le projet du second tome, il avance que cette étude devait le conduire « aux questions concrètes de la mathématique universelle ». Pourtant, à aucun moment, on (...) ne voit Vuillemin expliciter la nature de ce problème. Le but de cet article sera de produire une telle explicitation en s’appuyant, en particulier, sur certains éléments avancés dans le manuscrit préparatoire du second tome. (shrink)

Descartes’ Rules for the direction of the mind presents us with a theory of knowledge in which imagination, considered as an “aid” for the intellect, plays a key role. This function of schematization, which strongly resembles key features of Proclus’ philosophy of mathematics, is in full accordance with Descartes’ mathematical practice in later works such as La Géométrie from 1637. Although due to its reliance on a form of geometric intuition, it may sound obsolete, I would like to show that (...) this has strong echoes in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, in particular in the trend of the so called “philosophy of mathematical practice”. Indeed Ken Manders’ study on the Euclidean practice, along with Reviel Netz’s historical studies on ancient Greek Geometry, indicate that mathematical imagination can play a central role in mathematical knowledge as bearing specific forms of inference. Moreover, this role can be formalized into sound logical systems. One question of general epistemology is thus to understand this mysterious role of the imagination in reasoning and to assess its relevance for other mathematical practices. Drawing from Edwin Hutchins’ study of “material anchors” in human reasoning, I would like to show that Descartes’ epistemology of mathematics may prove to be a helpful resource in the analysis of mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Résumé Il est courant d’inscrire Leibniz dans une lignée qui, passant par Nicolas de Cues et Giordano Bruno, aurait marqué le triomphe de l’infini actuel dans la pensée moderne, qu’elle soit scientifique ou métaphysique. Pourtant Leibniz n’acceptait nullement un tel infini en mathématiques et s’en est expliqué à diverses reprises de manière particulièrement claire. Dans cet article, je voudrais rappeler cette position élaborée dès le début du séjour parisien (Accessio ad Arithmeticam infinitorum, fin 1672) et montrer son effectivité dans l’élaboration (...) du « fictionalisme » leibnizien en ce qui concerne les infiniment petits. Rappelant les différentes stratégies de comparaison entre les pensées de Leibniz et Nicolas de Cues, je voudrais indiquer la manière dont des textes récemment édités permettent aujourd’hui une meilleure appréciation de l’écart qui peut les séparer. (shrink)

Drawing on Leibniz’ thinking, this paper advocates two claims. Firstly, a continuous path can be drawn from the use of fictions inside mathematics, a widespread practice in the 16th and 17th centuries, to the use of mathematical entities as fictions outside mathematics (i.e. when it comes to employing them for describing the natural world). In the first case, fictitious entities are contrasted to other mathematical entities posited as “real”; in the second, all mathematical entities can be said to be fictitious (...) compared to “real” things, taken in the sense of “existing in the natural world”. Secondly, I will show why the path drawn in the first section allows one –and even requires one if we follow Leibniz– to be both a fictionalist and a Platonist at the same time. (shrink)

In this paper, we endeavour to give a historically accurate presentation of how Leibniz understood his infinitesimals, and how he justified their use. Some authors claim that when Leibniz called them “fictions” in response to the criticisms of the calculus by Rolle and others at the turn of the century, he had in mind a different meaning of “fiction” than in his earlier work, involving a commitment to their existence as non-Archimedean elements of the continuum. Against this, we show that (...) by 1676 Leibniz had already developed an interpretation from which he never wavered, according to which infinitesimals, like infinite wholes, cannot be regarded as existing because their concepts entail contradictions, even though they may be used as if they exist under certain specified conditions—a conception he later characterized as “syncategorematic”. Thus, one cannot infer the existence of infinitesimals from their successful use. By a detailed analysis of Leibniz’s arguments in his De quadratura of 1675–1676, we show that Leibniz had already presented there two strategies for presenting infinitesimalist methods, one in which one uses finite quantities that can be made as small as necessary in order for the error to be smaller than can be assigned, and thus zero; and another “direct” method in which the infinite and infinitely small are introduced by a fiction analogous to imaginary roots in algebra, and to points at infinity in projective geometry. We then show how in his mature papers the latter strategy, now articulated as based on the Law of Continuity, is presented to critics of the calculus as being equally constitutive for the foundations of algebra and geometry and also as being provably rigorous according to the accepted standards in keeping with the Archimedean axiom. (shrink)

In this paper, I pursue a dialogue initiated with the publication of Logiques des mondes on the basis of three main lines of questioning: 1. The first, most immediate one, is the meaning that should be given to the famous motto “mathematics = ontology”. Indeed, it is a different statement to claim that “mathematics is ontology”, as was promoted explicitely by Being and the event, and to say that set theory alone is ontology (as advanced by Logiques des mondes, as (...) well as other contemporary texts). It seems that there is at this point an important inflection of the system, not thematized as such; is set theory a way of expressing ontology, i.e. mathematics, or is it ontology itself? 2. This leads to a broader questioning of the relationship, in mathematics, between expression and ontology, or “language” and “being”. Here I would like to point out that, contrary to what one might think, there is often an ambiguity between these two aspects not only in Badiou, but more generally in discussions of the philosophy of mathematics. If this distinction is relevant - and I will try to show why it should be - then one cannot conclude too quickly from the fact that mathematics has adopted a unified expression thanks to the language of set theory to the fact that the form of being it expresses is set-theoretic (or “pure multiple” in Badiou’s terminology); 3. Finally, I would like to delve into the fact that the set-theoretic language has precisely given rise to the thematization of two orientations which could be just as well coined “ontological” (but in a different sense, therefore, from that given to it by Badiou); the first is anchored in the concept of number, while the other is anchored in the concept space (later called “topological”). The fact that we have a language capable of describing them in a homogeneous fashion does not entail that we are dealing with a single domain of objects. I would like to show that this tension runs through contemporary mathematics, and consequently through Alain Badiou’s thinking more than he wants to admit. In fact, it is at the basis of various attempts proposed in mathematics to arrive at more satisfactory forms of unification than that provided by “sets” alone. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d’étudier le concept de « mathématique universelle », apparue chez des philosophes comme Aristote, Jamblique et Proclus, dans son rapport à la mathématique. On essaye notamment de montrer qu’il ne se réduit ni à une interprétation extérieure à la donnée mathématique, ni à une pure et simple référence à une théorie, mais s’appuie sur un problème, celui de l’universalité en mathématiques, qu’il s’agit de reconstituer.

The meaning of the term “analysis” in Leibniz’s work is multifarious and it is doubtful that one could ever succeed in gathering this variety of meanings into a unified whole. However it has long been remarked that a landmass seems to detach itself from these moving waters – an island sometimes called by its inventor “The Most General Analytics of Human Thoughts”. Already sketched in the De Arte Combinatoria (1666) as a reform of the “analytical part” of Logic (pars logices (...) analytica), it rested on a very simple intuition: the possibility of developing, in parallel, three analyses, namely an analysis of thoughts (analysis notionum et veritatum), an analysis of the structure of language by which we express these thoughts (analysis linguarum or analysis grammatica) and an analysis of the symbols by which we represent them (analysis characterum). This “General Analytics” achieved, any human thought could be related to a catalog of simple notions expressed by basic characters (the so called alphabetum cogitationum humanarum) and, as a direct consequence, any truth could be expressed as a combination of these primitive symbols. (shrink)

A figura de Spinoza, com o seu sonho louco de querer desenvolver uma filosofia total “conforme a ordem da geometria”, como se esta ordem fosse intangível e fixa uma vez por todas, cristaliza particularmente bem as dúvidas que o espírito de sistema pode fazer nascer. Não somente ele representa a caricatura de uma metafísica que gostaria de se fazer passar por ciência, mas esta ciência, ela mesma, aparece como a caricatura de uma racionalidade arrogante e dobrada sobre ela mesma. Explicar (...) de que maneira pode-se, hoje, reivindicar este espírito sem cair sobre tais críticas: este será o meu principal objetivo neste artigo. (shrink)

« Et soudain, devant l'injonction à répondre, s'imposa à moi la possibilité d'une solution : tourner, comme souvent, la faiblesse en force, l'échec en programme. "Tu te souviens que Spinoza dit quelque part que les choses sont produites par Dieu avec la même nécessité qu'il résulte de l'essence d'un triangle que ses angles sont égaux à deux droits. Nous savons aujourd'hui que cette prétendue 'nécessité' découle d'un choix d'axiomes et non d'un absolu fixé une fois pour toutes. Dans la géométrie (...) de Riemann, cette mesure des angles peut même varier d'un point à l'autre, selon la courbure de l'espace. Je crois que j'aimerais pouvoir être ce genre de 'spinoziste' là : qui conserve le système, mais ne croit plus à l'essence du triangle et à l'absolue nécessité de la géométrie". Un spinoziste riemannien, en somme. » Le but de ce petit livre est de jeter les bases d'un tel programme. Il veut reprendre l'ancien rêve d'une éthique more geometrico, telle que Spinoza en a lancé le projet en plein cœur de la « révolution scientifique » et reposer avec lui la seule question qui vaille au fond : qu'est-ce que « bien vivre »? De son modèle, il retient que ce « bien » ne doit pas être pensé comme une norme extérieure au désir des hommes, mais y prend au contraire sa source, de sorte que l'éthique est inséparable d'une théorie des affects et des désirs. Mais il veut le faire dans un cadre qui n'est plus celui d'une confiance absolue dans l'usage des formalismes, ni dans la capacité de l'homme à dévoiler les « lois de la nature » ou à détenir le secret des « lois de la pensée ». « Éthique locale » ne signifie d'abord que cette provocation à penser la possibilité d'une éthique rationnelle et systématique sans accepter le point de vue de surplomb, « global », que permettait la douce assurance d'un régime transparent du monde à la raison dont les deux premières parties de l'Éthique sont profondément empreintes. Pages de début Liste des abréviations utilisées Avant-propos Incipit : Descartes en son cabinet Chapitre Premier. « À la manière des géomètres »? Chapitre II. Construire, dit-il Conclusion : en quoi ce livre est-il un livre d'éthique?Pages de fin. (shrink)

This book, which brings together historians, philosophers and mathematicians, is a tribute to the works of Hourya Benis-Sinaceur, internationally recognized specialist of history and philosophy of mathematics.

« Les Mathematiciens ont autant besoin d’estre philosophes que les philosophes d’estre Mathematiciens » [Leibniz à Nicolas Malebranche, 13/23 mars 1699 ]. Cette déclaration que fait Leibniz à Malebranche en 1699 n’est pas de façade et il la met lui-même en action à de multiples occasions. Ainsi, présentant en 1677 une des notions centrales de sa « caractéristique géométrique », il commente : Il n’est pas si aisé qu’on pense, de donner des veritables demonstrations en metaphysique....

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 101 Heft: 3 Seiten: 345-375.

Generality is a key value in scientific discourses and practices. Throughout history, it has received a variety of meanings and of uses. This collection of original essays aims to inquire into this diversity. Through case studies taken from the history of mathematics, physics and the life sciences, the book provides evidence of different ways of understanding the general in various contexts. It aims at showing how individuals have valued generality and how they have worked with specific types of "general" entities, (...) procedures, and arguments. (shrink)

This paper consists of three main sections. In the first section, we consider how early attempts at understanding the relationship between mathematics and philosophy in Leibniz’s thought were often made within the framework of grand reconstructions guided by intellectual trends such as the search for “the ideal of system”. In the second section, we proceed to recount Leibniz’s first encounter with contemporary mathematics during his four years of study in Paris presenting some of the earliest mathematical successes which he made (...) there. In particular, we argue that recently published letters and papers reveal how his youthful mathematical reflexions were deeply intertwined with important philosophical insights that, in turn, acted as guiding ideas for his mathematical research. Finally, in the third section, we situate the central themes of the essays of the present volume within the new understanding of the interrelations between philosophy and mathematics in Leibniz’s thought briefly indicated in the opening section. (shrink)

Cultural accounts of scientific ideas and practices have increasingly come to be welcomed as a corrective to previous—and still widely held—theories of scientific knowledge and practices as universal. The editors caution, however, against the temptation to overgeneralize the work of culture, and to lapse into a kind of essentialism that flattens the range and variety of scientific work. The book refers to this tendency as culturalism. The contributors to the volume model a new path where historicized and cultural accounts of (...) scientific practice retain their specificity and complexity without falling into the traps of culturalism. They examine, among other issues, the potential of using notions of culture to study behavior in financial markets; the ideology, organization, and practice of earthquake monitoring and prediction during China's Cultural Revolution; the history of quadratic equations in China; and how studying the "glass ceiling" and employment discrimination became accepted in the social sciences. Demonstrating the need to understand the work of culture as a fluid and dynamic process that directly both shapes and is shaped by scientific practice, Cultures without Culturalism makes an important intervention in science studies. Contributors. Bruno Belhoste, Karine Chemla, Caroline Ehrhardt, Fa-ti Fan,Kenji Ito, Evelyn Fox Keller, Guillaume Lachenal, Donald MacKenzie, Mary S. Morgan, Nancy J. Nersessian, David Rabouin, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Claude Rosental, Koen Vermeir. (shrink)

The project of this Précis de philosophie de la logique et des mathématiques (vol. 1 under the direction of F. Poggiolesi and P. Wagner, vol. 2 under the direction of A. Arana and M. Panza) aims to offer a rich, systematic and clear introduction to the main contemporary debates in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. The two volumes bring together the contributions of thirty researchers (twelve for the philosophy of logic and eighteen for the philosophy of mathematics), specialists in (...) the history or philosophy of logic or mathematics. Each volume consists of ten chapters; each chapter is about forty pages, is independent from the others and deals with a particular philosophical question about logic or mathematics. The objective is to offer to the French-speaking reader a reference book. On many of the issues addressed, this Précis offers the first clear and thorough synthesis that is available in French. -/- This book is intended for third year / master's students, but also for teachers of philosophy in secondary or higher education, for logicians and mathematicians willing to take a philosophical look at the fundamental concepts of their discipline, and for any reader interested in the basic issues discussed in the philosophy of logic and mathematics. Each chapter is self-contained, although some basic training in logic (or in mathematics, as the case may be) is required. The book should be looked at as a comprehensive framework for contemporary discussions in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, while also giving some guidance on the disciplinary content required by these discussions. -/- The first three chapters of the present volume (on the philosophy of mathematics) are devoted to the history of the philosophy of mathematics: from antiquity to the modern era, and from this period to the foundational crisis of the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century. Next, four chapters deal with the crucial questions for the philosophy of mathematics of the twentieth century: the opposition and/or comparison of set theory and category theory as foundational frameworks for mathematics; mathematical constructivism; the analysis of calculability; and Benaceraff's problem. The two following chapters are focused on the philosophy of mathematical practice, by treating the notion of ideals of proof, in particular explanation and purity, and the notion of informal proof and the use of visual artifacts in mathematical argumentation. Finally the last chapter deals with the applicability of mathematics, including the role of probability. -/- In Chapter 1, Sébastien Maronne and David Rabouin present the history of the philosophy of mathematics from antiquity to the modern era. The goal is to show that the philosophy of mathematics has a history as ancient as mathematics and philosophy itself, a history largely continuous with the latter, often by staying out of sync with respect to the former. In Chapter 2, Sébastien Gandon discusses the question of the foundations of mathematics from Kant to the end of the nineteenth century. By tying this question to Kant, he is able to show that the discussion of the foundations of mathematics that occupied a large part of these two centuries has much older roots. Accent is placed on the differences between the framework proposed by Kant for making sense of classical mathematics and the use made by Frege and then Russell of logical tools for giving a different reading of arithmetic and real analysis. The link between between these different conceptions and the evolution of mathematics itself is also underlined. -/- Chapter 3, written by Hourya Benis-Sinaceur and Mirna Džamonja, deals with the evolution of mathematics in the twentieth century, notably the structuralist turn of Dedekind, E. Noether, and Bourbaki, and certain more recent developments. They devote themselves, among other things, to explaining how these developments can be understood as responses to and extensions of questions posed during the foundational debate of the immediately preceding era. -/- In Chapter 4, Jean-Pierre Marquis and Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz discuss the different foundational options coming from set theory and category theory. They discuss, among other things, Lawvere's program to replace ZF with an axiomatization of the category of sets, the latter judged better adapted to the needs of contemporary mathematics. Different reactions, as much philosophical as technical, raised by this program are also taken into account. -/- Constructive mathematics are the object of Chapter 5, in which Gerhard Heinzmann and Mark van Atten examine in a critical and comparative manner a variety of constructivisms, including intuitionism, constructive type theory, predicativism, and finitism. -/- In Chapter 6, Guido Gherardi and Maël Pegny present computability theory, stressing its philosophical consequences. They discuss the basic concepts of this theory, for the computability of both the natural numbers and the real numbers. They then tackle the theory of computational complexity. -/- In Chapter 7, Andrea Sereni and Fabrice Pataut present Benacerraf's problem, opposing every possible account of mathematical knowledge to the availability of a theory of truth founded on an abstract ontology of mathematical objects. They give an overview of the original problem and its reformulation by Hartry Field, and reconstruct the debate that this problem has raised, by meeting at once the major opposing positions today of the analytic affiliation of the philosophy of mathematics, as much those on the platonist side as on that of nominalism. -/- In Chapter 8, Valeria Giardino and Yacin Hamami treat certain crucial aspects of the philosophy of mathematical practice. They deal in particular with the notion of an informal proof and on the role of artifacts in mathematical reasoning. They consider how such proofs, making use of these means, can contribute to the understanding of theorems and mathematical theories, thanks also to the role of visualisation and the aid of computer tools. -/- Why do mathematics often give several proofs of the same theorem? This is the question that Andrew Arana raises in Chapter 9, introducing the notion of an epistemic ideal and discuss two such ideals, the explanatoriness and purity of proof. -/- Chapter 10 is devoted to the applicability of mathematics in the study of empirical phenomena. After summarizing the history of this question, going back to Plato and Aristotle and passing by Mill and Kant, Daniele Molinini and Marco Panza reconstruct the contemporary debate, in relation, among other things, to questions raised in the philosophy of science. -/- Two appendices complete the volume. In the first Frédéric Patras treats the French tradition in philosophy of mathematics of the 20th century. In the second, Maria Carla Galavotti discusses the notion of probability and its use in science. (shrink)

In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. Thus, (...) causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation. (shrink)

This book brings together papers of the conference on 'Space, Geometry and the Imagination from Antiquity to the Modern Age' held in Berlin, Germany, 27-29 August 2012. Focusing on the interconnections between the history of geometry and the philosophy of space in the pre-Modern and Early Modern Age, the essays in this volume are particularly directed toward elucidating the complex epistemological revolution that transformed the classical geometry of figures into the modern geometry of space. Contributors: Graciela De Pierris Franco Farinelli (...) Michael Friedman Daniel Garber Jeremy Gray Gary Hatfield Andrew Janiak Douglas Jesseph Alexander Jones Henry Mendell David Rabouin. (shrink)

As the President's Council on Bioethics emphasized in a recent report, rapid growth of biotechnologies creates increasingly many possibilities for enhancing human traits. This article addresses the claim that enhancement via biotechnology is inherently problematic for reasons pertaining to our identity. After clarifying the concept of enhancement, and providing a framework for understanding human identity, I examine the relationship between enhancement and identity. Then I investigate two identity-related challenges to biotechnological enhancements: (1) the charge of inauthenticity and (2) the charge (...) of violating inviolable core characteristics. My thesis is that a lucid, plausible understanding of human identity largely neutralizes these charges, liberating our thinking from some seductive yet unsound objections to enhancement via biotechnology. (shrink)

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the Western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The fourteen chapters in Moral Vision are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and encourage students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The (...) book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics. (shrink)

David Gauthier is one of the most outstanding and influential philosophers working in moral theory today, and his book Morals by Agreement has established him as a preeminent defender of contractarian moral theory. This volume brings together a selection of his best essays on contractarianism, many of which have become difficult to find.

For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a ). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education institutions in dealing with such misconduct. A survey of multi-national higher education faculty was conducted to explore the perceived barriers to the implementation of academic integrity processes. It asked (...) faculty how likely some hypothetical scenarios of failures of such processes were to occur in the real world of higher education institutions. 63% of our participants perceived there to be institutional and/or faculty barriers to effectively dealing with academic misconduct. Mostly, they blamed the higher education model for this which, in the interests of mass education, has come to prioritise the need for institutions to focus more on their quantity of output as corporate business enterprises than on the integrity of their output as educators. In discussing participants’ comments, about the relationship of faculty to their employing institutions, Schein and Scheins’ ( 2016 ) theory of three levels of organisational culture was used. Participants’ comments suggested that, at the deepest level of organisational culture i.e. basic underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about beliefs and values, inadequate integrity measures have tended to become normalised. Despite the often considerable, efforts of the institutions, organisational barriers were noted which mitigate against faculty behaving professionally i.e. from doing a ‘good job’ in respect of student academic misconduct. Some blame was also placed on faculty. We argue that apparent institutional inability to effectively manage the integrity process, has potentially significant consequences for wider society. We discuss ways in which this situation might be improved including a recommendation that governments regulate this aspect of the corporate social responsibility of higher education institutions as they do other aspects, requiring that it be managed effectively. (shrink)

Business and society (B&S) scholarship that uses the theoretical perspective of institutionalism combines different research approaches to values. Within the B&S literature drawing on institutionalism, we identified and categorized the research on values according to a spectrum of normative and/or descriptive approaches (including both and neither approaches). Primarily, we focused on how the normative and descriptive approaches interrelate and integrate. We argue that drawing on John Dewey’s pragmatism and Philip Selznick’s institutionalism can help further an integrative approach, which holds great (...) potential for advancing theorization in the B&S field while increasing its practical relevance. (shrink)

The Addresses to the German Nation is one of Fichte's best-known works. It is also his most controversial work because of its nationalist elements. In this book, David James places this text and its nationalism within the context provided by Fichte's philosophical, educational and moral project of creating a community governed by pure practical reason, in which his own foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre could achieve general recognition. Rather than marking a break in Fichte's philosophy, the Addresses to the (...) German Nation and some lesser-known texts from the same period are shown to develop themes already present in his earlier writings. The themes discussed include the opposition between idealism and dogmatism, the role of Fichte's 'popular' lectures and writings in leading individuals to the standpoint of idealism, the view of history demanded by idealism and the role of the state in history. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, several commentators have called for mission-driven research programs on solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management (SRM) or climate engineering. Building on the largely epistemic reasons offered by earlier commentators, this paper argues that a well-designed mission-driven research program that aims to evaluate solar geoengineering could promote justice and legitimacy, among other valuable ends. Specifically, an international, mission-driven research program that aims to produce knowledge to enable well-informed decision-making about solar geoengineering could (1) (...) provide a more effective way to identify and answer the questions that policymakers would need to answer; and (2) provide a venue for more efficient, effective, just, and legitimate governance of solar geoengineering research; while (3) reducing the tendency for solar geoengineering research to exacerbate international domination. Thus, despite some risks and limitations, a well-designed mission-driven research program offers one way to improve the governance of solar geoengineering research relative to the ‘investigator-driven’ status quo. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book David Roberts sets out to demonstrate the centrality of the total work of art to European modernism since the French Revolution.

David Hume is commonly known as one of the greatest philosophers to write in English. He was also one of the foremost political and economic theorists and one of the finest historians of the eighteenth century. His political essays reflect the entire range of his intellectual engagement with politics - as political philosophy, political observation and political history - and function as an extension of and supplement to works such as his Treatise of Human Nature and his History of (...) England. The twenty-seven most important essays are presented in this fully annotated edition, together with excerpts from the History of England which illuminate their context. This major addition to the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In their comprehensive article, Bayefsky and Berkman outline a framework for limiting access to certain types of fetal genetic information through professional self-regulation. Given the rap...

Taking a social identity approach to health behaviors, this research examines whether experimentally “activating” the human identity is an effective public-health strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19. Three goals of the research include examining: whether the human identity can be situationally activated using an experimental manipulation, whether activating the human identity causally increases behavioral intentions to protect the self and others from COVID-19, and whether activating the human identity causally increases behaviors that help protect vulnerable communities from COVID-19. Across (...) two preregistered experiments, results suggest the manipulation of identification with humanity had a significant but small effect on participants’ psychological bond with all humanity, but not their concern for all humanity. However, the manipulation had no causal effect on health-related behavioral intentions or helping behaviors that reduce the spread of COVID-19. Limitations, future directions, and direct benefits of the research are discussed. (shrink)

For many years, moral philosophers have been debating the conceptual and moral status of the distinction between intending harm and foreseeing harm. In this paper, after surveying some of the objections to the moral significance of this distinction in general, I focus on the special case of state action, arguing that whatever reasons we have to be suspicious about the distinction's moral significance in general, we have very good reasons to believe it lacks intrinsic moral significance when applied to state (...) action. After arguing for this claim, I pursue in a preliminary way some of its implications. (shrink)

This essay offers a fresh interpretation of Bhartr̥hari’s concept of “insight”, and of its identification as the object of a sentence in the second kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya. Earlier scholars dealing with this topic disagreed on three main points: whether an epistemologically rigorous concept of insight can be found in Bhartr̥hari’s work, or if the notion remains irrevocably vague and equivocal; whether the concept of pratibhā primarily belongs to linguistics, or to action theory; whether Bhartr̥hari’s identification of insight as the (...) object of a sentence should be taken literally or figuratively. Starting from a close analysis of all passages in Bhartr̥hari’s work mentioning pratibhā, I identify, first of all, a univocal understanding of insight, valid throughout the Vākyapadīya, as immediate cognition informed by verbal transmission, in other words as a form of practical knowledge, non-representational yet essentially productive and dynamic. Showing, on this basis, how Bhartr̥hari’s understanding of language at the level of sentences is pragmatic rather than referential, I demonstrate, against the view prevalent in the late grammatical tradition, that a literal interpretation of his provocative statement on pratibhā as vākyārtha remains perfectly plausible. This thesis is further corroborated by the consideration of post-Bhartr̥hari philosophical sources elaborating on his ideas, which allow us better to understand in what sense pratibhā can legitimately be thought of as cognition “without an object”. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) argue that, ceteris paribus, it is morally worse to deploy a restraint that undermines a basic liberty than one that does not.1 This is a plausible view, and is like...