The COVID-19 pandemic significantly changed healthcare delivery. While global health care systems became so overstretched by the volume of patients with an emergent disease, front-line clinicians f...

It was certainly Kant’s purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason to find a middle ground between Cartesian rationalism and empirical idealism. One of the difficulties in reading the Critique is trying to follow how Kant can maintain his dual argument—that of transcendental idealism and that of empirical realism—at every point. Perhaps there is no better example of this than the crucial argument refuting idealism. The second edition Refutation is drastically reduced from the first edition and as densely packed as (...) any Kantian argument. Our purpose here is to unpack the argument, trying to show Kant’s grounds and his difficulties in attempting a deduction of the empirically real. (shrink)

This early essay by Albert Camus presents an eloquent picture of his understanding of what it means to know. But in order for us to assimilate it, we must recognize that Camus is not celebrating a hedonic naturalism, nor engaging in an existential anti-intellectualism. Rather, his articulation of lucidity and the exemplification of it in the artistry of the essay itself presents us with a challenging concept of knowledge. I attempt to explicate this concept with the help of two images, (...) one from the musical Hair and one from the movie The Pawnbroker, thus seeking to reinforce Camus' reliance upon image as the equivalent of idea. (shrink)

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing the study of culture. It focuses on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism's harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences - and particular research on human cognition - which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author (...) provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the 'blank slate' theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture. (shrink)

Reflectivity and Cultivating Student Learning includes theory, research, and practice appropriate for teacher educators, teacher candidates, classroom teachers, school administrators, and educational researchers.

When Heidegger's influence was at its zenith in Germany from the early fifties to the early sixties, most serious students of philosophy in that country were deeply steeped in his thought. His students or students of his students filled many if not most of the major chairs in philosophy. A cloud of reputedly Black Forest mysticism veiled the perspective of many of his critics and admirers at home and abroad. Droves of people flocked to hear lectures by him that most (...) could not understand, even on careful reading, much less on one hearing. He loomed so large that Being and Time frequently could not be seen as a highly imaginative, initial approach to a strictly limited set of questions, but was viewed either as an all-embracing first order catastrophy incorporating at once the most feared consequences of Boehme, Kierkegaard, Rilke, and Nietzsche, or as THE ANSWER. But most of that has past. Heidegger's dominance of German philosophy has ceased. One can now brush aside the larger-than-life images of Heidegger, the fears that his language was creating a cult phenomenon, the convictions that only those can understand him who give their lives to his thought. His language is at times unusually difficult, at times simple and beautiful. Some of his insights are obscure and not helpful, others are exciting and clarifying. One no longer expects Heidegger to interpret literature like a literary critic or an academic philologist. (shrink)

A brief analysis of the processes of measurement common to any science reveal a paradox. This paradox is encountered when one tries to make clear how formal statements are related to experience in such a way that factual statements, such as statements about measurements, result. I believe that this paradox bears an analogy to the “fallacy of the third man” which disturbed Plato. Be that as it may, this paradox has not been satisfactorily solved in modern times, although a full (...) comprehension of the processes of measurement would require its solution. In this paper I wish to do nothing more than present a statement of the difficulty. (shrink)

THERE IS MUCH TALK THESE DAYS OF RIGHTS: Civil rights, legal rights, natural rights, human rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, children's rights. A great deal of it--if not all of it--is confused and confusing. Indeed, it is safe to say that no politically relevant concept more needs clarification than this one. Furthermore, because we are lavishly spending our political capital, it will soon happen that neither the incantation of familiar phrases nor the public expression of sentimental pieties will keep us (...) from destroying our community. The conflict between property rights and civil rights, so prominent in the 1960s, is only one example of the sort of tensions which we will undergo in the future. Unless adequate categories through which these conflicts may be resolved are accepted, any one solution can only prefigure larger conflicts whose features are ominous indeed. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to contrast briefly one of the later developments in philosophy, the philosophy of the concrete, with an archaic mode of thought and then to show how certain defects in each were avoided in the development of the scientific method.

Introduction §1. 1s PHILOSOPHY FINISHED? Has philosophy now nearly completed its twenty-five hundred years of service to humanity? Has it only a few last remaining tasks of analysis and clarification to perform before its career is ...

The little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Paine's grand political vision for the United States. Thomas Jefferson praised Tom Paine as the greatest political writer of the age. The author of 'Common Sense' and Rights of Man, Paine helped make revolutions in America and France. But beyond his inspiring calls to action, Paine harbored a deeper political vision for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent decades planning: an (...) iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. The bridge was Paine's answer to the political puzzle of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and geographically fragmented as the United States. Among its patrons were other giants of the time, including Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke, Paine's ideological opponent. Set against the background of the American Revolution, the story of his iron bridge reveals a new Tom Paine and connects this revolutionary to the vast program of internal improvements that soon transformed America"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)