Difficulties understanding speech form one of the most prevalent complaints among older adults. Successful speech perception depends on top-down linguistic and cognitive processes that interact with the bottom-up sensory processing of the incoming acoustic information. The relative roles of these processes in age-related difficulties in speech perception, especially when listening conditions are not ideal, are still unclear. In the current study, we asked whether older adults with a larger working memory capacity process speech more efficiently than peers with lower capacity (...) when speech is presented in noise, with another task performed in tandem. Using the Eye-tracking of Word Identification in Noise Under Memory Increased Load an adapted version of the “visual world” paradigm, 36 older listeners were asked to follow spoken instructions presented in background noise, while retaining digits for later recall under low or high memory load. In critical trials, instructions directed listeners’ gaze to pictures of objects whose names shared onset or offset sounds with the name of a competitor that was displayed on the screen at the same time. We compared listeners with different memory capacities on the time course for spoken word recognition under the two memory loads by testing eye-fixations on a named object, relative to fixations on an object whose name shared phonology with the named object. Results indicated two trends. For older adults with lower working memory capacity, increased memory load did not affect online speech processing, however, it impaired offline word recognition accuracy. The reverse pattern was observed for older adults with higher working memory capacity: increased task difficulty significantly decreases online speech processing efficiency but had no effect on offline word recognition accuracy. Results suggest that in older adults, adaptation to adverse listening conditions is at least partially supported by cognitive reserve. Therefore, additional cognitive capacity may lead to greater resilience of older listeners to adverse listening conditions. The differential effects documented by eye movements and accuracy highlight the importance of using both online and offline measures of speech processing to explore age-related changes in speech perception. (shrink)

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their (...) distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on domestic trade policies and practices. It shows that protectionist measures, including those practiced by the United States, have been effectively challenged, and consequently restricted, due to the WTO strengthened dispute settlement procedures. I show that the new procedures affected the substantive policy outcomes by changing the political influence of competing actors. Specifically, I identify four transformations affecting the political influence of participants: the re-scaling of political authority, the judicialization (...) of inter-state relations, the institutionalization of the international organization, and the structural internationalization of the state. Based on this case, the article offers a view of globalization as an institutional project. This view emphasizes the political dimension of the process of globalization; it suggests that this project was facilitated by transforming the institutional arrangements in place; and it identifies the contradictions inherent in it both to U.S. hegemony and to the globalization project itself. (shrink)

This essay presents the Aestheticism of the 19th century as the foundational movement of modernist-formalist aesthetics of the 20th century. The main principle of this movement is what I denominate “productive opacity”. Aestheticism has not been recognized as a philosophical aesthetic theory. However, its definition of artwork as an exclusive kind of form—a deep, opaque form—is among the most precise ever given in the discipline. This essay offers an interpretation of aestheticism as a formalist theory, referred to here as “deep (...) formalism”, focusing on the thinking of leading aestheticists, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and James Whistler. These three thinkers defined artwork as a form saturated with an inextricable content, viz. opaque form. (shrink)

This book offers a new definition of metaphor-as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names “visualist,” challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual become a site of philosophical (...) analysis. This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence. Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors. (shrink)

A growing body of literature supports that fixed intelligence mindset promotes the emergence of maladaptive emotional reactions, especially when self-threat is imminent. Previous studies have confirmed that in adverse academic situations, students endorsing fixed intelligence mindset experience higher levels of negative emotions, although little is known about the mechanisms through which fixed intelligence mindset exerts its influence. Thus, the present study proposed to investigate self-esteem as a mediator of this relationship in two different cultural contexts, in Hungary and the United (...) States. Structural equation modeling revealed that self-esteem fully mediated the relationship between fixed intelligence mindset and negative emotions. Furthermore, results of the invariance testing conferred preliminary evidence for the cross-cultural validity of the mediation model. These findings suggest that, students adhering to fixed intelligence beliefs tend to experience greater self-esteem loss when experiencing academic failure, which leads to higher levels of negative emotions. (shrink)

An important aspect of the debate between the A-theory and the B-theory of time relates to the supposed implications of each for some of the most basic human attitudes and stances. The asymmetry in our attitudes towards past and future events in our life (pleasant and unpleasant), and towards the temporal limits of our existence, that is, toward birth and death, is supposedly considered differently by the two theories. I argue that our attitudes are neither justified nor discredited by anything (...) which is in debate between the A-Theory and the B-theory, and therefore that neither theory of time is supported by the asymmetry in our attitudes. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century optics naturalizes the eye while estranging the mind from objects. A mere screen, on which rests a blurry array of light stains, the eye no longer furnishes the observer with genuine re-presentations of visible objects. The intellect is thus compelled to decipher flat images of no inherent epistemic value, accidental effects of a purely causal process, as vague, reversed reflections of wholly independent objects. Reflecting on and trespassing the boundaries between natural and artificial, orderly and disorderly, this optical paradox (...) is a Baroque phenomenon; and it is the origin of Descartes’ celebrated doubt---whether we know anything at all. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Hegel’s account of shame as a fundamental affect. Qua spiritual, the human individual strives for self-determination; hence she is ashamed of the fact that, q...

This book offers, for the first time in aesthetics, a comprehensive account of aestheticism of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century as a philosophical theory of its own right. Taking philosophical and art-historical viewpoints, this cross-disciplinary book presents aestheticism as the foundational movement of modernist aesthetics of the 20<SUP>th</SUP> century. Emerging in the writings of the foremost aestheticists - Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, James Whistler, and their formalist successors such as Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Clement Greenberg - aestheticism offers a uniquely synthetic (...) definition of art. It captures the artwork’s relations between form and content, art’s independent ontology and autonomy, art’s internal completeness, criticism, immunity to recruitment, the uniqueness of each medium, and musicality, as well as the logical-theoretical affiliation of art for art’s sake to epistemology, ethics and philosophy of language.<BR> Those are used by Michalle Gal to formulate a definition of art in terms of a theory of Deep Formalism, setting aestheticism, which aspires to preserve the artistic medium, as a critique of the current linguistic-conceptual aesthetics that developed after the linguistic turn of aesthetics. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of marital love as a complex recognitive relation, which I articulate by juxtaposing it against other recognitive relations that figure in Hegel's theory of modern civil society (i.e., respect and esteem). Drawing on Hegel's early writings, I argue that, if love is to provide its unique sort of recognition, it must obtain between “living beings who are equal in power”—a peculiar form of equality that I name (drawing on Stanley Cavell's work) “dynamic equality.” I conclude (...) that it is by Hegel's own lights that we should reject his notorious conception of the sexual difference. However, I also offer reasons why, from Hegel's early 19th century perspective, he could consider the following two conditions as compatible: (1) equality within marriage and (2) sexual hierarchy outside marriage, namely, in civil society. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein thoughtfully express their disillusionment with contemporary applied behavioral science, particularly as it pertains to public policy. Although they fault an overemphasis on i-frame approaches, their proposed alternatives leave doubt regarding whether behavioral science has much, if anything, useful to offer policy. We offer two critical principles to guide and motivate more relevant behavioral science.

Contemporary philosophy can be characterized along the lines of a profound and vigorous debate between the prevalent ideas of 20th century philosophy’s linguistic–conceptualist age, on the one hand, and the re-emergent field of what we might call ‘visualist’ philosophy on the other hand, which is experiencing a revival within the framework of the current visual turn in philosophy. Thoughtful Images: Illustrating Philosophy through Art by Thomas E. Wartenberg stands at the intersection of these two camps. The philosophical visual turn foregrounds (...) the importance of the visual sphere, and it is this sphere with which Wartenberg engages. Investigating the genre of philosophical images throughout history, Wartenberg’s significant book joins the controversy between the characterization of humans as linguistic–conceptual or rather as visual beings. Do we reach intellectual superiority only through linguistic–conceptual schemes, or, rather, is it the richness of visuality and its level of detail – which can never be fully captured by language – that allows us a true glimpse of our reality and our very selves? I shall later claim that Wartenberg falls on the linguistic–conceptualist side of the polemic. But, a concrete example that may actually support the visualist perspective is found in the book’s final chapter, which is devoted to what Wartenberg terms ‘graphic philosophy’. Here, Wartenberg analyses Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – a memoir produced through illustrations that address the philosophical question of scepticism via Bechdel’s ‘epistemological crisis’. Bechdel is overcome with doubt over the truth status and objectivity of her own personal diary entries. Wartenberg argues that ‘this is parallel to Descartes’s worry in the Meditations that he might be mistaken about everything he takes to be true’, and is knowingly resolved by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his On Certainty (Wartenberg 2023: 282). He emphasizes the centrality of images in the memoir to portray a conceptually life-changing event for Bechdel, namely an encounter with a woman in a restaurant whose appearance assists her in figuring out her own identity. Wartenberg notes that text itself is insufficient to express Bechdel’s ideas here, arguing that ‘the visual information … is essential to our understanding of this incident in the book. Bechdel here uses a picture to convey information quickly in a readily understood manner, something that could not be done as efficiently with words alone’ (281). (shrink)

The paper analyzes the visual aspect of metaphors, offering a new theory of metaphor that characterizes its syntactic structure, material composition and visuality as its essence. It will accordingly present the metaphorical creating or transfiguring, as well as conceiving or understanding, of one thing as a different one, as a visual ability. It is a predication by means of producing non-conventional compositions – i.e., by compositional, or even aesthetic, means. This definition is aimed to apply to the various kinds of (...) metaphors: conceptual, linguistic, visual, and material. It will thus challenge the definition of metaphor as a conceptual or linguistic phenomenon in nature that is based on its semantic mechanism, broad concepts, and cognitive value. Those definitions have been prevalent since the second half of 20th century, under the influence of the philosophy of language, and later of cognitive studies. (shrink)

While aligned with John Neville Figgis’ pluralism and Marxist socialism, Harold Laski endorsed liberal and democratic values. However, he synthesised several elements from older liberal theories in a way that diluted the division to which these theories had adhered, namely that between the private and the political spheres. The resulting combination preserves privacy’s status as the realm where individuals are free to pursue their separate ends, but enables essentially private activities based in voluntary social spaces to infuse the space of (...) politics. From this emerged a vision of liberal democracy, in which freedom plays out in multiple private spaces that do not require an autonomous civic arena to complement them. The combination was reached within the contexts of mid-century thinking about the welfare state and a broader project of reformulating democracy by reducing its equation with representation. (shrink)

This paper proposes to define metaphor as a visual-material structure, the sphere of which is ontological rather than cognitive or conceptual. It argues that the essence of metaphor, as either an aesthetic or a communicative unit or both, resides in the qualitative dimension and appearance, or even materiality, of the metaphorical medium and its form. The paper thus offers a new theory of metaphor, focusing on the medium of metaphor, which composes and transfigures or reconstructs its target anew: a composition (...) that is prior to understanding or conceptualizing the target. In doing so, the paper presents a formalist ontology of metaphors, established via an externalist account of metaphors, as opposed to the prevailing cognitivist-conceptualist account which I characterize as internalist. The various kinds of metaphor – linguistic, poetic, visual or material – are based on their external structure, rather than an internal-conceptual mechanism of understanding, as assumed by a significant segment of the literature. Visual metaphor, therefore, is the paradigmatic kind of metaphor, the analysis of which can be generalized to other kinds of metaphor. Furthermore, the paper tries to overcome the current discrepancy between the formalist character of the metaphorical medium and the dominance of cognitivist and conceptualist theories of metaphor. Challenging these, I claim that if the identity of metaphor is indeed based on its composition, then it is actually based on its aesthetic qualities. That is to say, not only are there autonomous visual or material metaphors, that are not based on linguistic or conceptual ones, but linguistic and conceptual metaphors are based on visuality: they are enabled by the structural possibilities offered by visual media. (shrink)

In my paper I identify both the conceptual tools needed to establish claims for the existence of conceptual ties, as well as the principles governing the use of those tools, and present a model of conceptual analysis. I identify and justify those principles in light of the conditions for the meaningfulness of expressions in language, which I extract from an analysis of the concept of meaning. The conclusions of this analysis are organized into a schematic model of the workings of (...) a language. According to this model, the meaning of every word in any language is determined by its role in the systematic mapping of all possible states of affairs included in its conceptual scheme. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophers, Carers, and Psychodramatic GamesCorinne Gal (bio), Alexandre Chapy (bio), Marielle Fau (bio), and Muriel Guaveia (bio)Dear Jonathan D. Moreno,Thank you for the honor of taking the time to comment on the work we do. It is very meaningful for us to be able to talk with you.We, too, see a big difference between philosophers and carers (in the broadest sense) who deal with the suffering of patients and (...) try to find methods to help them. But, if theory is at the service of the clinic, it becomes a formidable asset to refine our therapeutic methods and better understand what is happening to our patients.Indeed, patients suffering from psychosis, severe neurosis … are difficult to accompany and “recalcitrant to therapy by word alone” to use your terms. It is on this point that Ludwig Binswanger distanced himself from psychoanalysis. Binswanger ran a sanatorium in Switzerland (the Bellevue Clinic) and took in patients suffering from this type of psychological pathology. Aware that “the divan” and the analysis of the transference (unconscious) made little progress, he sought other ways of understanding his patients. The work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement, and then the work of Martin Heidegger1 fascinated him because they attempted to answer fundamental questions about being. The patients we work with ask themselves and us the same question: What is being? How can we feel existence within ourselves? Binswanger then created daseinsanalysis as an analysis of existence in which he was able to develop, among other dimensions, what he called “artists’ gestures,” including the possibility of (physical) contact with the patients. The body regained existential importance in the therapy.There are also strong similarities between psychiatric phenomenology and the work of Jacob Levy Moreno (2014, p. 214). We would like to quote your work: “ Nonetheless, there were links between them. Heidegger and J.L. shared preoccupation with personal authenticity and meaning [End Page 230] just enough to be considered part of the trends that led to postwar existentialism and fueled the new humanistic psychology, NTL, and encounter groups.”Jacob Levy Moreno’s working methods are much more powerful, allowing us to work as closely as possible with bodily feelings, since the body involved in the action is so present in psychodrama. Because, to this question of being posed by our patients, is linked the body as a felt, sensing body: the body that I am (which differs from the object body). Schizophrenic patients often express, and this is a terrible suffering, that they no longer feel anything, that they no longer feel they exist, that they no longer feel emotions or feelings. They do not know how to be in the world and with others. For us it is a fundamental symptom, as much as hallucinations. We link it to the loss of natural evidence (Blankenburg, 1991), the loss of contact with reality (Minkowski, 1929). Most of the time, in psychodrama, we “externalize” what the patients feel in different roles played by players, which allows us to work at the heart of each person’s difficulties in interaction. Trained in psychodrama by Anne Ancelin Schützenberger, we have to our credit a set of techniques to support the expression of psychodramatic play, a sort of “toolbox.” Depending on the context, the moment of the patient, our own state, we open our toolbox and try to choose and use the technique that best fits the needs of the game, of what we understand about the difficulty of the protagonist or the group. We do not do anything systematic, we are craftsmen. We have chosen to present a very simple game, without any technique used, except for the initial soliloquy, with a stabilized patient suffering from paucisymptomatic forms of schizophrenia. This is to demonstrate how the possibility of encounter, constitutive of existence, is a fundamental dimension of psychodrama.We thank you for the examples you have given us, they will be a source of inspiration and will fill our toolbox.To John Nolte:We thank you very much for your comments which honor us.The aim of the article was to present how the encounter in... (shrink)

In the Ethics,1 Spinoza presents a rigorous naturalistic view of man and nature. Man is a part of nature, a subject of the same domain—not a domain separate from it, nor a domain within that of nature. Man cannot act against nature or in an unnatural way; in comparison with any other part or creature of nature, man is not special, more important or qualitatively different. All general laws of nature apply equally to animals, inanimate objects, humans, God, the mind, (...) and the affects. Nature can be explicated based on necessary causes, and there are no extra-natural factors that affect it or anything in it: no supernatural power or metaphysical principles create or regulate it, and no separate methods of explanation .. (shrink)

A partir de l'idée de “ folie ” chez S. Paul , Fr. Le Gal explore le thème de “ la folie sainte de Dieu ” qui n'est autre que la révélation de son amour fou pour l'homme. Examinant tout d'abord la polysémie du terme, sa réflexion porte en première partie sur Jésus-Christ comme “ homme de la dérision et Dieu à la folie ”, examinant au passage la parabole comme lieu de l' “ ironie christique ”. Dans la seconde (...) partie, c'est Paul qui révèle le contenu à la fois christologique, théologique et spirituel de la folie dans la tension entre la scandale de la croix et le risque pour l'apôtre et le croyant de n'être pas reçus. C'est pourtant là que se manifestera la “ folie sainte ”.Beginning with the idea of 'folly " in St. Paul , Fr Le Gal explores the theme of "the holy folly of God " that is nothing other than the revelation of his mad love for man. Examining first of all the polysemy of the term, his reflection in the first part is on Jesus Christ as "man of derision and God of folly ", examining in passing the parable as the area of "christic irony ". In the second part, it is Paul who reveals, at the same time, the christological, theological, and spiritual content of folly in the tension between the scandal of the cross and the risk for the apostle and the believer not to be accepted. It is there, nevertheless, that the "holy folly " manifests itself. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to refute the instrumental conception of practical reason, and thus defend a rationalist conception of practical reason. I argue that, far from merely playing an instrumental role, reason can be used by an agent to evaluate, that is, to approve or reject, final ends, which might be suggested by desires, and further to determine final ends independently of any desires, whether actual or potential, that the agent might have. My argument relies on an analysis of (...) the concept of intention, and, more specifically, on the distinction between want and intention. I argue that the notion of an intentional action entails that reason can be used to evaluate and determine final ends. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper contains two main sections. In the first I suggest a mechanism of interpretation, based on a distinction between two aspects of meaning, analyzed using two kinds of rhetorical-poetical constructions:tropesto explore the linguistic relations—metaphors, metonyms, synecdoches, etc.—that endow terms with content, andtopicsto account for the structuring function of key expressions, which enables the recognition and adjudication of phrases, arguments, texts, genres, etc. In the second section I substantiate my claims by demonstrating how new light is shed on Galileo (...) Galilei's neglected and obscureDe Motuif these two aspects of the meaning of its central theoretical terms are taken into consideration; interpreted through this approach it is revealed as a text revolutionary in its ideas, while the communicative efficacy of its continuous use of the traditional terminology is unveiled. (shrink)

This essay characterizes the perception of the visual hybrid as nonconceptual, introducing the terminology of nonconceptual content theory to aesthetics. The visual hybrid possesses a radical but nonetheless exemplary aesthetic composition and is well established in culture, art, and even design. The essay supplies a philosophical analysis of the results of cross-cultural experiments, showing that while categorization or conceptual hierarchization kicks in when the visual hybrids are juxtaposed with linguistic descriptions, no conceptual scheme takes effect when participants are presented with (...) mere visual hybrids. In isolation, the hybrids do not lend themselves to classification. I draw four conclusions from these experimental outcomes: 1. The perception of visual hybrids follows the structure of a nonconceptual mental content, because the original categories or concepts of the hybrids’ components are not combined into one, and their properties are not applied to one another, therefore none of the components reconstructs the other such that it is introduced to a new category. 2. Language freezes the hybridity of the visual hybrid into conceptuality. 3. Given that language has a freezing effect in the case of an extreme visual phenomenon such as the hybrid, it is all the more restraining in moderate artistic compositions, such as visual metaphors, in which properties of one component (the source) are applied to the other (the target). In those, nonconceptuality emerges from relatively organized compositions, forms, and relations, and from the dependence of objects and their properties on perceptual context. 4. Thus, the nonconceptualist terminology is suitable for the analysis of aesthetic perception in general and aesthetic perception’s relation to language. Keywords aesthetics, perception, nonconceptual content, hybrids, visual metaphors. (shrink)

This chapter presents the meeting points and conflicts between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and George Dickie’s avowedly succeeding theory. Its focus is on the internalist-externalist debate on the ontology of the artwork as created and perceived within the artworld. It shows that both Danto and Dickie developed anti-formalist theories, that contributed to the demise of aesthetic modernism. Inverting the formalist distinction between internal and external properties of the artwork, they classified the sensuous properties of the artwork as secondary in (...) its essence and identity. Accordingly, Danto and Dickie’s definitions of art emerged from the challenge “to be consistent with art appearing in every possible way.” Both negated the Neo-Wittgensteinians’s proposal to forgo the project of defining art and found the then-new pluralism to be revealing of the essence of art, directing philosophy to art’s nonexhibited infrastructure – beyond the reach of the eye. Across from this, the chapter presents their opposing ideas as revealed through different analyses of the concept of the “artworld”: as an intellectual sphere by Danto versus an institutional one by Dickie. Danto’s internalist/intentionalist ontology begins with the mental and stretches to its embodying material. Opposing it, Dickie’s externalist ontology points to social practices as constituting the artwork, which is attributed with the status of “arthood” by agents in its social sphere. Accordingly, I claim, Danto’s ontology is more versatile than Dickie’s. -/- . (shrink)

Supporters of the A-theory of time sometimes refer to an alleged experience of the passage of time in support of their theory. In this paper I argue that it is an illusion that we experience the passage of time, for such an experience is impossible. My argument relies on the general assertion that experience is contingent, in the sense that if it is possible to experience the passage of time, it is also possible to experience that time does not pass. (...) Having established this claim, I argue that it is impossible to experience that time does not pass, and hence that it is impossible to experience the passage of time. (shrink)

In the past few decades, liberal and democratic thought has been subjected to attacks from the adherents of nationalism, populism, and social radicalism. Much of these attacks involve suspicions about liberalism’s association with the contents and purveyors of structured knowledge, scientific and humanistic alike. I suggest that an examination of the history of liberal beliefs may add to our understanding of what is at stake. Such an examination may reveal how liberal thought in the twentieth century shifted away from its (...) earlier individualist and constitutional position towards the pluralist position that grants a special place to educated knowledge, to experts and professionals, and thus invites allegations of elitism. In particular, I focus on the differences between the ideas that conventional liberal authors elaborated during early modernity and the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and the version of liberal values and the polity based on them that were tacitly adopted during the mid-twentieth century, on the other hand. The examination involves highlighting the common denominators of mid-century authors on right, left, and centre, such as Laski, Popper and Hayek, as well as asking what in their shared worldview could attract allegations of elitism from later generations. (shrink)

Many believe that Goodman’s new riddle of induction proves the impossibility of a purely syntactical theory of confirmation. After discussing and rejecting Jackson’s solution to Goodman’s paradox, I formulate the “new riddle of deduction,” in analogy to the new riddle of induction. Since it is generally agreed that deductive validity can be defined syntactically, the new riddle of induction equally does not show that inductive validity cannot be defined syntactically. I further rely on the analogy between induction and deduction in (...) order to explain why some predicates, such as “grue,” are unprojectible. (shrink)

McTaggart's negative thesis in his proof for the unreality of time, which contends that the A-series is contradictory, is still today upheld as a proof of the unreality of the properties of past, present, and future, and of the `flow of time'. In my paper, I defend the possibility of a complete and consistent description of the A-series, thus refuting McTaggart's negative thesis. I show that the failure to acknowledge the possibility of such a description is due to an ambiguity (...) in natural language. Once this ambiguity is clarified, and in light of the disanalogy between time and space, the usual description of the A-series, `Event e was future, is present, and will be past', is shown to be a successful description of the change in the temporal A-properties. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the rejection of fatalism about the past by showing that there are possible circumstances in which it would be rational to attempt to bring about by our decisions and actions a necessary and sufficient condition, other things being equal, for something which we see as favorable to have occurred in the past. The examples I put forward are analogous to our attempts to bring about the occurrence of future events, and demonstrate the symmetry between the (...) past and the future in this respect. (shrink)

The following describes the concept of apoliticism, distinguishing it from indifference, which is also considered a negative attitude toward politics. Whereas apoliticism is the rejection of the official political institutions, possibly with the plan of an alternative system, the indifferent rejects politics altogether and is politically disinterested. If reflective negativism rejects politics as mechanism, the indifferent rejects it as a pursuit. I also distinguish between the extra-political, as the condition of being outside of any environment in which free deliberation and (...) public engagement is possible, and the supra-political condition, as blurring the line between public political activities and rites prescribed by the state on the one hand and the private sphere of the individual on the other hand. If different, both are forms of political poverty. These concepts may serve as means for a more nuanced understanding of the structure of apolitical attitudes. (shrink)

Formulated as a common conceptual ground for all democracies, Popper's notion of the open society sprang from the mid-20th century context that demonstrated democracy's vulnerability to hijacking through its own electoral mechanisms. Popper's concept may accordingly be considered as a resource for combatting the populist appeal to majority decision and its threat of diminishing individual and minority rights. I examine the affirmative and critical aspects of such a consideration. On the affirmative side, the open-society concept allows room for both majority (...) decision and the rights of individuals and minorities, as well as for particular group identities and class demands, showing that they may all cooperate to facilitate the growth of liberty, knowledge and the quality of life. Democratic institutions are justified from the grounds of this concept. Populism's equation of democracy with majority decision is, thus, incompatible with democracy's essence: decision by majority exists to cater to the vision that justifies that mode of decision making itself and cannot stay legitimate if it scuttles that vision. The more critical interpretation focuses on a detail of the open society's projected development. Popper tasks democracy's institutions with assuring conditions for progress through the expansion of knowledge. Popper expects the same process to modify the civic sphere's scope and content, as political bodies will be increasingly exposed to the expanding insights of scholarship and science. This anticipation involves grading the agents engaged in these two respective spheres, as well as looking forward to the ascendancy of one of them. Accordingly, the open-society concept might validate claims that, when seeking to confine the scope of majority decision through an emphasis on rights and law, constitutionalist and liberal approaches to democracy are subtly elitist. (shrink)

This article traces the limits of the understanding of beauty as unified multiplicity in Plotinus’ Enneads vi 2 and vi 6. These treatises can be read as insisting on the significance of multiplicity for beauty and as implying a distinction between the illuminated and the unilluminated beauty of Intellect. In treatise vi 7, this distinction is made explicit and a deeper understanding of beauty as the manifestation of the Good in Intellect is introduced.

: Bereft of the illusion of an epistemic vantage point external to science, what should be our commitment towards the categories, concepts and terms of that very science? Should we, despaired of the possibility to found these concepts on rock bottom, adopt empiricist skepticism? Or perhaps the inexistence of external foundations implies, rather, immunity for scientific ontology from epistemological criticism? Philosophy's "realism debate" died out without providing a satisfactory answer to the dilemma, which was taken over by the neighboring disciplines. (...) The "symmetry principle" of the "StrongProgramme" for the sociology of science-the requirement that truth and error receive the same kind of causal explanations-offered one bold metaphysical answer, under the guise of a methodological decree. Recently, however, it has been argued that this solution is not bold enough, that the social constructivists replaced the naïve presumption of an independent nature which adjudicates our beliefs with a mirror-image presumption of a sui generis society which furnishes these beliefs autonomously. The proper metaphysics for a foundationless epistemology, argues Bruno Latour, is one which grants nature and society, object and subject, equal roles in the success and failure of science and technology; one in which history of society merges with a history of things-in-themselves. The paper analyzes the philosophical and methodological motivations and ramifications of this extraordinary suggestion. (shrink)

This study examined students' reasoning about simple repeated choices. Each choice involved ''betting'' on two events, differing in probability. We asked subjects to generate or evaluate alternative strategies such as betting on the most likely event on every trial, betting on it on almost every trial, or employing a ''probability matching'' strategy. Almost half of the college students did not generate or rank strategies according to their expected value, but few subjects preferred a strategy of strict probability matching. High-school students (...) showed greater deviations from expected value than college students. Similar misunderstandings were observed in a choice task involving real (not hypothetical) repeated trials. Large gender differences in prediction strategies and in related computational skills were observed. Subjects who understand the optimal strategy usually do so in terms of independence of successive trials rather than calculation. Some subjects understand the concept of independence but fail to bring it to bear, thinking it can be overridden by intuition or local balancing (representativeness). (shrink)

This paper expands on the political vision embedded in Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic work. It comments on Winnicott’s notion that individuality is produced by society, and adds that such production inevitably involves power asymmetry. It is argued that Winnicott values rights and property as communicative devices rather than as private enclosures held against society. However, it is also maintained that Winnicott thinks that social deliberation itself depends on a preceding objective instance that may be referred to as justice. Lastly, aspects of (...) Winnicott’s outlook that touch on ideas of welfare and distribution are examined, especially those concerning the relationships between the market and social agencies, and between the household and the state. It is suggested that these attributes point to an affinity Winnicott has with a progressive liberal trend dating back to Mill, the later manifestation of this liberalism being evident in the design of the 20th-century welfare state. It is concluded that it is for this polity that Winnicott wrote his psychological theory. (shrink)

The following paper, together with its sequel ("The use and non-use of mathematics"), is a study in the mathematization of nature. It looks into the history of one of the most emblematic achievements of this fundamental aspect of the making of modem science - the Inverse Square Law of universal gravitation - before its celebrated application by Newton to celestial mechanics. What did it take, we ask, to tum a particular mathematical ratio into a candidate for a law of nature?