COnstantien Sandis speaks to Nassim Taleb about inductive knowledge,black swans, Hume, Popper, and Wittgenstein.

Sandys, Sir John Edwin. Aristotle's Constitution of Athens. A Revised Text with an Introduction Critical and Explanatory Notes Testimonia and Indices. Second edition, Revised and Enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1902. xcii, 331 pp. Frontis. Illus. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-23952. ISBN 1-58477-004-X. Cloth. $75. * By the author of the standard comprehensive history of classical scholarship, A History of Classical Scholarship. This scholarly examination of the textual evidence of the papyrus of what is known (...) to be Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, which dated from 328 and 325 B.C., is enhanced by notes that pertain to the legal aspects of the work. A thorough introduction surveys Greek political literature prior to Aristotle's time and that ascribed to him, and concludes with a history of the Constitution itself. While other scholars may have already deciphered the papyrus, this work is distinguished by the provision of the text with critical notes on each page, followed by the Testimonia, which contain further evidence on the text, in the form of quotations in Greek, often providing passages in full for immediate reference. With a bibliography and English as well as Greek index. (shrink)

Constantine Sandis argues for a holistic approach to museums.

ABSTRACTThis article examines accounts of the moral basis of compensatory duties that explain such duties as the continuation, in some way, of the pre-wrong normative situation. I identify, contrast, and assess three versions of this view—duty continuity, right continuity, and reasons continuity. I argue that each version is defensible, once properly articulated. The article responds to a range of objections to these views that have not received much critical attention by their proponents.

The anthology contains twenty-two essays and is divided into two parts. The essays are, in the main, critical responses to aspects of what has come to be known in action theory as the ‘Standard View’ – the view that traces back to Donald Davidson's contribution to twentieth-century philosophy of action. The view under criticism treats actions as bodily movements caused in a non-deviant way by belief–desire pairs, construes these belief–desire pairs as the primary reasons for the actions that they cause, (...) and embraces event-causality.The issue of how we should conceive of action is taken up in several essays. For example: in Essay 1, Fred Dretske challenges the view that actions are external events that are the effect of the reasons for which the action is done. In Essay 16, Helen Steward, proposes that, instead of treating the availability of a reason-giving explanation as essential to action, we should construe action as ‘an exercise of the power of bodily control by an animal’. In Essay 21, Jonathan Dancy argues for a deflationary approach to actions, which forgoes treating actions ‘as individuals, with identity conditions’.Other authors – for example, Stephen Everson, Rowland Stout and Maria Alvarez – focus on the issue of what reasons for action are. Are they psychological states, or propositions, or states of affairs? Also under review is how to distinguish different kinds of reason: normative and explanatory reasons, and even explanatory and motivating reasons. (shrink)

Exceptional, or anomalous, experiences (AE), including mystical, so‐called out‐of‐body and near‐death experiences, have intrigued humanity throughout history. In William James's program for a science of psychology at the end of the 19th century, all experiences, whether usual or exceptional were within its remit, yet the scientific consideration of AE has been mostly dormant until recently. This chapter provides an overview of the field, starting with a definition of AE, descriptions of various types, a brief history of their study, and a (...) list of why they are essential to a complete psychology of human experience. Other sections cover the (incidental) relation of AE to psychopathology, the proposal of an underlying personality trait, related neuroscientific studies, and the potential beneficial effects of AE. In the final section, I argue that rather than just being oddities or malfunctions, AE are essential to a comprehensive account of consciousness and may, more arguably, provide alternative epistemological pathways to that of the ordinary state of consciousness. (shrink)

Cultivating Consciousness: Enhancing Human Potential, Wellness, and Healing. Edited by K. Ramakrishna Rao. Connecticut: Praeger, 1993. 235 pp. (cloth). $55.00.

Libros reseñado: ¿Una ética en tiempo de crisis? Ensayos sobre estoicismo. Cali, Editoral de la Universidad del Valle, 2003.

Philosophy of Early Childhood Education: Transforming Narratives provides an insightful reflection on some contemporary issues and theories underpinning early childhood education. The essays in this volume penned by an international group of educators are both critical and transformative, offering new insights on the practices and policies within early childhood education. Provides a critical reflection on some current issues within early childhood education Offers perspectives outside traditional narratives of early childhood Encourages the emergence of new paradigms for early childhood education Promotes (...) the value of difference, perspective, and “otherness” Features an international field of contributors from diverse geographical boundaries. (shrink)

Este artículo revisa el proceso histórico de la ‘Conquista del desierto’ y la existencia de campos de concentración para indígenas en Argentina a través de una lectura de hermenéutica filosófica. El objetivo del artículo es interpretar el periodo y el uso de campos como instancias que configuraron la diferenciación del pueblo mapuche como sujeto racializado en la sociedad argentina. Los resultados de la exposición muestran que la marginación del cuerpo mapuche ocurre por el registro de excepciones y que aquella es (...) disputada por sujetos mapuche. This paper reviews the historical process of the ‘Conquest of the Desert’ and the existence of concentration camps for indigenous people in Argentina. The research is conducted through philosophical hermeneutics. The objective of the paper is to read the period and the use concentration camps as instances that shaped the differentiation of the Mapuche people as a racialized subject in Argentine society. The results of the argumentation show that marginalization of the Mapuche body occurs through the registration of exceptions, which is disputed by Mapuche subjects. (shrink)

What happens during a near-death experience? In an accessible style, this text reviews recent research about unbelievable events, creating an account of activity at the boundaries of science. It also examines research concerns, current theories, methodological issues and clinical implications.

Tracking the career development of a Nursery Nurse into a managerial role, this book: Clearly identifies and explains the managerial roles of team leader, senior supervisor, deputy and manager Focuses on the sudden change that takes place as you transcend from colleague to boss Offers advice on what is expected from you as you move into a managerial role Chris Ashman is Senior Manager at Bridgewater college, Somerset and has ten years experience teaching childcare and managing. He also writes course (...) content for the FE sector. Sandy Green is an Early Years Consultant and Trainer in south-west England. (shrink)

This volume brings together a collection of essays on the history and philosophy of probability and statistics by one of the eminent scholars in these subjects. Written over the last fifteen years, they fall into three broad categories. The first deals with the use of symmetry arguments in inductive probability, in particular, their use in deriving rules of succession. The second group deals with four outstanding individuals who made lasting contributions to probability and statistics in very different ways: Frank Ramsey, (...) R. A. Fisher, Alan Turing, and Abraham de Moivre. The last group of essays deals with the problem of 'predicting the unpredictable' - making predictions when the range of possible outcomes is unknown in advance. The essays weave together the history and philosophy of these subjects and document the fascination that they have exercised for more than three centuries. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between the various forces which underlie human action and verbal reports about our reasons for acting as we did. I maintain that much of the psychological literature on confabulations rests on a dangerous conflation of the reasons for which people act with a variety of distinct motivational factors. In particular, I argue that subjects frequently give correct answers to questions about the considerations they acted upon while remaining largely unaware of why they take themselves to (...) have such reasons to act. Pari passu, experimental psychologists are wrong to maintain that they have shown our everyday reason talk to be systematically confused. This is significant because our everyday reason-ascriptions affect characterizations of action that are morally and legally relevant. I conclude, more positively, that far from rendering empirical research on confabulations invalid, my account helps to reveal its true insights into human nature. (shrink)

Emotions and consciousness are intimately linked and often conceived from a purely intrapersonal perspective. This paper explores the implications of considering emotions as not only intrapersonal but also as interpersonal and transpersonal heterarchical (i.e., every component has potentially equal importance) systems. It is telling that in contemplative traditions and contemporary research on hypnotic experience, deep 'inner' experience is pregnant with interpersonal and transpersonal meanings. Similarly, the propensity to have porous conscious experiences is paralleled by the tendency to be affected by (...) the emotion of others. Anecdotal and experimental evidence on anomalous events clearly suggests that strong emotions can have non-local effects. That consciousness and emotions are embedded within interpersonal and transpersonal fields has important epistemological and ethical implications. (shrink)

Is sensory experience stable and theory-neutral? If it is, scientists do not have different experiences, but rather have different interpretations of the same experience. Kuhn: scientists rarely have ‘bare’ experience. Also, the construction of sense-language has not been successful.

This essay considers the ambiguous sense in which Badiou is a Platonist. It alleviates this ambiguity by considering how two characteristics of Platonism are treated in the metaphysics of Being and Event: (1) the split between being/appearing, and (2) Platonic Ideas. It considers how in Badiou and Plato’s metaphysics the treatment of both these characteristics of Platonism is comparable. Accordingly, it compares both such characteristics in relation to Being and Event and the Theaetetus and Phaedo, and, using concepts from each (...) philosopher, explores three possible ways in which being/appearing and Platonic Ideas may be interrelated, thereby constituting a philosophy of experience. These explorations necessitate parallel consideration of how the sense in which Badiou is a Platonist is determinable by the interrelation of Platonic Ideas with being/appearing in his metaphysics. It is determined that how being/appearing and Platonic Ideas interrelate in Badiou is markedly different from how they do so in Plato, making it questionable whether Badiou is a Platonist in this sense. However, it is indicated that an esoteric sense in which Badiou is a Platonist (the dialectic of the One and the multiple) has been considered throughout this essay, and that more such senses deserve consideration. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA cognitive autopoietic system is a dynamic, self-generating, organized and self-organizing thing which self-regulates with respect to an external medium. The present model of the effect of stress on a cognitive autopoietic system captures the notion of how a priori cognitive structures, combined with external sensations, constitute the basis for the development of cognitive structures and their architecture. The ESCA model integrates the fact that the mind–environment relation has a twofold effect: on one hand, it enables self-regulation of mind, but (...) on the other hand, it poses a potential perturbation on the same, which may result in the breakdown of the self-regulation of mind. The architecture of the CS developed on the basis of the ESCA model is consistent with the manifestations of the effect of stress on mind behavior at different levels. The ESCA model predicts that the faculty to concatenate... (shrink)

La tradición filosófica se ha asentado sobre una serie de presupuestos a propósito de lo que significa pensar, que ha naturalizado una forma dogmática del ejercicio filosófico y que se ha expandido en general a todas las áreas del hacer y del saber. El presente artículo intenta ofrecer, a la luz de la obra de Gilles Deleuze, un diagnóstico de tales presupuestos. Philosophical tradition has grounded itself in a series of assumptions regarding what it means to think. This has naturalized (...) a dogmatic form of philosophical practice, which has extended to all other areas of practice and knowledge. The article presents a diagnostic of those assumptions, on the basis of the work of Gilles Deleuze. A tradição filosófica tem sido estabelecida sobre uma série de pressupostos a propósito do que significa pensar, que tem naturalizado uma forma dogmática do exercício filosófico e que tem se expandido em geral a todas as áreas do fazer e do saber. O presente artigo pretende oferecer, à luz da obra de Gilles Deleuze, um diagnóstico desses pressupostos. (shrink)

Nuestro propósito es establecer una conversación sobre la vida afectiva desde el arte con Guayasamín, pintor ecuatoriano que hizo de las pasiones y de los sentimientos temas de muchas de sus obras, y la filosofía con el pensador francés contemporáneo Paul Ricœur, quien sin haberse dedicado específicamente a este tema, alude y hace precisiones sobre la vida afectiva, que se toman como referencia para acompañar esta reflexión. El arte crea significado y la filosofía conceptualiza. Esta es la indicación que nos (...) permitirá realizar nuestro propósito: acercarnos y explicitar mediante la filosofía las formas en que un artista latinoamericano expresa ciertas configuraciones afectivas para dar cuenta de cómo se constituye nuestra particular experiencia de mundo. (shrink)

Au-delà des frontières des langues, des cultures juridiques et systèmes de droit, conciliant synchronie et diachronie, le Professeur Mattila nous offre une oeuvre riche en couleurs, rencontres illustres et cas d’espèce. Nul doute qu’il s’agit là d’un ouvrage de référence, à la fois au regard de l’introduction d’une approche heuristique et de la cartographie d’un champ de connaissances commun au juriste et au linguiste. Sa vaste étude des interactions terminologiques et conceptuelles des langues et traditions juridiques européennes propose un tableau (...) minutieux, systématique et argumenté de la situation du langage juridique dans cinq langues. Elle offre une réflexion sur le développement de ces langues, notamment sur le plan international. Travail herculéen s’il en est, il ne pouvait être réalisé que par un humaniste accompli. Heikki Mattila, professeur émérite de jurilinguistique à l’Université de Lapland en Finlande, est juriste, spécialiste multilingue du langage juridique, linguiste .. (shrink)

¿“Quién asume la competencia en un caso para el cual no se ha previsto competencia alguna?”. Retomando esta pregunta de Carl Schmitt, el autor pretende unir la definición desgarradora de soberanía propuesta por este pensador con la idea de soberanía popular, consignada en las constituciones de los estados modernos y contemporáneos. El lector encontrará también una reflexión sobre la noción filosófica de estado de excepción y la ambivalencia entre peligro y oportunidad que este representa para el ejercicio del derecho y (...) de la política. (shrink)

Where most discussions of trust focus on the rationality of trust, in this paper I explore the doxastic justification of beliefs formed through trust. I examine two forms of trust: the self-trust that is involved when one trusts one’s own basic cognitive faculties, and the interpersonal trust that is involved when one trusts another speaker. Both cases involve regarding a source of information as dependable for the truth. In thinking about the epistemic significance regarding a source in this way, I (...) call upon Process Reliabilism (PR). With its core idea that the epistemic goodness of a belief tracks the reliability of the process through which the belief was formed, PR suggests one way to think about the (potential) epistemic benefits and risks of trust: in cases of trust the process through which belief is formed includes reliance on an information source, where the reliability with which the source produced its information is the main determinant of the epistemic status of the beliefs formed through trusting that source. While it is much more common to find something like this picture endorsed in connection with cases of self-trust, I argue that it ought to be endorsed for cases of interpersonal trust as well. The failure to do so, I submit, reflects a commitment to an individualistic orientation that proponents of PR need not, and should not, endorse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Did Literature Stop Being Cultural?Sandy Petrey (bio)Debate over the future of French Studies in the United States has sometimes neglected a vital fact: even though the field of French Studies incorporates everything relevant to the francophone world, no single department of French Studies can be that comprehensive. If we want to teach anything serious, we must focus our collective energy and intellect on some manageable component of the (...) many topics French Studies can legitimately address. To try to cover everything is to condemn ourselves to watered-down, dumbed-down versions of history, political science, art, economics, sociology, and the many other areas pertinent to things French.I believe the makeup of French departments in the United States means that our dominant focus should remain literary. Since we aren’t going to retool ourselves so spectacularly as to master all the disciplinary perspectives relevant to the francophone world, we have to make choices. As far as I can see, the best choice is an orientation toward literary criticism, the area in which most productive scholars in French departments in the United States were trained. We’ve learned how to deal with words, and chances are very good that we will do more things that deserve doing if we address words than if we address immigration statistics, changing styles on Maghreb dance floors, or the status attached to owning a pit bull in French housing projects.This doesn’t mean that immigration statistics, dance styles, and pit bulls are forbidden topics, just that we can best approach them if our primary focus remains literary while we open secondary focuses onto other areas. Those openings can renew our field without compromising our identity, allow us to adopt the interdisciplinary concerns animating cultural studies without repudiating literature’s traditional place in foreign language programs. I categorically reject the idea that the literary studies/cultural studies opposition is absolute, that concentrating on literature imposes the necessity of ignoring dance floors and pit bulls. My answer to the question in my title, “When did literature stop being cultural?,” is that it didn’t, whether we take “cultural” in the dirty-word sense of “high culture” or the buzzword sense of “cultural studies.” Literature’s credentials among the accomplishments of high culture matter to language departments in a great many ways, but more relevant to current professional concerns is that cultural studies can address the monuments of the French literary tradition as well as the monuments of French reaction to the Spice Girls. To impose a choice between literary studies and cultural studies strikes me as horribly misguided, something like imposing a choice between breathing and eating.Yet that choice is being imposed with more and more insistence, its suicidal consequences accepted with less and less concern. At times, those preaching an either/or approach have done so in defense of literature, and I refuse the idea that literature is Emerson’s “jealous mistress” who tolerates nothing else in her domain. To study either high culture or popular culture as if the other were unworthy of concern impoverishes both, which means the literary studies/cultural studies binary is pernicious no matter which side defends it. Although the either/or model has sometimes been asserted in the [End Page 12] name of literature’s integrity, however, its most influential recent articulations have come from partisans of cultural studies. The sides have changed. Instead of the argument that the nature of cultural studies means it must be excluded from literary analysis, we now hear that the nature of literary analysis means that it must be excluded from cultural studies.Let me take as evidence the MLA’s most recent publication on trends in language and literature departments, Profession 1997, and the Russell Berman article it contains, a brief for a new form of “Graduate Education toward a Foreign Cultural Literacy.” Berman’s essay makes a strong and informed argument for interdisciplinarity, the best features of which have in Berman’s representation come together to create cultural studies. Throughout this argument, I find the scary logical and political missteps endemic to recent contentions that cultural studies and literary studies are mutually exclusive. Berman’s essay is doubly... (shrink)

In this paper I formulate the thesis of the Division of Epistemic Labor as a thesis of epistemic dependence, illustrate several ways in which individual subjects are epistemically dependent on one or more of the members of their community in the process of knowledge acquisition, and draw conclusions about the cognitively distributed nature of some knowledge acquisition.

This paper introduces an innovative curricular approach—the Health Humanities Portrait Approach —and its pedagogical tool—the Health Humanities Portrait. Both enable health professions learners to examine pressing social issues that shape, and are shaped by, experiences of health and illness. The Portrait Approach is grounded in a set of “critical portraiture” principles that foster humanities-driven analytical skills. The HHP’s architecture is distinctively framed around a pressing social theme and utilizes a first-person narrative and scholarship to explore how the dimensions of the (...) personal and the structural are mutually constituted. We argue that when creator-educators adopt the Portrait Approach and its critical portraiture principles to design and teach the HHP, they enable learners to become proficient in synthesizing and analyzing—with both depth and breadth—the human and social dimensions of patients’ lives. This inventive curricular intervention provides a needed contribution to health professions education in that it utilizes health humanities methodologies to elucidate the multiple aspects of health, illness, disability, and healthcare. (shrink)

This paper has the aim of making Johannes von Kries’s masterpiece, Die Principien der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung of 1886, a little more accessible to the modern reader in three modest ways: first, it discusses the historical background to the book ; next, it summarizes the basic elements of von Kries’s approach ; and finally, it examines the so-called “principle of cogent reason” with which von Kries’s name is often identified in the English literature.

The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called "action" which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any such explanation must take fail from the outset, and shows how various debates on the nature of so-called motivating reasons only arise because the participants all share a number of mistaken views which follow from the basic assumption (...) under attack. In so doing, he urges philosophers and psychologists alike to stop asking whether the explanation of action is causal, and to focus instead on its multifarious objects. This book will appeal to anyone interested in motivational psychology, the reasons for which we act, and the philosophy of explanation in general. (shrink)

Since van Fraassen first put forward the suggestive idea that many philosophical positions should be construed as ‘stances’ rather than factual beliefs, there have been various attempts to spell out precisely what a philosophical stance might be, and on what basis one should be adopted. In this paper I defend a particular account of stances, the view that they are pragmatically justified perspectives or ways of seeing the world, and compare it to some other accounts that have been offered. In (...) Sect. 2 I consider van Fraassen’s argument for construing empiricism as a stance, and look at some responses to it. In Sect. 3 I outline my conception of stances as perspectives or ways of seeing, and explain how stances so understood may be justified. I illustrate this conception by way of a discussion of the model pluralist position with respect to the units of selection debate in biology, and suggest that on the model pluralist view different perspectives on the units of selection, such as the gene’s eye view, are in fact van Fraassian stances. In Sect. 4 I discuss the view put forward by Teller and Chakravartty among others that stances should be understood as epistemic policies, and argue that it is consistent with the conception of stances as perspectives. In the final section I criticise Rowbottom’s attempt to assimilate stances to Kuhnian paradigms. I argue that he has overlooked some important disanalogies between stances and paradigms, so that the comparison obscures more than it reveals. (shrink)

Make happy clients of brand-new parents, and you're on your way to chronicling that baby's entire life with your camera. Sandy Puc' knows the secrets, and shares them in this guide.