This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

We present 8 articles about the antropology of 7 philosophers of the XX century (Husserl, Gadamer, Pareyson, Fabro, Pieper, De Lubac and Mouroux), and the doctors who have writen these articles (respectively, J.J. Borobia, F. F. Labastida, P. Blanco, L. Romera, J. J. Franck, J.M. Galván and J. Alonso).

The abilities to attribute an action to its proper agent and to understand its meaning when it is produced by someone else are basic aspects of human social communication. Several psychiatric syndromes, such as schizophrenia, seem to lead to a dysfunction of the awareness of one’s own action as well as of recognition of actions performed by other. Such syndromes offer a framework for studying the determinants of agency, the ability to correctly attribute actions to their veridical source. Thirty normal (...) subjects and 30 schizophrenic patients with and without hallucinations and/or delusional experiences were required to execute simple finger and wrist movements, without direct visual control of their hand. The image of either their own hand or an alien hand executing the same or a different movement was presented on a TV-screen in real time. The task for the subjects was to discriminate whether the hand presented on the screen was their own or not. Hallucinating and deluded schizophrenic patients were more impaired in discriminating their own hand from the alien one than the non-hallucinating ones, and tended to misattribute the alien hand to themselves. Results are discussed according to a model of action control. A tentative description of the mechanisms leading to action consciousness is proposed. (shrink)

Dans un contexte de crise du systeme capitaliste - une crise qui n'est sans doute qu'une etape de plus dans une fuite en avant qui dure depuis 30 ans, par laquelle ledit systeme tente desesperement de dissimuler la contradiction fondamentale qui l'habite (chercher a maintenir a tout prix la forme de la valeur alors meme que tout la denonce comme une forme fondamentalement depassee, perimee et anachronique de la richesse sociale) - ce livre part de notre impuissance pratique et de (...) l'impossibilite ou nous sommes actuellement de penser un autre monde. Et il rapporte cette impossibilite au fait de la privation de monde (et de la privatisation du monde) comme au fait majeur resultant du dispositif capitaliste. Ce dispositif a fait de nous ce que les philosophes modernes ont pense que nous etions: des sujets separes de l'objectivite, des sujets sans monde, retires du monde, spectateurs desinvoltes d'un monde qui n'est plus le leur. La perte du monde et la separation d'avec l'objectivite sont deux manieres d'exprimer un meme phenomene: celui de l'alienation. Ce dispositif a produit l'illusion du sujet souverain et la realite d'une masse d'individus depossedes de leur puissance. Au coeur de ce diagnostic, on trouvera une relecture de Marx, une tentative de mise en dialogue de Heidegger avec Marx et une confrontation critique avec des representants contemporains (Althusser, Deleuze, Foucault) ou actuels (J. Butler, S. Zizek, A. Honneth) de la critique sociale. La perspective est celle d'une objectivation des sujets qui en fasse des individus sociaux capables d'un usage commun de leur monde. (shrink)

A knowledge-how attributing sentence of the form ' S knows how to F ' may yield an 'ability-entailing' reading as well as an 'ability-neutral' reading. The present paper offers an epistemological account of the availability of both readings, based on two conceptual distinctions: first, a distinction between a 'practical' and a 'theoretical' kind of knowledge of how to do something; second, a distinction between an 'intrinsic' and an 'extrinsic' kind of ability to do something. The first part of the paper (...) presents the double distinction that constitutes the proposed account; the second part presents a number of theoretical, mainly epistemological motivations for accepting the account. (shrink)

This study aimed at evaluating the role of proprioception in the process of matching the final position of one's limbs with an intentional movement. Two experiments were realised with the same paradigm of conscious recognition of one's own limb position from a distorted position. In the first experiment, 22 healthy subjects performed the task in an active and in a passive condition. In the latter condition, proprioception was the only available information since the central signals related to the motor command (...) were likely to be absent. The second experiment was realised with a deafferented patient who suffers from a complete haptic deafferentation, including loss of proprioception. The results first argue in favour of a dominant role of proprioception in action recognition, but they also stress the possible role of central signals. The process of matching the final position of one's limbs with an intended movement and thus of action recognition would be achieved through a comparison process between the predicted sensory consequences of the action, which are stored in its internal model, and the actual sensory consequences of that action. (shrink)

Heidegger avait porté son attention sur la détermination de l'être de l'étant comme volonté. F. Fischbach explore et met à jour d'autres possibles recelés par l'ontologie de l'agir : il étudie ce qui se tient derrière les conceptions les plus diverses de l'être de l'étant, l'actus.

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase, the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking (...) similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. Contributors: Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema. (shrink)

The work of 6th century Indian logician Dharmakirti is explored in detail in series of twelve articles analyzing deviant logic, subject failure, andther important aspects of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist logical tradition.riginal.

This Handbook documents the main trends in current research between logic and language, including its broader influence in computer science, linguistic theory and cognitive science. The history of the combined study of Logic and Linguistics goes back a long way, at least to the work of the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of this century, the subject was revitalized through the pioneering efforts of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Polish philosophical logicians such as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Around (...) 1970, the landmark achievements of Richard Montague established a junction between state-of-the-art mathematical logic and generative linguistic theory. Over the subsequent decades, this enterprise of Montague Grammar has flourished and diversified into a number of research programs with empirical and theoretical substance. This appears to be the first Handbook to bring logic-language interface to the fore. Both aspects of the interaction between logic and language are demonstrated in the book i.e. firstly, how logical systems are designed and modified in response to linguistic needs and secondly, how mathematical theory arises in this process and how it affects subsequent linguistic theory. The Handbook presents concise, impartial accounts of the topics covered. Where possible, an author and a commentator have cooperated to ensure the proper breadth and technical content of the papers. The Handbook is self-contained, and individual articles are of the highest quality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist PedagogyKelly J. WhitmerWhile the Franckesche Stiftungen (the Francke Foundations) of Halle/Saale are perhaps best known today as the institutional centre of German Pietism, throughout much of the eighteenth century they were widely regarded as a pedagogically innovative Schulstadt (or city of schools). The founder of this Schulstadt, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was many things to many people: Pietist, radical Lutheran, theologian, (...) pedagogue, professor of Greek and Oriental languages, preacher, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and proponent of a Protestant mission. Like most participants in what was initially a grassroots movement oriented around the personality of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a minister active in Frankfurt am Main around 1670 who sought to breathe new life into the Lutheran church,2 Francke rarely referred to himself as a Pietist. From his post at the University of Halle (founded in 1694), this Spenerian prote´gé set out to create a new "universal seminar" that would make the assimilation of many diverse points of view, identities, and competing strands of knowledge its [End Page 545] defining mandate. "My purpose," Francke wrote in a letter to a Pastor Ring from Grünebartau (October 29, 1712), "is to develop a universal institution, useful for bringing into a good and holy order all that is important for the Christianity of all orders of society and relates, in some way, to the healing power of the soul."3 His Schulstadt would "bring into order" a myriad of relationships around a single point and relied, quite deliberately I propose, on an eclectic methodology to do this.In recent years, the relationship of Francke's Schulstadt to the implementation of Brandenburg-Prussia's first compulsory schooling system and teacher training institutes has been better documented than in the past.4 Scholars of education have paid closer attention to the methodological innovations of Pietist pedagogy, and its points of convergence with the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) have become subjects of mounting interest.5 Francke's significance for the history of education has been assessed mainly in terms of his ability to realize the pedagogically inclined reform projects of seventeenth-century figures, such as Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670).6 We know that the thousands of children who participated in the life of the Schulstadt very often left Halle to become actively involved as teachers and ministers throughout the German states. Several played pivotal roles in the development of the late eighteenth-century educational reform movement known as Philanthropismus and its associated practices and institutions.7 [End Page 546]Perhaps the most striking feature of Francke's Schulstadt was its curriculum, which featured innovative training regimens in applied mathematics for children from diverse social backgrounds.8 The scale and rigor of these programs were to be found nowhere else at the time and can be linked to the overtly pedagogical mandate of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (f. 1701). These regimens deliberately juxtaposed artisanal and learned knowledge and stressed the importance of the eye as a conciliatory medium.9 Despite having acquired largely anti-empiricist reputations over the years due to their lingering interest in alchemy and their roles in securing the banishment of the "rationalist" mathematician and philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from their community in 1723, careful consideration of what Halle Pietists were teaching in their schools suggests a different view. These historical actors reconciled categories of knowledge production and transmission often framed as oppositional—despite what several scholars have recently shown to be their clear interconnectedness.10I argue here for the predominance of eclecticism in the Schulstadt, including a pronounced emphasis on the "middling" mathematical and mechanical sciences as tools of conciliation and self-improvement. I seek to illustrate how eclecticism was much more than a Philosophiebegriff that was well received by some Pietists, as Walter Sparn has argued, but that it is better understood as a set of conciliatory practices, traces of which resonate in Pietist lesson plans.11 Teachers in Francke's schools integrated experimental philosophy into an educational program that was introducing children to the exercises of... (shrink)

We give in this paper a sufficient condition, cast in semantic terms, for Hallden-completeness in normal modal logics, a modal logic being said to be Hallden-complete (or Ήallden-reasonable') just in case for any disjunctive formula provable in the logic, where the disjuncts have no propositional variables in common, one or other of those disjuncts is provable in the logic.

The paper looks at how Tsong kha pa, mKhas grub, and Go rams pa understood the third and fourth lemmas in the tetralemma, “both A and B” and “neither A nor B,” respectively.

Let it be granted that Buddhism has, e.g., in its logical literature, detailed canons and explicit rules of right reason that, amongst other things, ban inconsistency as irrational. This is the normative dimension of how people should think according to many major Buddhist authors. But do important Buddhist writers ever recognize any interesting or substantive role for inconsistency and forms of irrationality in their account of how people actually do think and act? The article takes as its point of departure (...) a recurring theme in the writings of the 8th Century Indian Buddhist thinker, Śāntideva, who subjects his own behaviour and thought to minute scrutiny in argumentation with himself, only to be puzzled at his own seemingly irrational persistence in ways of thinking that he knows to be wrong and actions that he knows to be worse courses. The Buddhist’s situation is profitably comparable to issues of akrasia, weakness of the will, that are taken up by Plato, Aristotle and many modern philosophers, including notably Donald Davidson and David Wiggins. (shrink)

Critical notice of Tom Sorell's Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science.

ABSTRACT While Joseph Hooker was considering his upcoming presentation on the geographical distribution of species, he asked Charles Darwin for help with some references. During the ensuing exchange of correspondence, Darwin seems to have contradicted himself, regarding his being aware of Leopold von Buch’s observation that distributed varieties become species, prior to writing On the Origin of Species. Literalists and conspiracists have interpreted this apparent self-contradiction as a sign of duplicity and fraud. However, when the correspondence and Hooker’s address are (...) analysed in context, there is a more compelling explanation. Simply that, in response to direct questioning by Hooker, Darwin conflated the two names of Von Baer and Von Buch, and made an honest mistake. (shrink)

In this article I shall argue for an interpretation of Odyssey 19.393–466 as a flash-back taking place in the mind of Eurykleia at the moment she recognises Odysseus' scar. That Eurykleia somehow forms the connection between main story and digression has been suggested before, but so far other interpretations have been defended with more fervour. Most famous of these interpretations is the one given by E. Auerbach in the first chapter of his Mimesis. He had chosen 19.393–466 to illustrate his (...) thesis that in Homer everything is ‘fully externalized’ and that there is no background, only a ‘uniformly illuminated’ foreground. According to Auerbach the digression on the scar stands in complete isolation to its context. It is meant to ‘relax the tension’, to make the hearer/reader ‘forget what had just taken place during the footwashing’, and although it might have been presented as a recollection of Odysseus , this ‘subjectivisticperspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background’ was not chosen, being ‘entirely foreign to the Homeric style’. Some twenty years later this interpretation was challenged by A. Köhnken, who, however, stuck to the idea that the digression is not told from the restricted perspective of one of the characters but from the perspective of the omniscient narrator; he claims that foreground and background are marked as such through a difference in narrative style: ‘berichtende Erzählung’ for the digression itself and ‘szenische Darstellung’ for the context. I disagree with both points. (shrink)

In his celebrated article on the narrative technique of Odysseus' Wanderings (‘Ich-Erzählungen’) W. Suerbaum concludes that this character's narration is not essentially (‘wesentlich’) different from that of the primary narrator of theOdyssey(p. 163). Even though Odysseus is a first-person narrator and hence is subject to certain restrictions, these are almost completely counterbalanced by hisex eventuknowledge. For example, he can even report a conversation which took place on Olympus (12.376–88), because it was afterwards reported to him by Calypso, who heard it (...) from Hermes (12.389–90). He can also tell what went on in the minds of his companions (10.415–17), because they later told him what they had felt (10.419–21). Suerbaum's conclusion is shared by M. Fusillo (‘Ulysse contrôle toujours une vision panoramique avec focalisation zéro et ne la concentre pas en lui-même comme personnage’) and A. Heubeck, p. 11 (‘the form in which Odysseus is made to tell his story is entirely in harmony with the narrative style elsewhere’). (shrink)

Orthodox bioethics is distinctive in how it reflects on issues in bioethics. This distinctiveness is found in the relationship of spirituality and liturgy to ethics. Eber's essay, however, treats the distinctiveness as absolute uniqueness. In so focusing on the incommensurability of Orthodox bioethics Eber fails to tell his reader what Orthodox bioethics is about. Furthermore, his description of Western Christian ethics is seriously inaccurate.

In prevention and health promotion interventions, screening methods and risk profile assessments are often used as tools for establishing the interventions’ effectiveness, for the selection and determination of the health status of participants. The role these instruments fulfil in the creation of effectiveness and the effects these instruments have themselves remain unexplored. In this paper, we have analysed the role screening methods and risk profile assessments fulfil as part of prevention and health promotion programmes in the selection, enrolment and participation (...) of participants. Our analysis showed, that screening methods and health risk assessments create effects as they objectify health risks and/or the health status of individuals, i.e., they select the individuals ‘at risk’ and indicate the lifestyle modifications these people are required to make in order to improve their health. Yet, these instruments also reduce the group of participants thereby decreasing the possible effect of interventions, as they provide the legitimisation for people to make choices to whether they enrol or not and what lifestyle changes they incorporate into their lives. In other words, they present a space of interaction, in which agency is distributed across the practice nurses, the participants and the instruments. Decisions were not just made upon the projection of the outcomes of these instruments; decisions that were made by both the patients and practice nurses were the resultant of their opinions on these outcomes that were formed in interaction with the instruments. (shrink)