This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections (...) into several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections (...) into several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

Introduction: People with Spinal Cord Injury are at risk of feeling socially disconnected. Competitive esports present an opportunity for people with SCI to remotely engage in a community. The aim of this study is to discuss barriers to esports participation for people with SCI, present adaptive solutions to these problems, and analyze self-reported changes in social connection.Materials and Methods: We presented a descriptive data collected in the process of a quality improvement initiative at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 2019, seven individuals (...) with cervical SCI and quadriplegia participated in a special interest group on esports. Group scores were then analyzed for evidence of between subjects variability using a single sample t-test. A Pearson's correlation was conducted to determine the relationship between social connectedness and demographic data.Results: All players experienced functional limitations as a result of their injury but managed to design personalized gaming setups with adaptive equipment that allowed them to successfully compete in esports. All players reported a positive change in perceived social connectedness after participating in the special interest group. Score on Social Connectedness Scale negatively correlated with Time since injury.Discussion: It is feasible to create adaptive gaming setups that can be used by people with differing degrees and severity of SCI in a competitive esports environment. Technology and adaptive competitive esports have a potential to improve social connectedness and inclusion in people with quadriplegia. Further research on efficacy and effectiveness of these inclusive environments and their effects on quality of life, activity, and participation is warranted. (shrink)

Climate models calibrated exclusively with observations from the 19th through 21st centuries are unsuitable for assessing many important hypotheses about the future. Many systems in the modern climate are expected to cross dynamic thresholds in the near future, requiring more than the instrumental record for adequate calibration. In this paper I argue that paleoclimate analogues from earth’s past can mitigate this threshold problem, even if the modern climate exhibits features that make it historically unique. While this requires that paleoclimatologists be (...) increasingly discriminate in the past systems they target for modern analogues, the upshot is a practice of climate model construction that improves the reliability of future projections. All of this is achieved by integrating features of past climate systems discovered by the study of earth deep in the past. My analysis synthesizes important empirical work done by climate modelers and paleoclimatologists with relevant philosophical work on analogical reasoning in science. (shrink)

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. (...) The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction. (shrink)

Aspects of the world are normative in as much as they or their existence constitute reasons for persons, i.e. grounds which make certain beliefs, moods, emotions, intentions or actions appropriate or inappropriate. Our capacities to perceive and understand how things are, and what response is appropriate to them, and our ability to respond appropriately, make us into persons, i.e. creatures with the ability to direct their own life in accordance with their appreciation of themselves and their environment, and of the (...) reasons with which, given how they are, the world presents them. An explanation of normativity would explain the various puzzling aspects of this complex phenomenon. In particular it would explain how it is that aspects of the world can constitute reasons for cognitive, emotive, and volitional responses; how it is that we can come to realise that certain cognitive, emotional or volitional responses are appropriate in various circumstances, and inappropriate in others; and how it is that we can respond appropriately. This paper explores an aspect of the last of these questions. (shrink)

ספר ויקרא, או תורת כוהנים, נראה היום פחות מעניין מאשר ספרי-קודש אחרים, כי הוא ספר מצוות - הוא כולל כארבעים אחוז מכל תרי"ג המצוות - ואף במידה רבה מצוות שאינן בתוקף מאז חורבן בית-המקדש. אך יש בו עניין, שכן הוא מוכר כספר השלם ביותר מבחינת סגנונו ותכנו, ואולי אף בכך שעריכתו כנראה עתיקה ביותר - לא לדעת דון יצחק אברבנאל, שכן הוא לא הטיל בספק כי תורה נתנה למשה מפי הגבורה - אמנם לא בסיני אך בכל-זאת למשה מפי הגבורה. החוקרים (...) המתעלמים מדעה זו.. (shrink)

The tu quoque argument is the argument that since in the end rationalism rests on an irrational choice of and commitment to rationality, rationalism is as irrational as any other commitment. Popper's and Polanyi's philosophies of science both accept the argument, and have on that account many similarities; yet Popper manages to remain a rationalist whereas Polanyi decided for an irrationalist version of rationalism. This is more marked in works of their respective followers, W. W. Bartley III and Thomas S. (...) Kuhn. Bartley declares the rationalist's very openness to criticism open to criticism, in the hope of rendering Popper's critical rationalism quite comprehensive. Kuhn makes rationality depend on the existence of an accepted model for scientific research (paradigm), thus rendering Polanyi's view of the authority of scientific leadership a sine qua non for scientific progress. The question raised here is, in what sense is a rationalist committed to his rationality, or an irrationalist to his specific axiom ? The tradition views only the life?long commitment as real. Viewing rationality as experimental open?mindedness, we may consider a rationalist unable to retreat into any life?long commitment ? even commitment to science. In this way the logic of the tu quoque argument is made irrelevant: anyone able to face the choice between rationality and commitment is already beyond such a choice; it is one thing to be still naïve and another ? and paradoxical ? thing to return to one's naïveté. (shrink)

The literature on time perception is discussed. This is done with reference both to the ''cognitive-timer'' model for time estimation and to the subjective experience of apparent duration. Three assumptions underlying the model are scrutinized. I stress the strong interplay among attention, arousal, and time perception, which is at the base of the cognitive-timer model. It is suggested that a multiplicative function of two key components (the number of subjective time units and their size) should predict apparent duration. Implications for (...) other cognitive domains are drawn, and in particular an analogy is suggested between apparent duration and apparent movement. (shrink)

Provides a set of normative measure sto assess the value of nature and proposes the new discipline of foundational ecology as a response to environmental crisis.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

Terence's famous humanistic motto, “homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto,” was transmitted from antiquity to modernity as an isolated fragment of a surviving play, and was subjected to various forms of translation and interpretation. In this essay, Joseph McAlhany argues that fragments and translation, by their nature, resist completion and wholeness, and it is this quality that makes them paradigmatically humanistic. After a history of the uses and abuses of this line, in particular the unsuccessful scholarly attempts (...) to provide it with an authoritative meaning and a definitive translation, a close reading of the line reveals the humanistic ironies already present in the line itself. The translations of this fragment demonstrate not only the resistance to completion and the recognition of loss that are essential to humanism, but also how, and why, this crumb of classical antiquity continues to nourish the discourse of humanism. (shrink)

One of the most commonly observed peculiarities of the instrumental conception of rationality is that when applied in contexts of social interaction it sometimes prescribes actions that will predictably result in suboptimal outcomes. Often these outcomes could be avoided if agents were able to credibly commit themselves to refraining from exercising certain options available to them. The prisoners’ dilemma is the classic example. This problem has generated a small growth industry of attempts to modify the instrumental model in order to (...) incorporate commitments. The reason that philosophers are so attracted to this project is that it seems to offer them an opportunity to finish off the job that Socrates began, viz. to refute moral skepticism of the ‘rational egoist’ variety.1 None of this has worked very well, but enthusiasm for the project appears to continue unabated. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Placide Tempel's epoch-making work Bantu Philosophy, African philosophers have worked to dispel the myth that there is no metaphysics in Africa.

This volume collects Keith Donnellan's key contributions dating from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.

Economics is a science - at least positive economics must be. And science is in part applied mathematics, in part empirical observations and tests. Looking at the history of economics, one cannot find much testing done before the twentieth century, and even the collection of data, even in the manner Marx engaged in, was not common in his day. It is true that economic policy is an older field, and in that field much information is deployed for the purpose of (...) prescribing a course of action. But this is not to say that the information procured for that purpose is either based on observation or has been tested. In the seventeenth century some alchemists and economists hoped to boost the economy by manufacturing gold, others feared inflation; and the British Parliament legislated against manufacturing gold. David Hume proved in the eighteenth century - quite a priori - that doubling the quantity of gold will only double the price of each commodity and he thus set things at rest for a while. Later the question was opened again when Marx, for example, showed historically how the gold robbed from the Americas started Europe's boom. Yet the theory - the quantity theory of money, as it is called - which Hume proved a priori, is still contested and still hardly tested to economists' satisfaction: is the price level fixed mainly by the amount of available money? Some economists answer yes, others no. (shrink)

Over the past quarter of a century the work of few philosophers has exerted such powerful influence, or been the centre of such vigorous debate, as that of Alasdair MacIntyre. And although MacIntyre has not often formally addressed educational issues, the thrust of his writing has seemed to bear more clearly on education than that of most philosophers. His assault on central tenets of the Enlightenment in After Virtue already contained an implicit critique of public education in the modern era. (...) That critique was extended and made more explicit in later writings such as his Richard Peters Lecture ‘The Idea of an Educated Public’ (1987), the concluding chapters of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988), the final chapter of Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990), and the essay ‘Aquinas’s Critique of Education: Against his Age, Against Ours’ (1998). With less polemical intensity he furnished some further arguments on education and upbringing in his book Dependent Rational Animals (1999a). And his most recent comments on the subject are presented in the dialogue published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education (MacIntyre and Dunne, 2002). Moreover, even in his most critical writing MacIntyre has also developed an affirmative vision that has seemed to offer resources for a fruitful reconceptualisation of education: his steady concern with human flourishing, strongly linked to his own distinctive conceptions of virtue and of practice, as well as to his ideas of the biographical unity of a life and the encompassing power of traditions, flows easily into discourse about the aims of education and the kind of undertaking engaged in by teachers. (shrink)

PROFESSOR N D O’Donoghue’s kindly critical, and appreciated, response to my article, ‘The First Part of the Third Way’. is most deserving of a response in turn. I offer the following reflections.

there be an objective modal distinction between the observable and the unobservable.’ My intent is to counter Ladyman's claim that the irreducibly modal character of empirical adequacy is something that is ‘really wrong with constructive empiricism’. I argue that disposition concepts refer to non-modal properties of types rather than to modal properties of tokens of those types. Solubility, for example, is an ‘occurrent’, though unobservable, property of a type of substance (involving the structure of associated atoms); and observability is, similarly, (...) an ‘occurrent’, though unobservable, property of a type of event (involving the structure of associated physical systems). Empirical adequacy, like truth, is an objective, semantic notion; the empirical adequacy of a theory depends upon all actual tokens of the relevant observable type, not just upon the tokens that have actually been observed. Introduction The typical character of disposition concepts Confirmational versus semantic empirical adequacy Conclusion. (shrink)

The present attempt to indicate the general manner in which the kinship system of a people can be stated as an interpreted axiomatic system, with utilization of the symbolism of modern mathematical logic, is intended as a demonstration of the applicability of contemporary logical methods to problems in the social sciences. Aside from the obvious general advantages in the way of clarity and logical rigour to be gained by an application of axiomatic method, there emerges as by-products a convenient system (...) of kinship symbolization and what is believed to be a solution to the long-standing controversy concerning the use of the terms ‘descriptive’ and ‘classificatory’ in reference to kinship systems. Since kinship terms are words in languages, the present exposition is perhaps of interest in that it shows how meaning in a semantic field of related terms can be defined by logical methods. So all the directional or temporal terms in a specific language might be treated as kinship terms are here. The possibility of a systematic treatment of the semantic aspects of linguistics which so far have resisted this type of treatment should be of interest to linguists. (shrink)

If we can save the lives of only one of multiple groups of people, we might be inclined simply to save whichever group is largest. We may worry, though, that automatically saving the largest group fails to take each saveable individual sufficiently into account, offering some of these individuals no chance at all of being rescued. Still wanting to give larger groups higher chances of survival, we may then say that we ought to employ a proportionally weighted lottery to determine (...) which group to save. In this paper, I argue that this would be a mistake. Given the most plausible way of specifying it, the weighted-lottery view itself fails to treat each saveable individual with equal moral respect. (shrink)

Even of that, I cannot elaborate. He joined the Irgun National Military Organization as a youth, joined its headquarters as a teenager, and went abroad on a mission at the age of 22, from which he returned a decade later, after his chief political activity was over. I cannot describe all that now. I will sum it up briefly. His life work had two great achievements and two heartbreaking failures. The struggle to rescue the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust (...) and the Declaration of Israel’s Independence were both his achievements and his failures. (shrink)

The achievement of self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology hinges on establishing a relationship with another self-conscious being. How this is accomplished, and even that it is accomplished in Hegel’s text, are topics of dispute and misunderstanding in the literature. I show how Hegel argues for this intersubjective origin of self-consciousness, first, by comparing Hegel’s analysis of lord and bondsman to Sartre’s analysis of intimacy. Second, I focus on two in-terpretive challenges. First, I argue that the staking of life comes from an (...) other-oriented epistemological relation, and not simply from an im-mediate concern with dominating the other. Second, contrary to many interpretations which see the bondsman’s development arising out of an isolated activity merely between himself and the products of his labor, I argue that the slave’s ability to gain knowledge of himself as a self is only possible by establishing a relationship with the lord. This point is essential because, if readings of the bondsman’s development as isolated from the lord are correct, then Hegel has in fact not succeeded in showing that self-consciousness only develops out of intersubjective recognition. (shrink)

Heinrich Heine had not only many places of residence during his years in Germany, but he also made numerous journeys throughout Europe. Thus, during his time in France, he got to know the country substantially better and furthermore he would have liked to undertake a detour to Spain. Since his student days, Spain was for him as a German Jew the epitome of a Jewish- Christian-Islamic symbiosis despite many differences and difficulties. He slipped into the role of the Moors to (...) express his own outsider role within the German Christian majority society. Heine admired the great Jewish achievements and remained critical of Christian claims, although he had become a Protestant after being baptized at the end of his law studies. His tragedy Almansor, poems from the Buch der Lieder, texts in prose and epic poems from the Parisian years as well as in his literary bequest and above all the last collection of poems called Romanzero with their moving “Spanish” texts, namely the stories about Jews, Christians and Muslims, are the most important poetic evidences of religious coexistence and its problems. (shrink)

Xenophon's Socrates, like Plato's, holds that wisdom comes with practical abilities. But influential interpretations of Xenophon's Socrates attribute to him a splintered view of wisdom, on which there is no wisdom simpliciter which is specially connected to all good actions. In this paper, I argue that a crucial text is significantly more problematic for the splintered view than hitherto appreciated, while the texts which are supposed to support the splintered view do not. But Xenophon's Socrates comes apart from Plato's in (...) having an interesting story about why wisdom comes with practical abilities: the unwise lack a special prohairetic ability to choose fine and good actions. (shrink)