In discussing Elster's views on the use of counterfactuals and on the nature of contradictions in society, it is contended that, in general, these will not seem especially controversial to those trained in neoclassical economics. Similarly, there is little disagreement in principle between the views of many 'new economic historians' and Elster on the use of counterfactuals in the study of historical problems. In evaluating Elster's critique of several applications of counterfactuals in the 'new economic history', it is argued that (...) the concentration on broad philosophical questions may obscure the point that much recent controversy is based upon disagreements concerning factual issues and the nature of empirical relationships and magnitudes. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the background and implementation of the registration of slaves on the island of Trinidad after 1813. Registration was introduced by James Stephen in the British Colonial Office as a means of limiting the inflow of slaves in the illegal slave trade. Slave registration was extended to the other British colonies and then extended every three years until the end of slavery in 1834. Other registrations of slaves are noted, including the manifests of the coastal shipping of (...) slaves in the USA after 1808. (shrink)

Exploring the economic, cultural and political role of slavery in different societies, this volume includes selections from historians, economists and contemporaries - from those enslaved as well as from free members of slave owning societies.

Establishing a link between phenomenology and hermeneutics as seen by philosophers and as applied by students of religion is the pioneering aim of this book. No existing book ties together the cross-disciplinary strands in a way that is useful for religious studies. A phenomenological and therefore hermeneutical approach to religion "prides itself on being aware of its own presuppositions and those of others that are brought to bear on data to be interpreted." Thus it "seeks to gain an access to (...) the religious worlds of other peoples in as pure a form as possible." Phenomenological hermeneutics differs from the traditional comparative study of religion in an important way: the new method attempts an empathic understanding of religious experiences before making any comparisons or drawing any inferences. Part I shows how the phenomenological approach must arise from a "crisis of doubt within the prevailing tradition." It goes on to compare this approach to the mystics' understanding of the "scope and limitations of rational consciousness," contrasting it with the nominalists' dichotomy between faith and reason. Part II starts with Eliade's "creative hermeneutics," which holds that an object or an act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype, particularly the archetype of the sacred. It goes on to develop Cassirer's point that "myth is a particular way of seeing." Part Ill starts by showing how art, like religion, is an "imitation of an archetype." It goes on to apply hermeneutical phenomenology to the interpretation of ritual. "Ritual gesture," Chapter 6 argues, "thematizes the world," establishing a mystical symbolic relationship between body and world, the seen and the unseen. Part Ill continues with a critique of the writings of Carlos Castaneda, arguing that these contain "the symbolic elements of both archaic shamanism and classical mysticism." The final chapter treats the "three-tiered cosmos" that is universal in folklore: the tier of family-home-land-artifacts, the tier of clan-tribe-nation, and the tier of weather-seasons-natural forces, Each tier has its loric power, and these powers are united by shamans and mystics in one sacred "kingdom of power.". (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. Lukas Meyer investigates the (...) applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rüdiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority.This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays. (shrink)

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States increased exponentially, quickly leading to a pandemic in 2020, which created a serious public-health emergency. During the period in which the COVID-1...

As his editor John L. Stanley points out, Georges Sorel was "that fascinating polymath." This volume, the third in his selected works in the English language published by Transaction, emphasizes Sorel's extraordinary writings in the philosophy of science, religion, culture, and art. For those who know Sorel only as author of Reflections on Violence, the present volume will come as a forceful reminder of the range and depth of Sorelian efforts to construct a world view. Sorel is throughout concerned (...) with the moral development of human beings. In this sense, his writings on politics are of a piece with his writings on religion, "facticity" of human history and society. Sorel's earliest writings were on religion, and key portions of that period are reflected in selections here. And he went on from there to study the sociology of science, the ways in which science fits into the cultural history of civilization and present day social relationships of industrial society. Stanley provides a profound framework based on two decades of close study and translation of Sorel's texts. He helps to explain how the partial theories of Sorel lead to holistic intellectual consequences, how the psychological method does not foreclose political activism, and how historical limits can be transformed against a background of aesthetics or considerations of taste. He shows that Sorel comes as a close as Manheim and Simmel and Durkheim to the creation of a modern social science--albeit he lacks the overall philosophical theorems of people like Marx and Weber. In Sorel we have a first-class mind at work. And in Stanley, we have a first-class analyst at work. Together, the volume adds up to something special for the political scientist, sociologist, art historian, theologian--in short for those to whom the ideal of a human science endures. John L. Stanley is professor of political science at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of The Sociology of Virtue: The Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel. He has written many articles and reviews on the history of European political theory. With his wife, Charlotte Stanley, he has been long engaged in the translation of the works of Georges Sorel. (shrink)

The neural reuse framework developed primarily by Michael Anderson proposes that brain regions are involved in multiple and diverse cognitive tasks and that brain regions flexibly and dynamically interact in different combinations to carry out cognitive functioning. We argue that the evidence cited by Anderson and others falls short of supporting the fundamental principles of neural reuse. We map out this problem and provide solutions by drawing on recent advances in network neuroscience, and we argue that methods employed in network (...) neuroscience provide the means to fully engage in a research program operating under the principles of neural reuse. (shrink)

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining hypothetical alternatives to reality. Philosopher David Lewis argued that people estimate the subjective plausibility that a counterfactual event might have occurred by comparing an imagined possible world in which the counterfactual statement is true against the current, actual world in which the counterfactual statement is false. Accordingly, counterfactuals considered to be true in possible worlds comparatively more similar to ours are judged as more plausible than counterfactuals deemed true in possible worlds comparatively less similar. Although Lewis (...) did not originally develop his notion of comparative similarity to be investigated as a psychological construct, this study builds upon his idea to empirically investigate comparative similarity as a possible psychological strategy for evaluating the perceived plausibility of counterfactual events. More specifically, we evaluate judgments of comparative similarity between episodic memories and episodic counterfactual events as a factor influencing people's judgments of plausibility in counterfactual simulations, and we also compare it against other factors thought to influence judgments of counterfactual plausibility, such as ease of simulation and prior simulation. Our results suggest that the greater the perceived similarity between the original memory and the episodic counterfactual event, the greater the perceived plausibility that the counterfactual event might have occurred. While similarity between actual and counterfactual events, ease of imagining, and prior simulation of the counterfactual event were all significantly related to counterfactual plausibility, comparative similarity best captured the variance in ratings of counterfactual plausibility. Implications for existing theories on the determinants of counterfactual plausibility are discussed. (shrink)

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

Traditionally legal theorists, whenever engaged in controversy, have agreed on one point: legal norms are par excellence rules which impose obligations. The author examines this assumption, which from another perspective (that of constitutional law, for instance) appears less obvious. In fact, constitutional rules are commoniy empowering norms, norms which do not create duties but powers. To this objection many theorists would reply that empowering rules are incomplete and that they are to be understood as parts of duty‐creating rules. A different (...) position from this traditional stance is that defended in Kelsen's later writings, according to which the fundamental type of norm is the empowering norm. The author discusses Kelsen's three theories on the “ideal form” or structure of the legal norm, with special attention to the third of these, the empowerment theory. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen's legal philosophy and legal theory is regarded by many in the field as the most influential theory in this century. This volume makes available some of the best work extant on Kelsens' theory, including papers newly translated into English. It covers topics such as competing philosophical positons on the nature of law, legal validity, legal powers, and the unity of municipal and international law, as well as shedding light on Kelsen's intellectual milieu and his intellectual debts.

Following Einstein's prediction of the gravitational bending of light, and in the course of experimental work aimed at its verification, only sporadic and at times misleading references have been made to Johann Georg von Soldner. In a paper published in 1804, Soldner derived the gravitational bending of light on the classical Newtonian basis and calculated its value around the sun with remarkable accuracy. Soldner's paper, inaccessible even in German, is now presented in English translation and put in the perspective of (...) Soldner's life and the science of his day and ours. (shrink)

First, the author examines the traditional doctrine of imputation. A look at the traditional doctrine is useful for establishing a point of departure in comparing Kelsen's doctrines of central and peripheral imputation. Second, the author turns to central imputation. Here Kelsen's doctrine follows the traditional doctrine in attributing liability or responsibility to the subject. Kelsen's legal subject, however, has been depersonalized and thus requires radical qualification. Third, the author takes up peripheral imputation, which is the main focus of the paper. (...) It is argued that with respect to the basic form of the law, exhibited by the linking of legal condition with legal consequence, peripheral imputation counts as an austere doctrine, shorn as it is of all references to legal personality or the legal subject. If Kelsen's reconstructed legal norms are empowerments, then the austere doctrine of peripheral imputation captures the rudiments of their form, exactly what would be expected if peripheral imputation does indeed serve as the category of legal cognition. Finally, the author develops the puzzle surrounding the legal “ought” in this context. Although Kelsen talks at one point as though the legal “ought” were the peculiarly legal category, the author submits that this is not the best reading of Kelsen's texts. (shrink)

Having positive moral traits is central to one’s sense of self, and people generally are motivated to maintain a positive view of the self in the present. But it remains unclear how people foster a positive, morally good view of the self in the present. We suggest that recollecting and reflecting on moral and immoral actions from the personal past jointly help to construct a morally good view of the current self in complementary ways. More specifically, across four studies we (...) investigated the extent to which people believe they have changed over time after recollecting their own moral or immoral behaviors from the personal past. Our results indicate that recollecting past immoral actions is associated with stronger impressions of dissimilarity and change in the sense of self over time than recollecting past moral actions. These effects held for diverse domains of morality (i.e., honesty/dishonesty, helping/harming, fairness/unfairness, and loyalty/disloyalty), and they remained even after accounting for objective, calendar time. Further supporting a motivational explanation, these effects held when people recollected their own past actions but not when they recollected the actions of other people. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE STANLEY L. JAKI Seton Ha,ll Uni1;ersity South Orange, New Jersey FEW SUBJECTS MAY appear so discouragingly vast as Thoma's and the Universe. Few have pmduced a work vaster, let alone deeper, than did Thomrus. As to the universe, its Viastness as well as its depth ·are succinctly stated in Newman's Idea of a University:" There is but one thought greater than that of the (...) universe, and that is the thought of its Maker." 1 There is in aiddition the vastness of the history of the notion of the universe and the.large number of Thomas' interpreters, not all of them immune to prolixity. At any rate, Thomas' best known ~0th-century interpreters offer, as will be seen shortly, at most a brief chapter or a subsection of it on Thomas and the universe with very little on the universe as such. A possible reason for this is that in rthe vast writings of Thomas there is no chapter or question on the universe as suoh. By as such I mean the very core of the notion of the universe, or its 'being the totality of consistently interacting things and their very unity. Thomas, as will 1be seen later, is not iat all silent on this point. Brut if one tries to focate his relevant dicta hy looking through the detailed fables of contents in, say, the Para:na edition of his works, one is not given much guidance. No different is the cruse when one looks through the subject indices. Entries under "universum" are almost as scarce as hen"s teeth. As to entries under " mundus," they.are of no great help on the worild or universe as such. Authors who let their publishers undertake the compilation of the subject index of their books will p11obably agree that the 1J. H. Newman, The Idea, of a, University (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888), p. 462. 545 546 STANLEY L. J AKI result is very unsatisfactory in most cases. Few reaiders can really sense the nuances of an author's real concerns, especially if, like Thomas, he has many important concerns. There is in addition the effect of the climate of thought. Under ordinary circumstances one does not pay attention to the air one hreathes in, and much less writes about it extensively, though one still can make incisive though brief references to it. In the intellectual atmosphere surrounding Thomas, the reality o[ the universe :as such 'Was taken to he a most obvious fact. There were debates whether the universe was eternal or temporal; whether it was uncreated or created out of nothing or out of some prime matter; whether any creature could he given a creative power; whether the unive11se was governed providentially; whether it was properly ordered; whether anything occurred in it :by chance or thy accident; whether it was absolutely or relatively the best; whether it could have been otherwise; whether it was necessarily spherical; whether it could move or not-but nobody.felt the need to discuss ·at length whether there was a universe,.that is, a totality of consistently intemcting things 1aH of which verged toward unity. Democritus' claim aibout a large number of universes was, of course, known, but just a;s well known was the illogicality of it. Either those universes interructed with one,another, and in that oase they clearly formed one :single universe, or they were unknowaible to one another in the 'absence of such interaction. 'lihe arguments Aristotle offered 2 on behalf of the unicity of the universe were widely adhered to even in the latter half of the 17th century. The idea of the plurality of worlds that came then into vogue l1ested largely on taking planets and stars for worlds, though hardly ever with the intent of destroying the notion of the universe as a totality. The spontaneous acceptance of a real universe remained part and parcel of Western consciousness until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason began to make a real impact through the rise of Neo-Kantiani:sm fil'om the 1870s on. Reaction to that impact 2 Aristotle, On the Heavens, Bk I, ch. 8-9. THOMAS AND THE... (shrink)

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could (...) have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

This new collection of writings from America's foremost authority on the relationship between science and religion, Templeton Prize-winner Stanley L. Jaki, is an incisive overview of the intersection of science with the most fundamental areas of human culture.

Throughout the world, research ethics committees are relied on to prevent unethical research and protect research subjects. Given that reliance, the composition of committees and the manner in which decisions are arrived at by committee members is of critical importance. There have been Instances in which an inadequate review process has resulted in serious harm to research subjects. Deficient committee review was identified as one of the factors In a study in New Zealand which resulted in the suffering and death (...) of many women diagnosed with carcinoma in situ. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs the title suggests, I take up three motifs in the article. Legal science, on a narrower reading, examines the law qua object of legal cognition. Substituting legal cognition for traditio...

"In The Savior of Science Jaki illumines one of the best kept secrets of science history - the role theology has historically played in fruitful scientific development." "The volume begins by portraying a most-neglected yet all-important facet of cultural history - the invariable stillbirths of science in great ancient cultures, including Greece, China, India, and the early Muslim empire. This overview provides the background for the first major thesis of the book: belief in Christ, the only begotten Son of God (...) - a belief absent in all these cultures - secured for science its only viable birth in a period beginning in the High Middle Ages." "In the second part of the book Jaki continues his critique of science history with a number of meticulously argued theses about Christian monotheism. These include the view that Christian monotheism provides intellectual safeguards for the cosmological argument (an argument powerfully supported by modern scientific cosmology), that Christian monotheism vindicates the sense of purpose destroyed by materialist theories of evolution, and that Christian monotheism secures firm ethical guidelines against fearful abuses of scientific know-how."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Georges Sorel's reputation as a proponent of violence has helped to link his ideas to fascist and totalitarian thought. Much of the literature on Sorel as developed this theme, at the expense of what Sorel himself stated as his primary purpose, "the discovery of the historical genesis of morals." How, Sorel asked, in the light of the development of modern industry and the vast powers of the modern state the individual can possess a sense of self-worth and at the same (...) time help to sustain a cultural vitality similar to the great societies of antiquity? How is it possible to avoid the utter resignation and nihilistic relativism of modern existence? In his writings Sorel outlined a sociology of virtue that combined the importance of family love as the basis of community feelings with acceptance of the basis of individual vitality as constant industrial struggle against nature. Sorel's solution is different from Marx's: in place of the ida of transcended alienation, Sorel envisions an agonal striving against nature's unceasing resistance to our efforts. The Feuerbachian unity of nature that, for Marx, had been alienated under capitalism, Sorel regarded as being inherently fragmented by scientific procedures themselves, as well as by the industrial processes that correspond to those scientific procedures. For Sorel, the struggle against nature is the struggle that enables man to overcome himself, to strive against his own inclination to passivity, sloth, and licentiousness. The Marxist concept of totality so necessary to the vision of a communist society is rejected, in favor of a pragmatic, pluralist view of nature that parallels the social pluralism of a regime of workers' syndicates. The primary function of Sorel's famous "myth of the general strike" is to link the workers' constant struggles against capitalist employers to the never-ending struggle against nature. The feelings engendered by such a strubble constitute the true core of socialism; without such feelings, socialism is doomed to the same decay that Sorel and Marx foresaw for capitalist civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen’s purity thesis is the basic methodological principle of the Pure Theory of Law. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that virtually everything that is peculiar to Kelsen’s legal theory stems from the purity thesis. This includes Kelsen’s normativism or non‐naturalism and his polemic against various dualisms in legal science. I set out Kelsen’s position on these issues after looking at the nomenclature of purity in his writings as well as the philosophical and contextual sources of purity as (...) he understands them. (shrink)

Wage theft—the underpayment or nonpayment of workers’ wages and benefits by employers—is pervasive in the US and abroad, adversely affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people annually. Although academics, advocacy groups, and investigative journalists have made advances in documenting the pervasiveness and severity of wage theft practices across states, nations, and industries, research has yet to identify and characterize the processes that make the public see such practices as legitimate. Across four well-powered studies (total _N_ = 2291), we (...) leverage theory and research on moral identity and on evolutionary approaches to moral values to investigate a possible underlying psychological antecedent of the judged legitimacy of wage theft. We propose that the value placed on a widely shared and moralized principle—loyalty—may (ironically) underlie the legitimization of wage theft practices. Although people often consider loyalty to be a positive moral principle or virtue that ought to be valued and exemplified in social and business relations, we find consistent evidence that placing more value on loyalty closely tracks stronger beliefs that wage theft practices are legitimate. Ultimately, differences in the valuation of loyalty may help to explain and predict judgments about the legitimacy of wage theft practices across individuals, groups, organizations, and cultures. (shrink)

In his introductory section, Christian Dahlman points to various “absurdities” or “self-contradictions” generated by the basic norm. I adduce arguments showing that these “absurdities” or “self-contradictions” do not arise - not, at any rate, from Dahlman’s premises. In his central section, Dahlman sets out three purported problems and claims to resolve them by appeal to one or another of the “three basic norms” that he adumbrates. None of these problems is resolved by Dahlman. Specifically, I adduce arguments showing that the (...) first problem is a straw man of Dahlman’s own making, his resolution of the second problem turns on his confusion of the fictitious basic norm in Kelsen’s post-1960 period with the basic norm of ostensibly normative import in Kelsen’s classical or neo-Kantian phase, and, finally, Dahlman’s resolution of the third problem turns on his confusion of Kelsen’s basic norm with H.L.A. Hart’s rule of recognition. I close with remarks on Kelsen’s own conception of the juridico-theoretical problems he faced. (shrink)

The separability thesis claims that the concept of law can be explicated independently of morality, the normativity thesis, that it can be explicated independently of fact. Continental normativism, prominent above all in the work of Hans Kelsen, may be characterized in terms of the coupling of these theses. Like Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart is a proponent of the separability thesis. And–a leitmotiv–both theorists reject reductive legal positivism. They do not, however, reject it for the same reasons. Kelsen's reason, in (...) a word, is the normativity thesis. Hart, however, grounds his theory in social fact. In place of the reductive thesis of the legal positivist tradition, and in sharp contrast to Kelsen's normativity thesis, Hart defends a non‐reductive version of what the author terms the facticity thesis. (shrink)