This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

Quantum mechanical measurements on a physical system are represented by observables - Hermitian operators on the state space of the observed system. It is an important question whether all observables may be realized, in principle, as measurements on a physical system. Dirac’s influential text ( [1], page 37) makes the following assertion on the question: The question now presents itself – Can every observable be measured? The answer theoretically is yes. In practice it may be very awkward, or perhaps even (...) beyond the ingenuity of the experimenter, to devise an apparatus which could measure some particular observable, but the theory always allows one to imagine that the measurement can be made. This Letter re-examines the question of whether it is possible, even in principle, to measure every quantum mechanical observable. Unexpectedly, ideas from com-. (shrink)

This article appeals to the table of nothingness (Nichts) occurring within Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to assess three recent accounts of nothingness - by Graham Priest, Filippo Costantini, and Filippo Casati & Naoya Fujikawa - under the light of folk preconceptions about nothingness. After defining the two strongest preconceptions as the absence of unrestrictedly everything (nihil absolutum) and the idea of nothingness as a self-contradictory item (nihil negativum), I argue that both might be read as two Aristotelian connected homonyms, (...) rather than conflating them into a single item (as Priest's and Casati and Fujikawa's accounts seem to do), or dropping the idea of the nihil absolutum, as Costantini's account does. (shrink)

Amazon Book Review Series of “Wild Wise Weird”.

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's career (...) as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

There is a theistic argument which is discussed at least twice in the Hume corpus, both times rather perfunctorily. This perfunctoriness has carried over to some of his commentators, who are not always clear as to what the argument is or about the force of Hume’s comments on it. On page 23 of A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh Hume calls it “the metaphysical Argument a priori” and in Part 9 of Dialogues concerning Natural Religion simply (...) “the argument a priori”.1 It is the argument of Demea. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mystery of Problems for Modern Theological MethodologyBruno M. Shah O.P.Recent trends in Catholic theology emphasize the category of "mystery." But "problems," which can seem distinct from and even opposed to mysteries, have a constitutive role in the work of theology as well. If the object of faith is God, and if theology's goal is typically defined as "faith seeking understanding," then the object of theology must include the (...) seeking's problematical quotient. At the very least, problems condition the faith-and-reason labor of theological enquiry. This essay claims that problems philosophically orient and index the theological articulation of mysteries—not the mysteries themselves—particularly in a modern key, and that they require explicit attention in theological methodology and pedagogy.First, I explain my concern with the "return to mystery" in conciliar-era Catholic theology. This explanation entails, second, describing the special attention to "problems" in neo-Kantianism, which bequeaths the tension between the empirical world and transcendental freedom to modern theology. These two historiographical matters in methodology set up the tension between problems and mysteries for Catholic thinking. Third, I briefly return to Aristotle's thoughts on the matter, which are a lodestone for the tradition. Fourth, I evaluate the positions of Jacques Maritain and Gabriel Marcel, the most important conciliar-era thinkers who thematized the relationship between problems and mysteries. My treatment will show how both ontological (Maritain) and existential (Marcel) dynamics of mystery are necessarily linked to metaphysical and spiritual problems. The [End Page 1265] critical ascertaining of theological mystery formally requires orientation via philosophical problems.My concern here is fundamental, ecclesial, and professional, interested that those who serve the Church through theological writing and teaching do so in a recognizably common or compatible manner, and in a way that can meaningfully stimulate theological interest. If the teaching of theology would invite students to embark upon the via inventionis and not merely yield to the via doctrinae, there must be fundamental advertence to ontological and existential problems as the theologically constitutive point of departure.1 Theologians do well to think in correlative terms of problems and mysteries. As a fifth and final point, then, I suggest that the quintessential starting point for (fundamental) theology today is the problem and mystery of the human person.Historical Context 1: The Return to MysteryContemporary Church life and theology have witnessed a "return to mystery."2 "Mystery" refers to some range or dynamic of reality that is essentially inaccessible apart from some feature of religious or spiritual practice. Christian reference to "mystery" or "mysteries" etymologically intimates that there are realities of which we cannot and/or ought not to speak, even as these mysteries have in some way been disclosed.3 Mysteries, therefore, are tensional in that they indicate at once contact and transcendence, knowledge and nescience. Christians and others communicate in religious mysteries through liturgical exercise and creedal confession, as well as through personal prayer and even existential trial. They are mediations of what is categorically transcendent, of what constitutively eludes or escapes [End Page 1266] the categories of our objectifying consciousness. Accordingly, the mysterious regards the inarticulable.That the substance of religious mysteries is real or true cannot be proven beyond all question, not according to commonly accessible human criteria of justification. For Christians, the gift of faith provides the convincing motive to believe in the reality of Christian mysteries through a kind of thinking with felt decision. Granting this claim, the work of theology is to reflect upon the mysteries of faith and develop expressible knowledge. Theology articulates (the) faith, extrapolating upon the reasons that the heart has for its belief. To do this work, theology trades upon fixed standards of confessional speech, liturgical practice, and perhaps also moral action, which provide lexical cogency and communicable intelligibility.The late nineteenth century witnessed attacks upon theology's claims to objectively or universally valid expression, owing especially to challenges from both epistemology and historiography.4 The surge of post-Enlightenment liberalism was surely catalytic as well. The Catholic Church initially aggregated these attacks in terms of "modernism." But then—as the standard history continues—conciliar theology gave fresh and viable riposte to what was... (shrink)

In the opinion of Aristotle and Plutarch the growth of latifundia and consequent decline of the citizen population at Sparta were due to the absence of restrictions on gifts and bequests of land. According to Plutarch this freedom of gift and bequest, so far as it applied to the κλροι or entailed estates, was introduced by the τρα of an ephor named Epitadeus, who removed the ban on gift and bequest imposed by Lycurgus.

Context: Josef Mitterer has become known for criticizing the main exponents of analytic and constructivist philosophy for their blind adoption of a dualistic epistemology based on an alleged ontological difference between world and words. Judith Butler, who has developed an influential model of (de)constructivist feminism and has been labeled a linguistic constructivist, has been criticized for sustaining exactly what, according to Mitterer, most modern philosophy fails to acknowledge: namely that there is no ontological difference between objective facts beyond language and (...) the discourse about these facts. Problem: In the scholarly discussion on non-dualism, two main questions have been raised: Where does Mitterer’s basic consensus, i.e., the starting-point description, come from? and: What does it mean, to say that further descriptions change their object? Method: Comparative analysis of the core concepts of Mitterer’s and Butler’s work in the context of the history of ideas. Results: Butler’s conception of a performative production of objectivity through discursive and non-discursive iterated practices can be interpreted as an illustration of Mitterer’s claim that descriptions change their object. The problem of where Mitterer’s starting-point descriptions come from can be solved by adopting Butler’s concept of culturally inherited practices. (shrink)

Zwischen 1738 und 1745 erschien in Amsterdam eine von Johann Christoph von Sprögel und Adolph Friedrich Marci übersetzte achtzehnbändige Ausgabe der Lehrbücher der Mathematik und Philosophic von Christian Wolff. 1764 gab Johannes Petsch, einer der bedeutendsten Leibniz-Wolffianer in den Niederlanden, eine holländische Übersetzung der Essais de Théodicée von Leibniz heraus. Wie groß jedoch der Einfluß der beiden deutschen Denker auf die niederländische Philosophie gewesen ist, war bislang unklar. Der Aufsatz versucht zu zeigen, daß der Leibniz-Wolffianismus neben dem Neukantianismus eine wichtige (...) Rolle im philosophischen Denken der Niederländer in der Zeit der Aufklärung spielte. (shrink)