This paper reconsiders Frank Ramsey's essay on subjective probability (1926) as a consistent way to articulate logic, rationality and knowledge. The first part of the essay builds an axiomatic theory of subjective probability based on ‘formal logic’, defining rationality as choice-consistency. The second part seems to open up different horizons: the evaluation of degrees of belief by ‘human logic’. Because of the interest Keynes (1931) had taken in ‘human logic’, it was considered to be a possible alternative to the formal (...) logic underlying the neoclassical theory of individual behaviour. The analysis of Ramsey's method in the entire paper, the relation between logic and rationality it constructs and the conception of uncertainty it reveals, lead me to note on the contrary that Ramsey's human logic was a complementary logic rather than an alternative to formal logic. Defining a standard to evaluate beliefs formation according to a frequentist criterion, it completes a normative representation of rationality which supports an original theory of knowledge that appears more in line with further developments of neoclassical methodology than with Keynesian economics. (shrink)

Harold Hotelling’s articles in mathematical economics from the 1930s are classics. Some are keystones of entire sub-disciplines of economic theory such as location economics [Hotelling...

In responding to three reviews of Evolution in Four Dimensions (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, MIT Press), we briefly consider the historical background to the present genecentred view of evolution, especially the way in which Weismann’s theories have influenced it, and discuss the origins of the notion of epigenetic inheritance. We reaffirm our belief that all types of hereditary information—genetic, epigenetic, behavioural and cultural—have contributed to evolutionary change, and outline recent evidence, mainly from epigenetic studies, that suggests that non-DNA heritable variations (...) are not rare and can be quite stable. We describe ways in which such variations may have influenced evolution. The approach we take leads to broader definitions of terms such as ‘units of heredity’, ‘units of evolution’, and ‘units of selection’, and we maintain that ‘information’ can be a useful concept if it is defined in terms of its effects on the receiver. Although we agree that evolutionary theory is not undergoing a Kuhnian revolution, the incorporation of new data and ideas about hereditary variation, and about the role of development in generating it, is leading to a version of Darwinism that is very different from the gene-centred one that dominated evolutionary thinking in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 2003, given by Iris Marion Young, an American philosopher.

Although rationing by clinical judgment is controversial, its acceptability partly depends on how it is practiced. In this paper, rationing by clinical judgment is defined in three different circumstances that represent increasingly wider circles of resource pools in which the rationing decision takes place: triage during acute shortage, comparison to other potential patients in a context of limited but not immediately strained resources, and determination of whether expected benefit of an intervention is deemed sufficient to warrant its cost by reference (...) to published population based thresholds. Notions of procedural justice are applied along with an analytical framework of six minimal requisites in order to facilitate fair bedside rationing: (1) a closed system that offers reciprocity, (2) attention to general concerns of justice, (3) respect for individual variations, (4) application of a consistent process, (5) explicitness, and (6) review of decisions. The process could be monitored for its applicability and appropriateness. (shrink)

The ethics-related beliefs of Chinese international graduate students are heavily influenced by their academic cultural background, and given the nature of that culture, they often face challenges when adapting to the U.S. academic environment. This qualitative study examines Chinese graduate students’ perceptions of the differences between Chinese and American academic integrity practices and the effects of those differences on their ethical practices and adaptations in a graduate program in the United States. Data were collected via semistructured interviews in a public (...) university in the United States. Findings suggest that perceptions of academic integrity in Chinese universities are influenced by Confucian philosophy, collectivist assumptions, and a resultant convenience mind-set. These cultural premises clash with academic expectations in the United States. Participants describe how they, and their Chinese peers, navigate U.S. integrity standards and provide recommendations for ways that U.S. schools can help them better adjust. We expand on those and provide recommendations for university personnel. (shrink)

This article focuses on the role of the interchromatin compartment (IC) in shaping nuclear landscapes. The IC is connected with nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) and harbors splicing speckles and nuclear bodies. It is postulated that the IC provides routes for imported transcription factors to target sites, for export routes of mRNA as ribonucleoproteins toward NPCs, as well as for the intranuclear passage of regulatory RNAs from sites of transcription to remote functional sites (IC hypothesis). IC channels are lined by less‐compacted (...) euchromatin, called the perichromatin region (PR). The PR and IC together form the active nuclear compartment (ANC). The ANC is co‐aligned with the inactive nuclear compartment (INC), comprising more compacted heterochromatin. It is postulated that the INC is accessible for individual transcription factors, but inaccessible for larger macromolecular aggregates (limited accessibility hypothesis). This functional nuclear organization depends on still unexplored movements of genes and regulatory sequences between the two compartments. (shrink)

The cost of health care at the end of life accounts for a high proportion of total health care costs in the United States. The percentage of Medicare payments attributable to patients in their last year of life was 28.3% in 1978 and has remained substantially the same at 25.1% in 2006. This indicates how little progress has been made in containing these costs, though doing so will be important to promote a financially sustainable health care system. These expenditures also (...) highlight the prospect that efforts to reduce health care costs overall are likely to disproportionately affect the care patients receive at the end of life. (shrink)

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) gilt weithin als Autor des literarischen Sturm und Drang bzw. der philosophischen und theologischen Spataufklarung. Dass er jedoch auf vielen Gebieten die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie massgeblich beeinflusste, wird eher selten in den Blick genommen. Der Band untersucht dieses sowohl kritische als auch affirmative Rezeptionsverhaltnis Kants, Schellings, Schlegels, Humboldts oder Hegels zu Herder auf den Gebieten der Geschichtsphilosophie, der Metaphysik, der Ethik und Politik sowie der Asthetik und Anthropologie. - Mit Beitragen von Andreas Arndt, Manfred Baum, Christoph (...) Binkelmann, Martin Bondeli, Nigel De Souza, Stefan Greif, Andree Hahmann, Cornelia Klinger, Christian Krijnen, Stephan Nachtsheim, Angelica Nuzzo, Ludger Roth, Gideon Stiening, Violetta Stolz und Gunter Zoller. (shrink)

Fifty-seven outstanding black-and-white photographs from the central California coast and Sierra reflect the author's special relationship with the coastline of California, as well as capture vivid images from the deserts of California and the Southwest.

"Et toutes ces belles idées sur la liberté, elles sont appliquées quelque part? - Ensemble, non. Mais par petits bouts, oui. Enfin, je crois. - Hé bien, tu n'as qu'à aller voir." C'est ainsi que je fus arraché à la torpeur de ma bibliothèque. Depuis lors, je voyage à travers le monde avec une ambition simple : étudier les thèmes de philosophie politique qui me sont chers là où ils sont mis en oeuvre. Faire apparaître derrière les concepts des histoires, (...) des visages. Pour comprendre la tolérance religieuse, j'ai parcouru le Kerala, en Inde, où les grands monothéismes coexistent depuis la nuit des temps. Pour me faire une opinion sur le libre-échange, j'ai suivi dans son quotidien le directeur de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce. Pour tester la libéralisation des drogues, j'ai côtoyé les entrepreneurs de la marijuana au Colorado. Pour mieux saisir les enjeux du revenu universel, j'ai enquêté dans les villages brésiliens où il est expérimenté. Pour apprécier la réalité du micro-crédit, j'ai sillonné les bidonvilles de Lima. Et pour m'assurer des vertus de la liberté, j'ai rencontré ceux qui en sont privés, dans les "prisons ouvertes" finlandaises. Chemin faisant, j'ai perdu certains préjugés, découvert de nouvelles idées, croisé des auteurs insoupçonnés. Et j'ai acquis une conviction : les problèmes posés par la liberté se résolvent par... davantage de liberté. G.K. (shrink)

In an 1894 manuscript addendum to the seminal "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", which he had written in 1877, Charles Peirce stated that "there are many people who detect the authorship of my unsigned screeds; and I doubt not that one of the marks of my style by which they do so is my inordinate reluctance to repeat a word". However, if Peirce refrained from repeating words in one and the same sentence, he surely did not refrain from repeating (...) words throughout all his writings, as this brief report will show. Here, we present the results of a lexicometric analysis performed on the vocabulary present in the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, as they were edited and published by... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article I propose to interpret Austin's conception of perlocution in light of Peirce's philosophy of signs, through the lens of his notions of thirdness and speculative rhetoric in particular. I suggest that the traditional notion of speech genre, examined within the context of Peirce's semiotic framework, can make sense of the regularities and predictability that are characteristic of a large part of our discursive practices. More specifically, I argue that crystallized “habits of interpretation,” correlated to purposeful speech genres (...) instantiated in given circumstances of enunciation, could be construed as predetermining the range of future interpretive conduct. In that perspective, this process of determination could be thus conceived as relatively predictable, at least for communication situations activating well-defined speech genres. In the end, I suggest that Peirce's conception of rhetoric draws attention to the necessarily constrained interpretive habits of our discursive life, yielding an original perspective on the notion of perlocution. (shrink)

Linkage (or genetic) maps are graphs, which are intended to represent the linear ordering of genes on the chromosomes. They are constructed on the basis of statistical data concerning the transmission of genes. The invention of this technique in 1913 was driven by Morgan's group's adoption of a set of hypotheses concerning the physical mechanism of heredity. These hypotheses were themselves grounded in Morgan's defense of the chromosome theory of heredity, according to which chromosomes are the physical basis of genes. (...) In this paper, I analyze the 1919 debate between William Castle and Morgan's group, about the construction of genetic maps. The official issue of the debate concerns the arrangement of genes on chromosomes. However, the disputants tend to carry out the discussions about how one should model the data in order to draw predictions concerning the transmission of genes; the debate does not bear on the data themselves, nor does it focus on the hypotheses explaining these data. The main criteria that are appealed to by the protagonists are simplicity and predictive efficacy. However, I show that both parties' assessments of the simplicity and predictive efficacy of different ways of modeling the data themselves depend on background theoretical positions. I aim at clarifying how preference for a given model and theoretical commitments articulate. (shrink)

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never (...) been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative. Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines. Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question “Who comes after the subject?” Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion advances a controversial argument for a God free of all categories of Being. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of both metaphysics and neo-Thomist theology: that God, before all else, must be. Rather, he locates a "God without Being" in the realm of agape, of Christian charity or love. This volume, the first translation into English of the work of this leading Catholic philosopher, offers a contemporary perspective on the nature of God. (...) "An immensely thoughtful book. . . . It promises a rich harvest. Marion's highly original treatment of the idol and the icon, the Eucharist, boredom and vanity, conversion and prayer takes theological and philosophical discussions to a new level."--Norman Wirzba, Christian Century. (shrink)

Is corporate social responsibility a tool for strategic positioning? While CSR is sometimes used as part of a differentiation strategy, this article analyzes which specific CSR strategies arise in response to competitive pressures. The results suggest that competitive pressures lead firms to increase their positive social actions without necessarily decreasing their social weaknesses. This positive impact varies with specific dimensions of CSR and industry specificities: Competition improves social performance toward core stakeholders to a greater extent than social performance toward peripheral (...) stakeholders. This effect is more pronounced in B2C industries than in other industries. Competition leads firms in “dirty” industries to ignore environmental initiatives. (shrink)

Le livre refermé on ne peut s’empêcher de ressentir une sorte d’accablement. Car l’histoire est terrible. Cette « étrange défaite » que Christine Bard constate, reprenant le titre du livre écrit par Marc Bloch dans la clandestinité, est celle de notre société et d’abord la nôtre, celle des féministes. Défaite des féministes qui se sont dépensées dans cet entre-deux-guerres et n’ont remporté que de maigres succès dans leur lutte pour l’égalité civile et civique. Défaite de l’histoire aussi, si...

ABSTRACTIn recent work, Joshua Horton and David Keith argue on distributive and consequentialist grounds that research into solar radiation management geoengineering is justified because the resulting knowledge has the potential to benefit everyone, particularly the ‘global poor.’ I argue that this view overlooks procedural and recognitional justice, and thus relegates to the background questions of how SRM research should be governed. In response to Horton and Keith, I argue for a multidimensional approach to geoengineering justice, which entails that questions of (...) how to govern SRM research should be addressed from the very outset – that is, now. (shrink)

What ethical challenges do internal auditors (IAs) encounter in their professional role, and how do they navigate these hurdles, especially when weaving risks into their ethical judgments? Anchored in philosophical concepts distinguishing norms from values, and the notion that risk is intrinsically moral, this research delves into interviews of 33 Canadian public sector IAs across various government strata. This primary data are enriched by insights from archival documents and an ethics training session attended by 11 internal audit executives. Our analysis (...) reveals two primary ethical challenges faced by IAs—ethical issues and dilemmas—which unfold in the various contexts we explicate in this study. To address them, IAs tend to favor axiological logic (values driven) over deontological logic (norms driven). However, in some situations, a prudential logic centered on risk becomes their touchstone. Our key takeaways are threefold: (1) a highlight of the ethical quandaries IAs grapple with; (2) evidence that prudential logic, with its merits and flaws, is used to bridge the gap that sometimes exists between professional norms and individual values; and (3) an emphasis on the weak reliance of IAs on the Institute of Internal Auditors Code of Ethics, hinting at avenues for its enhanced outreach and pedagogy. (shrink)

In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups” that discuss different future scenarios. In the (...) second phase, the participants are regrouped into three “convergence groups”, each of which contains representatives from each of the three groups from the first phase. In the final third phase, all participants meet for a summary discussion. This pilot project had two aims: (1) to develop and assess the new methodology and (2) to gather advice and recommendations from the public that may be useful for future decisions on nanobiotechnology (NBT). Participants emphasized that they wanted the technology to focus on solutions to environmental and medical problems and to meet the needs of developing countries. The need for further public participation and deliberation on NBT issues seemed to be acknowledged by all participants. Many of them also raised equality concerns. Views on the means by which NBT should be steered into socially useful directions were more divided. In particular, different views were expressed on how much regulation of company activities is needed to curb unwanted developments. The participants’ responses in a questionnaire indicate that the methodology of the convergence seminars was successful for decision-making under uncertainty. In particular, the participants stated that their advice was influenced both by access to different possible future developments and by the points of view of their co-participants, which is what the method is specifically intended to achieve. (shrink)

Can unilateral action be an effective response to global climate change? Baylor Johnson worries that a focus on unilateral action by individuals will detract from efforts to secure collective agreements to address the problem. Although Johnson and I agree that individuals have some obligation to reduce their personal emissions, we differ in the degree to which we see personal reductions as effective in spurring broader change. I argue that 'unilateral reductions' can have communicative value and that they can change the (...) structure of collective action problems, making such problems easier to solve. Since collective action problems are much less tractable where individuals abide by the tenets of traditional game theory and much more tractable where individuals are oriented to cooperate and to trust that others will reciprocate, we need moral norms that promote individual restraint in exploitation of the commons, and we ought ourselves to abide by those norms. (shrink)

This article focuses on discursive regularities that can generally be observed in text corpora produced in similar communication situations (medical interviews, political debates, teaching classes, etc.). One type of such regularities is related to the so-called ‘discourse genres’, considered as a set of tacit instructions broadly constraining the forms of utterances in a given discursive practice. Those regularities highlight the relatively regulated, non-random nature of most of our discursive practices and epitomize the necessary constrained creativity of meaning making in discourse. (...) In this perspective, we suggest that the concepts of Thirdness and Habit, as theorized by Charles S. Peirce, can be fruitful in describing the role and importance of such regularities in our sociodiscursive life. More specifically, we believe that discourse regularities are ideal case studies if one wishes to investigate instances of predictability in semiotic (discursive) processes. Overall, we suggest that their study can be one of many research orientations through which a prediction-based scientific conception of semiotics could be applied. (shrink)

Many environmental policies seem to rest on an implicit distinction between doing and allowing. For example, it is generally thought worse to drive a speciesto extinction than to fail to save a species that is declining through no fault of our own, and worse to pollute the air with chemicals that trigger asthma attacks thanto fail to remove naturally occurring allergens such as pollen and mold. The distinction between doing and allowing seems to underlie certain versions of the precautionary principle, (...) and insofar as the precautionary principle rests on this distinction, it diverges from direct consequentialist approaches to risk management.There are two ways in which such reliance on the doing/allowing distinction may be defended: by appeal to indirect consequentialist considerations, and by appeal to deontological considerations. Neither approach is unproblematic; however, retention of a distinction between doing and allowing in environmentalpolicy is consistent with the widespread intuition that there is something prima facie valuable about the world as we find it. (shrink)

Marion Milner introduces this edited collection of her papers from 1942 to 1977 with a fascinating biographical account of her development in psychoanalysis. The collection includes her classic papers on symbolism.

According to sources both in print and at a recent meeting, evolutionary theory is currently undergoing change which some would characterize as a New Synthesis, and others as an Extended Synthesis. This article argues that the important changes involve recognizing that there are three means by which evolutionary change can be initiated and three corresponding modes of evolutionary drift. It compares the three and goes on to discuss the scale of innovation and extended or inclusive and Lamarckian inheritance. It concludes (...) from these that “new trends in evolutionary biology” are in part a new, and in part an extended evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

Events in the US in 2020 have laid bare the reality that racism and its effects continue to take a heavy toll on the lives of Black Americans. The three articles in this issue of AJOB each provide...

L’ itinerarium mentis entrepris par Dante, vers le bonheur et à travers Béatrice, entretient un rapport vital avec l’expérience philosophique, comme le montre le lien entre la Vita nova et le Convivio. L’essai de Jean-Luc Marion s’attache à cette continuité, en se concentrant sur le fait que « la voie unique de l’amour » ne se limite pas à indiquer la présence d’une intention unique informant de soi différents amours, mais implique la transformation radicale de l’idée de philosophie, transformation (...) fondée sur l’amitié étroite entre l’amour et la sagesse. Cette union donne vie à un nouveau dynamisme, à un habitus amoureux, ou plutôt à une posture amoureuse dans laquelle la pratique s’impose à la théorie et dans laquelle le sujet se découvre attendu par ce qui formait son but. (shrink)

Milner’s great study, first published in 1950, discusses the nature of creativity and those forces which prevent its expression. In focusing on her own beginner’s efforts to draw and paint, she analyses not the mysterious and elusive ability of the genius but – as the title suggests – the all too common and distressing situation of ‘not being able’ to create. With a new introduction by Janet Sayers, this edition of _On Not Being Able to Paint_ brings the text to (...) the present generation of readers in the fields of psychoanalysis, education and all those, specialist and general audiences alike, with an interest or involvement in the creative process and those impulses impeding it in many fields. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Charles S. Peirce’s grammar of representation and its relevance for a logical conception of scientific inquiry. Closely relying on Peirce’s writings, one of his important trichotomies of signs will be discussed in particular: that distinguishing between substitutive signs, or “semes”, informational signs, or “phemes”, and persuasive signs, or “delomes”. According to Peirce, these three categories of signs result from an extension of the traditional division between “terms”, “propositions”, and “arguments” to all signs, understood as the foundational (...) elements with and on which the scientific mind operates. It is shown that such an extended view of logic, conceived as a “semiotic”, or general doctrine of signs, is consistent with Peirce’s metaphysical views on truth and reality. Logic-as-semiotic, and its three corresponding branches of stecheotic, critic, and methodeutic, is thus conceived as a requisite normative trivium for the practice of scientific inquiry, whose purpose is to represent reality truthfully. In the end, we aim to remind that Peirce’s semiotic epistemology must necessarily be contextualized within the frame of his comprehensive philosophy of the scientific “settlement of opinion”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 551-565.

This essay attempts an overview of Peirce’s pragmaticist doctrine of the truth of propositions. Relying on his writings, I try to characterize his conception of the real and discuss the ways in which his peculiar scholastic metaphysics, opposing that of nominalists, is a central tenet of the pragmaticist view of truth which he strived to develop. Peirce conceived indeed real possibilities and real necessities to be just as real as actualities, those realities corresponding in nature to qualities (“firsts”), laws (“thirds”), (...) and existents (“seconds”), respectively. More specifically, I detail the peculiar mode of being of each kind of real elements and show that all three categories must be recognized at once in true propositions. This led Peirce to conclude that if propositions are general signs indeed and, as such, along with terms and arguments, are necessarily dependent on mind, it does not in the least preclude those propositions to be about, nor true of, a real world – a position which actually constitutes a necessary prerequisite for any meaningful conception of scientific inquiry. I believe that a focus on such interrelations between Peirce’s categorial account of the real and Peirce’s pragmaticist conception of truth constitutes an ideal testament to the systematic nature of his thought, which is an aspect often deflated in unspecialized literatures. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young (1949-2006) was one of the most influential and innovative political theorists of her generation who had a significant impact on a wide range of topics such as democratic theory, feminist theory, and justice. She bridged many longstanding divides among political theorists, engaging in Continental and critical theory, but also insisting on the importance of normative argument: her corpus stands as a testament to the fruitfulness of engaging in both abstract theory and the 'real world' of everyday (...) politics. This volume spans the several decades of her work, illustrating her intellectual development over time through three major areas of innovation: Gender: Maintaining that gender is both conceptually and politically meaningful, Young theorized gender in terms of structures that, in combination, position different people we call "women" in different ways, such that some women have some structures in common, without all women sharing all gendered structures in common. Justice: Young's early writings on a critical theory of justice evolved in her later and posthumously published works where she developed an account of justice that brought together her theorization of structure with her concern to respond to contemporary claims of injustice. The Politics of Difference: Young rejected universal and abstract theories of justice and maintained that justice instead required attending to the experiences of people marked by difference. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported a surprising trend in disease outcomes: men were more likely to require hospitalization and die from COVID-19 than women. Researchers looked to sex-linked biology to explain these disparities, hypothesizing innate sex differences in immune function, suggesting the use of estrogens or androgen-suppressants as therapy, and even pushing for sex-specific vaccine strategies. Leading bioethicists like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel at the University of Pennsylvania recently described the sex disparity in COVID-19 outcomes as "the unsolved mystery" (...) of the... (shrink)

Upon what kind of moral order does capitalism rest? Conversely, does the market give rise to a distinctive set of beliefs, habits, and social bonds? These questions are certainly as old as social science itself. In this review, we evaluate how today's scholarship approaches the relationship between markets and the moral order. We begin with Hirschman's characterization of the three rival views of the market as civilizing, destructive, or feeble in its effects on society. We review recent work at the (...) intersection of sociology, economics, and political economy and show that these views persist both as theories of market society and moral arguments about it. We then argue that a fourth view, which we call moralized markets, has become increasingly prominent in economic sociology. This line of research sees markets as cultural phenomena and moral projects in their own right, and seeks to study the mechanisms and techniques by which such projects are realized in practice. (shrink)

Natural kinds is a widely used and pivotal concept in philosophy – the idea being that the classifications and taxonomies employed by science correspond to the real kinds in nature. Natural kinds are often opposed to the idea of kinds in the human and social sciences, which are typically seen as social constructions, characterised by changing norms and resisting scientific reduction. Yet human beings are also a subject of scientific study.Does this mean humans fall into corresponding kinds of their own? (...) In The Epistemology and Morality of Human Kinds Marion Godman defends the idea of human kinds. She first examines the scientific use and nature of human kinds, considering the arguments of key philosophers whose work bears upon human kinds, such as Ian Hacking, John Searle, Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. Using the examples of gender, ethnic minorities and Buddhism she then argues that human kinds are a result of ongoing historical reproduction, chiefly due to pre-existing cultural models and social learning. Her novel argument shifts the focus away from the reductionism characteristic of research about human kinds. Instead, she argues that they are “multiply projectable” and deserving of scientific study not in spite of, but because of their role in explaining our identity, injustice and the emergence of group rights. (shrink)

In the third book in the trilogy that includes Reduction and Givenness and Being Given. Marion renews his argument for a phenomenology of givenness, with penetrating analyses of the phenomena of event, idol, flesh, and icon. Turning explicitly to hermeneutical dimensions of the debate, Marion masterfully draws together issues emerging from his close reading of Descartes and Pascal, Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas and Henry. Concluding with a revised version of his response to Derrida, In the Name: How to (...) Avoid Speaking of It, Marion powerfully re-articulates the theological possibilities of phenomenology. (shrink)