In Pascal's God and the Fragments of the World, Martin Nemoianu offers a new interpretation of the thought of Blaise Pascal, drawn from the Pensées and beyond. The book takes Pascal's central theme to be the distinction - Infini rien - between the transcendent God and the created world, which, without God, would be nothing. Nemoianu identifies the distinction in Pascal, articulates it, and works through the difficulties attending the distinction's disclosure. He then considers the implications of (...) the distinction for the nature of nature and the nature of the human being, culminating in the ideal of martyrdom. The book closes with treatment of a closely related theme: the relation between human freedom and divine grace, in the context of the vexed question of Pascal's Jansenism. (shrink)

This essay aims to reconstruct and defend Pascal’s account of divine hiddenness. In the first section I explain Pascal’s view that divine hiddenness is primarily a function of human volitional aversion and only secondarily a result of God’s intentional action. In the following section I evaluate the primary sense of hiddenness by considering Pascal’s response to the objection that divine goodness requires and divine power makes possible God’s provision of evidence sufficient to overcome human volitional indisposition. While Pascal does think (...) it possible for God to provide such evidence, he argues that this would unjustly harm human freedom and endanger human intellectual understanding. I conclude by addressing a weaker form of the objection through consideration of the second sense of divine hiddenness and Pascal’s surprising view that God’s intentional “hiding” is in fact a progressively deeper entry into the particulars of human history. (shrink)

George Eliot's Daniel Deronda advances a conception of freedom with clear Spinozist affinities. The development of Eliot's characters, and of their relationships to one another, can be understood fruitfully in terms of growth toward freedom or contraction to bondage, where the notions of freedom and bondage are very much in accord with Spinoza's views in the Ethics. A close reading of specific scenes and an analysis of the title character's arc in the novel discloses a view of human freedom which (...) is at once an attractive interpretation of Spinoza and a significant component of Eliot's ethics. (shrink)

Perhaps the best known criticism of Pascal’s wager is the many Gods objection. As so often with anglophone criticisms of Pascal, the many Gods objectiontypically treats the wager in isolation from the rest of Pascal’s thought. In this case, the truncated reading has issued in the view that Pascal was indifferent toor ignorant of the possibility that Gods other than the one described by Catholic theology might exist. This view is false. Even a cursory glance beyond the wagerfragment reveals that (...) Pascal considers a number of religious and philosophical positions and argues that, given the nature and needs of the human being, onlya God of a specific description could count as God for the human being and, so, be the object of the wager. This essay sketches Pascal’s view to show that the many Gods objection is not sufficient to address his argument meaningfully. (shrink)

This work is a study of Blaise Pascal's Pensees. It proposes to show the way in which Pascal's philosophy of mind---his conception of order and the relation of reason, the emotions, and the will to the self---which emerges from his skepticism, can be used to draw out his views on morality, despite the fragmentary state of the work. The thesis begins with a consideration of the three major philosophical precursors to Pascal's project: Augustine, Montaigne, and Descartes. It continues with an (...) account of order in the Pensees, centering on the heart, the two minds, and the three discontinuous orders, connecting Pascal's views to those of a number of 20th century analytic philosophers. It goes on to consider the order of the body and the order of charity in specific detail, showing how Pascal discusses each of these through a dialectical process that begins in a pre-critical, unreflective state, moves through a first, rational and philosophical, criticism, and finally turns that criticism against philosophy itself. The thesis concludes by briefly considering three figures whose ideas, to some extent, carry on and expand those of Pascal: Rousseau, Maistre, Tocqueville. (shrink)

This essay rejects two common views of Pascal: (a) that he holds only temporal and contingent standards of justice to be available to human beings and (b) that he is indifferent to all but eternal standards of justice. Against these reductive misunderstandings, I provide a detailed reconstruction of Pascal's political thought, drawn from the Pensées and other texts. I show that Pascal develops an account of two distinct and hierarchized orders of justice: a temporal order and an eternal order. Pascal (...) recognizes the integrity of the temporal order of justice, as expressed in local, particular custom and the historical development of positive law and, at the same time, holds that the axiological and ontological condition of this temporal order is an eternal order, a horizon beyond history which serves to ground it. Pascal's politics, rather than a tragic pessimism or a passion for the absolute, is simply a limited specification of his moral and metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In their self-understanding, expert committees solely draw on scientific knowledge to provide policy advice. However, we try to show, first, on the basis of material related to the German Radiation Protection Commission that much of their work consists in active model building. Second, expert advice is judged by criteria that diverge from standards used for judging epistemic research. In particular, the commitment to generality or universality is replaced by the criterion of specificity, and the value of precision gives way to (...) epistemic robustness. Third, non-epistemic considerations are included in the reasoning—albeit hesitantly. Manageability and social robustness, understood as compatibility with widespread value attitudes in society, affect the content of the recommendations. (shrink)

We present two finitely axiomatized modal propositional logics, one betweenTandS4 and the other an extension ofS4, which are incomplete with respect to the neighbourhood or Scott-Montague semantics.Throughout this paper we are referring to logics which contain all the classical connectives and only one modal connective □ (unary), no propositional constants, all classical tautologies, and which are closed under the rules of modus ponens (MP), substitution, and the rule RE (fromA↔Binfer αA↔ □B). Such logics are calledclassicalby Segerberg [6]. Classical logics which (...) contain the formula □p∧ □q→ □(p∧q) (denoted byK) and its “converse,” □{p∧q)→ □p∧ □q(denoted byR) are called regular;regularlogics which are closed under the rule of necessitation, RN (fromAinfer □A), are callednormal. The logics that we are particularly concerned with are all normal, although some of our results will be true for all regular or all classical logics. It is well known thatKandRand closure under RN imply closure under RE and also that normal logics are also those logics closed under RN and containing □{p→q) → {□p→ □q). (shrink)

We criticize speculations to the effect that quantum mechanics is fundamentally about information. We do this by pointing out how unfounded such speculations in fact are. Our analysis focuses on the dubious claims of this kind recently made by Anton Zeilinger.

I discuss the problem that Kant’s ethics seems to be incapable of capturing our strong intuition that emergencies create a context for actions that is very different from other cases of helping and from other opportunities to further obligatory ends. I argue that if we pay attention to how Kant grounds beneficence we see that distress and emergency function as constitutive concerns. They are vital to establishing the duty of beneficence in the first place, and they also guide the application (...) of duties to specific cases. Kant’s conception of imperfect duties to others, when understood correctly, offers a way to understand why emergencies are morally important, but also why other factors have a place in our moral reasoning. (shrink)

Die vier Studien dieses Bandes behandeln alle das Problem, wie sich ein gutes Leben zu einem moralisch guten Leben verhält. Jede untersucht dieses Verhältnis von einer anderen Seite her; jede führt auf ihre Weise zu dem Schluß, daß der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Guten und dem moralisch Guten weder als letztendliche Identität noch als begriffliche Priorität einer der beiden Komponenten verstanden werden darf. Zusammen bilden sie den Entwurf einer praktischen Philosophie, die die Begriffe des individuellen Guten und des moralisch Richtigen als (...) interdependente Grundbegriffe versteht. (shrink)

¿Como llegamos hasta este punto en que la democracia tal como la conocimos en las últimas cuatro décadas corre peligro? Las intervenciones de Martín Plot, recorriendo los conflictos centrales de los últimos 12 años de la política argentina, ofrecen una respuesta. En un nivel que podemos llamar discursivo con la condición de entender que el autor retiene en ese nivel todos los hechos económicos, sociales y políticos relevantes del período, podrán captarse, junto a la reaparición de la virulencia del autoritarismo (...) liberal, los efectos trágicos de la captura del progresismo y el peronismo en un faccionalismo excluyente escenificado como hostilidad a la renovación de figuras, ideas y repertorios políticos. Pero al mismo tiempo, bajo la argumentación precisa y al mismo tiempo poética de los textos, podremos discernir una arquitectura que funda un poderoso y poco discutido punto de mira sobre el proceso político: la concepción de éste como una disputa acerca del régimen político-constitucional – entendida como una disputa social por su interpretación – que se une al uso operativo de lo más actual de la filosofía política para entender la coyuntura. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophycan be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly paradoxical (...) project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

C. Lloyd Morgan is mostly known for Morgan’s canon, still a popular and frequently quoted principle in comparative psychology and ethology. There has been a fair amount of debate on the canon’s interpretation, function, and value regarding the research on animal minds, usually referring to it as an isolated principle. In this paper we rather shed light on Morgan’s overall scientific program and his vision for comparative psychology. We argue that within his program Morgan identified crucial conceptual, ontological, and methodical (...) issues, that are still fundamental to the current research on animal minds. This also highlights a new aspect of his role as one of the “founding fathers” of modern comparative psychology. In order to understand Morgan’s program, we briefly outline the historical context in which he began his work on a science of comparative psychology. We will then emphasize to what extent his taxonomy of psychological capacities, the development of his metaphysics for a comparative psychology, and his newly introduced interdisciplinary procedures justify Morgan’s distinctive approach to still rather sensitive issues. In doing so, we aim to provide a more comprehensive picture of Morgan’s methodological signature and we contend that a proper understanding of his canon can only be gained by taking it as part of this program. We finally understand his most renown considerations as part of his struggle to ascertain the limits and possibilities of the discipline he contributed to set up, and thus emphasize the need to keep the discussion going, notably on the accessibility of other minds than one’s own and on the limits of one’s research perspectives. (shrink)

Recent research illustrates substantial gaps between entrepreneurial intentions and behavior. This is a challenge for entrepreneurship promotion interventions that have primarily focused on stimulating entrepreneurial intentions. However, extant literature suggests that implementation intentions enhance the likelihood of acting congruently to the behavioral intention. Furthermore, theory also suggests the condition effects of situations and the perceived control over them. We therefore hypothesized that implementation intentions mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and action, while perceived family support moderates the movement from implementation (...) intention to entrepreneurial action. Using two-wave survey data from a sample of students at an African university, we measured two psychological attributes as important precursors of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions present before undertaking an innovations and entrepreneurship course. Implementation intentions regarding entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial actions, and perceived parental support for entrepreneurial activities were also measured 2 weeks after completion of the course. Our results demonstrate support for the proposed moderated double mediation model in which the effects of the two psychological attributes on entrepreneurial actions are explained via entrepreneurial intentions and implementation intentions. We further find moderation effects of perceived family support indicating that implementation intentions more likely predicted entrepreneurial actions in cases of higher family support. (shrink)

from the fact that the subject reacts faster to those words than to words that were not on the list. The subject.

If ZFC is consistent, then each of the following is consistent with ZFC + 2ℵ0 = ℵ2: (1) $X \subseteq \mathbb{R}$ is of strong measure zero iff |X| ≤ ℵ1 + there is a generalized Sierpinski set. (2) The union of ℵ1 many strong measure zero sets is a strong measure zero set + there is a strong measure zero set of size ℵ2 + there is no Cohen real over L.

G. H. Mead developed an alternative "metaphysics" of selfhood and agency that underlies, but is seldom made explicit in discussions of, his social developmental psychology. This is an alternative metaphysics that rejects any pregiven, fixed foundations for being and knowing. It assumes the emergence of social psychological phenomena such as mind, self, and deliberative agency through the activity of human actors and interactors within their biophysical and sociocultural world. Of central importance to the emergence of self-consciousness and deliberative forms of (...) human agency is the ability of developing individuals to take the perspectives of others within their own conduct. However, precisely what is involved in this process, and whether or not it assumes the preexistence of exactly those forms of selfhood and agency, the emergence of which it seeks to explain, have been much disputed. In this essay, recent reinterpretations of Mead's "metaphysics" are used to argue that his overall theoretical program contains resources necessary to overcome charges of ontological and epistemological circularity. In particular, once his interactionism, perspectivism, emergentism, and compatibilism are explicated, it is possible to see that Mead's "taking the perspective of the other" is not primarily a process of internalization that requires a preexisting "internalizer," but a process of participation with others within conventionalized sequences of interactivity. This participatory process enables the development of prereflective forms of perspective taking and self-other differentiation that serve as necessary conditions for the further emergence of more reflective forms of perspective taking, self-consciousness, and deliberative agency. Compatibilist interpretations of deliberative agency, thus understood, also are discussed. (shrink)

Martin Flashar und Ralf von der Hoff, Die Statue des sog. Philosophen Delphi im Konlexl einer mehrfigurigen Stiftung p. 407-433 Zu den prominentesten Skulpturenfunden in Delphi zâhlt die Statue des sog. Philo sophen (Inv. 1819). Sie fand Aufnahme in die wichtigsten Handbûcher griechischer Plas- tik, obwohl weder Datierung noch Deutung oder gar ursprunglicher Aufstellungszusam- menhang geklàrt sind. Meist wird sie mit stilistischen Argumenten um 250 v. Chr. datiert, ausgelôst durch die hypothetische und falsche Zuweisung an das ebenfalls ungedeutete und (...) undatierte (hâufig aber um die Mitte des 3. Jhs. angesetzte) «Hufeisenmonument» westlich der Daochosgruppe durch L. Lerat. Wie die Neuuntersuchung zeigen kann, ist der « Philosoph » Bestandteil einer mehrfîguren Stiftung gewesen. Die Forschung hat gera- dezu «vergessen», daB er zusammen mit zwei weiteren Statuen, einer weiblichen bekleide- ten (Inv. 1817) und einer ebenfalls langgewandeten mânnlichen (Inv. 1820) gefunden wurde. Technische Indizien belegen den Werkstattzusammenhang, die drei Figuren waren auch zusammen aufgestellt. Sie rechneten zu einer u.U. noch grôBeren (môglicher- weise ist die nackte mànnliche Figur Inv. 1793 zugehôrig) um 300 v. Chr. oder in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 3. Jhs. im Nordsektor des Heiligtums geweihten Gruppe. Das Portràt, der Statuen- und Gewandtypus charakterisieren den « Philosophen » als bûrgerlichen alten Mann — fur die Deutung als wirklicher Philosoph gibt es kein stich- haltiges Argument. Die Frauenfigur lehnt sich ebenfalls an das Darstellungsrepertoire weiblicher Sterblicher (etwa auf attischen Grabreliefs) an. Die dritte Statue bezeugt einen seit dem Strengen Stil gelàufîgen Dionysos-Typus. Als Stifter kommt ein dionysischer Technit oder Chorege in Frage. Auf jeden Fall handelt es sich um ein Familienmonu- ment, das Portràts von mindestens zwei Verwandten prâsentierte und den Gott, dem es geweiht war, in das Ensemble miteinbezog. (shrink)

Critically examining what most people take for granted is central to philosophical inquiry. Philosophers who accept positions on policy making commissions, tasks forces, or committees cannot, however, play the same uncompromisingly critical role in this capacity as they do in the classroom or in their personal research or writing. Still, philosophers have much to contribute to such bodies, and they can do so without compromising their integrity or betraying themselves as philosophers. Keywords: compromise, critical reflection, embryo research, integrity, organ transplantation, (...) policy development, Warnock Committee CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Luck egalitarians need to address the question of cost-responsibility: If an individual is responsible for being worse off than others, then what benefits, if any, is that individual uniquely cost-responsible for? By applying luck egalitarianism to justice in health I discuss different answers to this question inspired by two different interpretations of luck egalitarianism, namely ‘standard luck egalitarianism’ and ‘all luck egalitarianism’, respectively. Even though I argue that the latter is more plausible than the former, I ultimately suggest and defend (...) a third interpretation of luck egalitarianism, which I label ‘universal luck egalitarianism’. Finally, I adjust my findings to a (all things considered) more plausible currency, namely welfare. (shrink)

Das Christentum sagt, dass Jesus Christus sowohl wahrer Mensch als auch wahrer Gott war. Doch wie kann das genauer gedacht werden? Das Buch rekonstruiert umfassend, wie Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und damit einer der einflussreichsten und interessantesten Denker der Moderne diese Frage beantwortet. Anschließend wird Hegels Lösungsansatz aus theologischer wie aus philosophischer Perspektive kritisiert und der Ansatz eines eigenen Vorschlags skizziert. Zuletzt wird der explizite und implizite Umgang mit Hegel in der gegenwärtigen Theologie untersucht.

As part of the 1995 IAPL meeting devoted to “Incorporations: Virtual Reality,” John Russon organized and chaired a session on the theme “Virtual Hegel.” Participants were asked to address the issue of Hegel and the postmodern, and to facilitate discussion their papers were circulated in advance.

Questions about the validity of eye fixations in the blocks task as a memory indicator are discussed. Examples from reading research illustrate the influence of extraneous factors.