Although Haitian revolutionaries were not the intended audience for the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they heeded its call, demanding rights that were not meant for them. This failure of the French state to address only its desired subjects is an example of the phenomenon James R. Martel labels "misinterpellation." Complicating Althusser's famous theory, Martel explores the ways that such failures hold the potential for radical and anarchist action. In addition to the Haitian Revolution, Martel shows how the revolutionary (...) responses by activists and anticolonial leaders to Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech and the Arab Spring sprang from misinterpellation. He also takes up misinterpellated subjects in philosophy, film, literature, and nonfiction, analyzing works by Nietzsche, Kafka, Woolf, Fanon, Ellison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and others to demonstrate how characters who exist on the margins offer a generally unrecognized anarchist form of power and resistance. Timely and broad in scope, _The Misinterpellated Subject_ reveals how calls by authority are inherently vulnerable to radical possibilities, thereby suggesting that all people at all times are filled with revolutionary potential. (shrink)

This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Blake, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one (...) another. _Alef, Mem, Tau _also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time. The framework for Wolfson’s examination is the rabbinic teaching that the word _emet, _“truth,” comprises the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, _alef, mem,_ and _tau,_ which serve, in turn, as semiotic signposts for the three tenses of time—past, present, and future. By heeding the letters of _emet _we discern the truth of time manifestly concealed in the time of truth, the beginning that cannot begin if it is to be the beginning, the middle that re/marks the place of origin and destiny, and the end that is the figuration of the impossible disclosing the impossibility of figuration, the finitude of death that facilitates the possibility of rebirth. The time of death does not mark the death of time, but time immortal, the moment of truth that bestows on the truth of the moment an endless beginning of a beginningless end, the truth of death encountered incessantly in retracing steps of time yet to be taken—between, before, beyond. (shrink)

Science and technology (S&T) policy studies has explored the relationship between the structure of scientific research and the attainment of desired outcomes. Due to the difficulty of measuring them directly, S&T policy scholars have traditionally equated “outcomes” with several proxies for evaluation, including economic impact, and academic output such as papers published and citations received. More recently, scholars have evaluated science policies through the lens of Public Value Mapping, which assesses scientific programs against societal values. Missing from these approaches is (...) an examination of the social activities within the scientific enterprise that affect research outputs and outcomes. We contend that activities that significantly affect research trajectories take place at the levels of individual researchers and their communities, and that S&T policy scholars must take heed of this activity in their work in order to better inform policy. Based on primary research of two scientific communities—ecologists and sustainability scientists—we demonstrate that research agendas are actively shaped by parochial epistemic and normative concerns of the scientists and their disciplines. S&T policy scholarship that explores how scientists balance these concerns, alongside more formal science policies and incentive structures, will enhance understanding of why certain science policies fail or succeed and how to more effectively link science to beneficial social outcomes. (shrink)

The target article sought to question the common belief that our decisions are often biased by unconscious influences. While many commentators offer additional support for this perspective, others question our theoretical assumptions, empirical evaluations, and methodological criteria. We rebut in particular the starting assumption that all decision making is unconscious, and that the onus should be on researchers to prove conscious influences. Further evidence is evaluated in relation to the core topics we reviewed (multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions (...) under uncertainty), as well as priming effects. We reiterate a key conclusion from the target article, namely, that it now seems to be generally accepted that awareness should be operationally defined as reportable knowledge, and that such knowledge can only be evaluated by careful and thorough probing. We call for future research to pay heed to the different ways in which awareness can intervene in decision making (as identified in our lens model analysis) and to employ suitable methodology in the assessment of awareness, including the requirements that awareness assessment must be reliable, relevant, immediate, and sensitive. (shrink)

In 1792, Thomas Paine sounded a cautionary note about the economics of empire: The most unprofitable of all commerce is that connected with foreign dominion. To a few individuals it may be beneficial, merely because it is commerce; but to the nation it is a loss. The expense of maintaining dominion more than absorbs the profit of any trade.1 Had Americans consistently heeded Paine’s advice, the United States might have avoided much of the overseas bloodshed, as well as domestic bureaucratization, (...) which have accompanied the creation of the American empire. (shrink)

Introduction : memory and heeding the murmuring of the Israelites -- Ghosts of Judaism and the serpent devouring its own tale -- Zionism and the sacramental danger of nationalism -- Gnosis and the covert theology of antitheology : Heidegger, apocalypticism, and Gnosticism -- Tragedy, mystical atheism, and the apophaticism of Simone Weil -- Facing the faceless : poetic truth, temporal oblivion, and the silence of death.

The target article sought to question the common belief that our decisions are often biased by unconscious influences. While many commentators offer additional support for this perspective, others question our theoretical assumptions, empirical evaluations, and methodological criteria. We rebut in particular the starting assumption that all decision making is unconscious, and that the onus should be on researchers to prove conscious influences. Further evidence is evaluated in relation to the core topics we reviewed (multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions (...) under uncertainty), as well as priming effects. We reiterate a key conclusion from the target article, namely, that it now seems to be generally accepted that awareness should be operationally defined as reportable knowledge, and that such knowledge can only be evaluated by careful and thorough probing. We call for future research to pay heed to the different ways in which awareness can intervene in decision making (as identified in our lens model analysis) and to employ suitable methodology in the assessment of awareness, including the requirements that awareness assessment must be reliable, relevant, immediate, and sensitive. (shrink)

This case note considers the Court of Appeal decision in Royal Bank of Scotland v. Etridge (No. 2) and other appeals [1998] 4 All E.R. 705. It concerns the familiar scenario of a wife jointly mortgaging (or providing a guarantee for a mortgage of) the family home in order to secure financial support for a business run by her husband. The House of Lords decision in Barclays Bank v O'Brien [1994] A.C. 180 has given rise to a range of litigation (...) in this area, and the spotlight has now moved from the banks to an examination of the quality of advice given by solicitors. The banks have heeded the warnings in O'Brien and now insist that wives are told to obtain independent legal advice. It will be seen that, following Etridge, if the bank tells the solicitor to give the wife legal advice upon undertaking the transaction, that will be sufficient to protect the bank, notwithstanding that the advice was either inadequate or even not actually given. The onus to ensure that proper advice is given is shifted squarely on to the solicitor. The note concludes that the decision is indicative of the shift of judicial opinion against wives seeking to avoid charges over matrimonial homes and in favour of banks. (shrink)

Many meta-ethicists have thought that rationality requires us to heed apparent normative reasons, not objective normative reasons. But what are apparent reasons? There are two kinds of standard answers. On de dicto views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when it appears to S that R is an objective reason to \ . On de re views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when R’s truth would constitute an objective reason for S to \ (...) , and it appears to S that R. De re views are currently more popular because they avoid overintellectualizing rationality. But they face problems owing to the way in which they do so. Some assume that we can escape these problems by requiring more information to be apparent or by appealing to defeat. But these strategies fail. So, I defend a new view: apparent reasons are apparent facts that agents are competently attracted to treat like objective reasons, where competence is indirectly defined in terms of objective reasons and a competence/performance distinction is honored. Since one can treat X like an F without having the concept of an F, the view does not overintellectualize rationality. But it is also strong enough to dodge the pitfalls of de re views. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CREATOR AND CAUSALITY: A CRITIQUE OF PRE-CRITICAL OBJECTIONS ANDREW BEARDS University of Oalgary Calgary, Alberta IN SOME QUARTERS arguments ias to the existence or non-existence of God are still regarded as intellectually respectaible. Indeed, interest in such arguments is not restricted to those with a strictly philosophical or theological training. Every so often one may observe some specialist from the physical sciences taking an interest in the philosophical discussion (...) of cosmological issues. Such has been the case with the recent contributions of the physicist Paul Davies.1 However, such contributions are likely to invite from the philosopher the response that the generalized notions which the scientist attempts to transpose from the particular field of his scientific interest are the very notions which feature in the current debates on the philosophy and methodology of the sciences. Such debates bring into question the status of these scientific notions and therefore render any putative generalized or even metaphysical application of them problematic. Discussions of natural theology, then, often appear to be conducted in a manner which tends to take too much for granted with regard to the terms employed. The notion of causality, central to such,argumentation, is a case in point. Often enough a simple ":billiard hall" image of causal interaction seems to he all that one is required to keep before the mind in order to follow the lines of argument involved, he they ~or or aiga.inst the postulation of a First Cause. Thus, in the often referred to r:adio.debate on the existence of God between 1 Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: T'ouchstone Books, 1984). 573 574 ANDREW BEARDS Bertrand Russell and Fl1ederick Copleston, Russell simply averred that he did not feel compelled to accept that a causal chain extended heyond the ·World to some First Cause. For, indeed, if one imagines a line of billiard halls transmitting momentum one to the other, there is nothing unintelligible about picturing a first!billiard hall initiating the process apparently unaided. Hume has surely taught us that much. If one is to heed the present debates raging in that arena known as the philosophy of science (by which term one can understand epistemology, metaphysics and virtually ·any other topic tr:aditiona1ly designated philosophical), then one can.be forgi¥en for asking how the question as to the existence of God could he raised in an intelligiible manner. For if one is to agree with Richa1d J. Bernstein's assertion that contemporary philosophy manifests, in the ma.in, 1a rebellious attitude to the "father figure,, of the methodical Descartes,2 then one can be equally well impressed by the fact that this " rebellious spirit" is no Jess informed iby a respect for the Kantian attempt to descry the parameters of valid human knowing. And was it not the Kantian achievement to have dispelled the oibfuscation of metaphysics, thereby eliminating the grounds which were helieved to have substantiated a rational affirmation of the existence of God? The term 'Pre-Critical ' in the title of this essay is, therefore, intended as an e¥ocation of the Kantian demand for a critical v;alidation of the terms employed in philosophical argumentation. However, I shall attempt to advance the thesis that the Kantian enterprise does not, in fact, result in a happy resolution of the problems which it sets for itself. This is, of course, a thesis which could 'be proposed f.rom a number of divergent philosophical standpoints. It is my intention to argue here, however, that the work of the philosopher Bernard Lonergan provides,a more satisfactory method for the carrying through of the critical endeavour to validate epistemologi2 Richard J, Bernstein, Beyond Objectwism and.Relatwism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 18. CREATOR AND CAUSALITY 575 cally the philosophical,statements we propose. I believe it is the merit of Lonergan's work to have developed positions on the hasis of an explication of the exigences operative in criticism itself, such that any criticism of this explication will he rbut an example of an incoherent criticism,attempting to invalidate its own procedures.3 In what follows I shall attempt to develop the above-mentioned argument to the effect... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This special issue provokes a conversation between decolonial and postcolonial feminisms by asking what they are, how they speak about each other, and how they can speak to each other. Read together, the articles engage and sometimes trouble the temporal and spatial distinctions drawn between decolonial and postcolonial approaches. Kiran Asher explores overlaps between decolonial and postcolonial thought by comparing the ideas of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Silvia (...) Rivera Cusicanqui on representation. Aimee Carrillo Rowe also stages a dialogue between these approaches when interrogating her family ’s Chican@ settler history. Tiara R. Na’puti and Judy Rohrer offer an account of how recent scholarship from Hawai‘i and Guåhan (Guam) has elaborated Indigenous epistemologies in settler contexts. Two articles excavate colonialism’s relationship to science: Jennifer Hamilton, Banu Subramaniam, and Angela Willey explore how two instances of population genetic research illustrate the racialized knowledge systems that undergirded colonialism, while Sandra Harding points out how the colonization of Latin America contributed to the edifice of Western science. In a related vein, Breny Mendoza centers the material role of Abya Yala (the preferred term for Latin America) in not just Spanish colonialism but British colonial expansionism and eventually the eclipsing of China. Patricia A. Schechter reflects on her trajectory as a scholar and teacher of US women’s history and the insights she has gained through 504Preface engaging decolonial scholarship. Amy Piedalue and Susmita Rishi argue for a more expansive understanding of postcolonial feminism’s reach as they review recently published titles in the field. Although Anna Tsing and Paulla Ebron’s review of feminist scholarship about the Anthropocene does not directly mention postcolonial or decolonial approaches, it nonetheless engages relevant scholarship on the environmental impact of settler modernization and capitalism. An art essay by Hyunji Kwon introduces the largely unrecognized paintings of former comfort woman Duk-kyung Kang (1929–1997) and focuses on the potential of Kang’s work to challenge Japanese colonial hierarchies. Our featured poets in this issue are Emily Zhang, Megan Kaminski, and Raina J. León. Both postcolonial and decolonial scholars have been committed to critiquing the material and epistemic legacies of colonialism. The distinctions that are frequently drawn between the two approaches, however, have been a source of disquiet to the editors of Feminist Studies, and they prompted our journal’s call for papers in 2016. A common temporal marking that concerned us was the eclipsing of postcolonialism, which was increasingly becoming viewed as passé, and a setting up of decolonial feminism as always already better in time. Decolonial approaches sometimes depicted postcolonial feminism as being only about the past, despite postcolonial feminism’s stated commitment to studying the continuing impact of colonial processes and its complex use of the prefix “post.” Our concern was, as well, with misrepresentations of postcolonial feminist priorities. The depiction of postcolonial feminism as deconstructive, abstract, elite theory confined to the ambit of modern colonial knowledge systems overlooked the important quandaries that postcolonial feminism raised about how to represent marginalized people ethically and, indeed, how to understand the very desire to represent the marginalized—whether or not we claim belonging to them. Postcolonial feminists warned against an easy embrace of alterity, noting that the desire for positioning oneself outside colonialism could naively ignore the power of colonial discourses to frame colonialism’s Other. Another set of hopes for this special issue was to dwell on the spatial markings of decolonial and postcolonial feminisms: decolonial feminism is often associated with Indigenous scholars and those from the Americas, and postcolonial feminism with scholars from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. These regional emphases, although not always as tidy as sometimes depicted, have produced distinct intellectual Preface 505 priorities. We must heed decolonial feminism’s insistence on engaging with the genocidal history of settler colonialism, the current manifestations of the violent dispossession of land, and its constitution of gendered racial capitalism the world over. (FeministStudies will soon publish a special issue on Indigenous Feminisms). Yet, if postcolonial feminism is circumscribed geographically to only South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, we risk ignoring its powerful transcontinental mapping of imperial gender formations and its scrupulous attention to the ethics of representing... (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 1, Page 72-103, Winter 2019.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This distinction has sometimes been read as purely epistemic, resting not on things, but on our knowledge of them: there is one world, not two, though it may be apprehended in two ways. But this view is patently at odds with the text. Knowledge and opinion are δυνάμεις, "faculties," to be distinguished and defined by their objects, no less than by the state of mind they produce, and Plato clearly states that the fallibility and unclearness of opinion is rooted in (...) the relative unreality of opinables. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 152–154 Levi R. Bryant. The Democracy of Objects . Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. 2011. 316 pp. | ISBN 9781607852049. | $23.99 For two decades post-anarchism has adopted an epistemological point of departure for its critique of the representative ontologies of classical anarchism. This critique focused on the classical anarchist conceptualization of power as a unitary phenomenon that operated unidirectionally to repress an otherwise creative and benign human essence. Andrew Koch may have inaugurated this trend in (...) 1993 when he wrote his influential paper entitled “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism.” Koch’s paper certainly laid some of the important groundwork for post-anarchism’s continual subsumption of ontology beneath the a priori of an epistemological orientation, and his work continues to be cited as an early and important venture into post-anarchist philosophy. The problem is that Koch could not conceive of an anti-essentialist and autonomous ontological system, one not subject to regulation or representation by the human mind. Consequently, he was forced to assert a subjectivist claims-making ego as the foundation of a post-structuralist anarchist politics. Saul Newman was indebted to this heritage insofar as he also posited the ego (extrapolated from the writings of Max Stirner) and the subject (extrapolated from Jacques Lacan’s oeuvre ) as the paradoxical ‘outside’ to power and representation. Todd May fell into a similar trap in his book The Political Philosophy of Post-structuralist Anarchism when he wrote that “[m]etaphysics [...] partakes of the normativity inhabiting the epistemology that provides its foundations.” 1 Whereas Newman’s approach did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of metaphysics—at least to the extent that he began with the subject of the Lacanian tradition (wherein the subject is believed to be radically split between thinking and being)—May completely foreclosed the possibility of any escape from the reign of the epistemological. There laid the impasse of yesterday’s post-anarchism. This impasse at the heart of the project of post-anarchism has forced Koch, Newman, May, and many others, to come to similar conclusions about the place of ontology in post-anarchist scholarship. The post-anarchists have all formulated a response strikingly similar to Koch’s argument that any representative ontology ought to be dismantled and dethroned in favour of “a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme .” 2 By dismissing all ontologies as suspiciously representative and as incessantly harbouring a dangerous form of essentialism, post-anarchists have overlooked the privilege that they have placed on the human subject, language, and discourse, at the expense of the democracy that the human subject shares with other animals, objects, and beings in the world. This epistemological characterization of post-anarchism has held sway for far too long. It is not by chance that post-anarchism, as a concept, was first formulated by Hakim Bey as an “ontological anarchism,” 3 and subsequently repressed by the canon of post-anarchist authors. Perhaps Bey’s ontological anarchism also lacked the ‘rigour’ required of today’s scholarly audience and for these two reasons (at least) he has received very little credit for his inaugurating efforts into post-anarchism. In any case, I want to challenge this reluctance and revive the roots of post-anarchism. Levi Bryant gives us a reason to believe that we can achieve the promise of Bey’s ontological anarchism without sacrificing the scholarly standard of rigour. Levi Bryant’s newest open-access book, The Democracy of Objects , is a tour de force . His book challenges post-anarchists to take their radical critique of representation a step further by questioning the “hegemony that epistemology currently enjoys in philosophy.” Bryant maintains that post-structuralism, and radical anti-humanisms, only appear to reject the subject as the locus of political agency. Their rejection is actually more of a disavowal, a replacement of the human subject with the equally human order of language or discourse. What post-structuralism attempts to elucidate is the manner in which the subject is colonized by the Other of language, discourse and social relations. What here appears as a movement away from the determining subject of humanism and existentialism is only replaced with the determining apparatuses of structures as they are conceived by astute analysts of political culture. Post-structuralism thus re-enters the anthropocentric discourse to the extent that the cultural analyst believes himself capable of conceiving the determinative structures of society. In contradistinction to the claims of post-structuralism and post-anarchism, the role of the ontologist is not to suture the gap between epistemology and the real but to de-suture it, as Bryant puts it: “[o]ntology does not tell us what objects exist, but that objects exist, that they are generative mechanisms.” Above all else, the role of ontology, for post-anarchists, ought to be a real de-centering of the subject in relation to other objects in the non-human world such that the subject becomes conceived as one object among others within a living democracy of equality. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that objects exist whether or not the subject or analyst is there to represent them: they represent themselves and are autonomous from our dictation, just as each object finds its autonomy in relation to other objects. Ontology must now be distinguished from representation. We must shift the terms of the debate and interrogate the hegemony that epistemology has been afforded within post-anarchist philosophy. At least two possibilities are now permitted. On the one hand, one could intervene into the reigning mode of philosophy, namely epistemology, by latching onto concepts from meta-ethical philosophy. Meta-ethics allows one to easily separate the ontological from the epistemological and to answer very particular questions about each in order to formulate an overarching meta-ethical position. 4 Post-anarchism is particularly adept at this task because of its resounding ability to frame itself as an ethical political philosophy in relation to the strategic political philosophy of classical Marxism. On the other hand, Bryant argues that “[p]erhaps the best way to defeat [the privilege currently held by epistemology] is to shift the terms of debate.” Shifting the terms of debate is also something that post-anarchists have been very good at doing. Thus, instead of asking the question ‘how do representative ontological systems harbour concealed epistemological orientations toward the political?’ one might ask ‘ do epistemological orientations toward the political always harbour representative and subject-centred ontological systems?” The genius of Bryant’s book rests in its ability to convincingly argue for the radical autonomy of being and of objects. This claim speaks to some of the most compelling theories of the political in anarchist and marxist political philosophy (for instance, hegemony, representation, democracy, and so on) and it re-stages the political drama of our times across a much wider terrain. The fallacy of strategic political philosophy in the Marxist tradition, as Todd May quite correctly points out, is that it remains committed to a concept of power that is unitary in its analysis, unidirectional in its influence, and utterly repressive in its effect. Similarly, Bryant’s ontology allows one to argue that there is a fallacy that occurs “whenever one type of entity is treated as the ground or explains all other entities.” Whereas May’s post-structuralist anarchism moved away from the fallacy of the unitary analysis of power, whereby subjects are constituted by the influence of a single site of power, it nonetheless remained committed to a tactical political philosophy which is monarchical in the final analysis . It remains monarchical to the extent that the human world, the world of epistemology, is treated as the yardstick of democracy. Bryant’s argument is quite instructive: “[w]hat we thus get is not a democracy of objects or actants where all objects are on equal ontological footing [...] but instead a monarchy of the human in relation to all other beings.” The real fallacy is thus not against strategic political philosophy but philosophy itself and the way it has played out over so many centuries. “The epistemic fallacy,” writes Bryant, “consists in the thesis that proper ontological questions can be fully transposed into epistemological questions.” The point that Bryant is making relates to the way ontology is today always reduced to an epistemology and thereby loses its significance as a philosophical question. This book should be applauded for its novelty and its thesis ought to be taken seriously by post-anarchists today. Because of this book, and the attendant post-continental movement that is being called ‘speculative realism,’ we can now distinguish three stages in the life of post-anarchism. First, we can deduce what Süreyya Evren has described as its ‘introductory period.’ The introductory period of post-anarchism is defined by its inability to side-step the ontological problem in the literature of classical anarchism. During this period, post-anarchism needed to distinguish itself from classical anarchism while nonetheless remaining committed to its ethical project. The second period overcomes the problem of the separation of post-anarchism from classical anarchism by re-reading the classical tradition as essentially post-anarchistic. Some of the critiques of post-anarchism—especially that from Cohn & Wilbur 5 —are included into this period insofar as post-anarchism, for them, was always already anarchism. Whereas the first and second phases have included only explicitly anarchist literature under their rubric of worthwhile investigation, in the third period this no longer holds true. To be certain, the second period permitted the incorporation of post-structuralist literature into post-anarchist discussions (but always with a certain amount of reservation). This third period, the one that is to come—the one that is already here if only we would heed its call—will not take such care with attempts at identification or canonization. Indeed, post-anarchism is already here, like a seed beneath the snow, waiting to be discovered. Levi Bryant teaches us that the third period is already here: and yet where is it? NOTES 1) Todd May. The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1997. 2. 2) Andrew Koch. “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” [1993] in Post-Anarchism: A Reader . Eds. Duane Rousselle & Sureyyya Evren. London: Pluto Press. 2011. pp. 23-40. 3) Bey, Hakim. “ Post-Anarchism Anarchy .” 1987. 4) I have attempted to do this in my paper on Bataille’s post-anarchism; see Duane Rousselle. “Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies . 17(3): in press. 5) Jesse Cohn & Shawn Wilbur. “ What’s Wrong with Post-anarchism? ” 2010. (shrink)

This essay explores the role of informal logicand its application in the context of currentdebates regarding evidence-based medicine. This aim is achieved through a discussion ofthe goals and objectives of evidence-basedmedicine and a review of the criticisms raisedagainst evidence-based medicine. Thecontributions to informal logic by StephenToulmin and Douglas Walton are explicated andtheir relevance for evidence-based medicine isdiscussed in relation to a common clinicalscenario: hypertension management. This essayconcludes with a discussion on the relationshipbetween clinical reasoning, rationality, andevidence. It is argued that (...) informal logic hasthe virtue of bringing explicitness to the roleof evidence in clinical reasoning, and bringssensitivity to understanding the role ofdialogical context in the need for evidence inclinical decision making. (shrink)

In this paper I consider how thinking emerges out of human infants' relatedness towards the personal and non-personal world. I highlight the contrast between cognitive aspects and cognitive components of psychological functioning, and propose that even when thinking has become a partly separable component of the mind, affective and conative aspects inhere in its nature. I provide illustrative evidence from recent research on the developmental psychopathology of autism. In failing to adopt a developmental perspective, contemporary theorizing has displaced thinking from (...) where it is properly situated - intimately woven with feeling as well as action, and infused with qualities of interpersonal relatedness from which its structure is derived. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTE ON THE IDEA OF RELJ!GIOUS TRUTH IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION HE FOLOWING PAGES claim to be no more than provisional attempt to define a problem of considerble complexity within the Christian tradition. In this introductory note I shall meTely outline how the notion of the truth conveyed by faith soon,after it was established in the New Testament, developed a synthesis with Greek philosophy, at first Platonic, later Aristotelian. (...) In the nominalist crisis this synthesis broke down and two modes of " religious truth " emerged: one within faith with relatively little support from reason, and one of faith within a philosophy henceforth detaiched from theology. Since the nineteenth century we notice that philosophy and theology are moving towards a rapprochement while maintaining their relative aiutonomy. Philosophy appears more inclined to accept religious truth on its own terms without reducing it to an unsuccessful formulation of truth as defined in modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant. Theology, from its side, has increasingly stressed the unique experience implied in faith itself, thus allowing philosophy to include it in its own, general reflection on experience. In a more comprehensive study, to appear in a collective work edited by Daniel Guerriere, I intend to review actual and possible overtures in recent philosophical theories of truth which would rendeT such a rappmchement fruitful. First a word about the biblical context in which the New Testament idea emerged. The earliest articulation of truth in the Bible basically consists in a relation of faithfulness (emet) or :firmness-1a moral quality. Not surprisingly, truth also appears as a correspondence between word and fact-a relation that even to the uncritical mind appears problematic from the start. Thus in Prov1 erbs rn, 17 we read: " He who utters the truth affirms that which will stand; but a lying witness that 499 500 LOUIS DUPRE which will bring dis1a.ppointment." 1 But the more fundamental truth consists in God's steadfastness toward his people and in their participation in it by fidelity to a divinely revealed law.2 In some of the Psalms (such as Ps. 119) the correlation between the law and truth appears particulady clear: the law reveals to us God's fidelity (His truth) and its observance enables us to share in that 3 With the idea that truth requires entrusting one-self to a higher authority, a cognitive quality joins the moml one. We remain in the truth to the extent that we heed the revelation of God's truthfulness as expressed in His commands, and that our deeds, values and attitudes correspond to that divine disclosure. The idea of correspondence, then, which came to dominate the later cognitive discussion started out as a morral-practical one. The same could be said about the idea of coherence. Trust in God's providence and obedience in the Covenant unite all aspects of communal and individual exfatence. The sapiential literature in particular stresses the harmony of a life guided the law. The emphasis upon trust, obedience, and receptivity in the attainment of truth distinguishes the biblical conception from that modem one according to which truth originates in the knowing subject.4 Yet more and more tihe idea of truth as disclosure, that 1 Of course, some of the olcler wisdom literature appears to have consisted of a series of maxims considered useful for promoting a career in Court administration -a relatively" secular" affair. 2 Martin Buber identified the original meaning of faith as steadfastnesseven more than trust in a person. He sees this symbolically represented in the story of Moses' prayer during the battle with Abimelek. As long as his hands remained steady Israel retained the upper hand, but the hands of faith always grow weak and need support. a Ignace de la Potterie relates truth and law in a causal way. "La verite est un concept plus large, plus enveloppant; elle clesigne la r·ev·elation meme de la volonte divine et du mystere de Dieu; par contre la loi, les commanclements, les paroles de Dien, sont autant cl'expressions concretes de la volonte divine." La verite dans Saint Jean (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1977), p. 152. 4 Even when revived in the Reformation the older... (shrink)

In his article ‘A Cavalry Unit in the Army of Antigonus Monophthalmus: Asthippoi’, N. G. L. Hammond argues that the reading of the manuscript R at Diodorus 19. 29. 2 should be retained and that we should read ⋯π⋯ π⋯σι δ⋯ το⋯ς τε ⋯σθ⋯ππους ⋯νομαζομ⋯νους κα⋯ τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων ⋯κτακοσιο⋯ς. The readings of F and its copy X, ⋯νθ⋯ππους, and the commonly accepted conjecture of Wesseling ⋯μɸ⋯ππους, should both be abandoned. Hammond's arguments for retaining this reading are that (...) between the variant readings of R and F, R ‘is the more often correct’ ; ⋯σθ⋯ππους, the reading of R, is preferable to F's ⋯νθ⋯ππους on the principle of ‘lectio difficilior’; the ‘difficulty’ of his lectio difficilior is made less by the arguments presented by A. B. Bosworth, 245 ff.), for the restoration at several places in the text of Arrian's Anabasis the word ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι, in place of the editorial emendation of πεζ⋯ταιροι. ‘For just as asthetairoi meant an élite group of Macedonian infantrymen,’ says Hammond, ‘so asthippoi should mean an élite group of Macedonian cavalrymen.’ He then proceeds to examine the passage and its context in an attempt to find confirmation of this proposition and comes to the conclusion that Diodorus' text says that there were 800 cavalrymen, broken into two groups, the asthippoi and ‘the men from the up-country settlers’; these, though having different names, had a close relationship to each other, as is shown by their being brigaded together. Following his derivation of asthetairoi as meaning ‘townsmen-companions’, i.e. companions recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia, he argues that asthippoi were cavalry recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia and that τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων means ‘the sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’. These 800, says Hammond, were both among Antigonus' best troops and ‘were Macedonians from Europe’. We thus appear, on Hammond's interpretation, to have here a group of 800 Macedonian élite cavalrymen, all of whom were recruited in Upper Macedonia's townships, but of whom some were chosen to be the cavalry-equivalent of the élite ‘townsmen-companions’ by their title of ‘townsmen-cavalry’, whilst the others, similarly recruited – but perhaps of a younger generation? – had no particular distinguishing title beyond ‘sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’.Now, while it would be exciting to be able to add another one, possibly two Macedonian cavalry units to the Macedonian army of Philip, Alexander and the Successors, there are several aspects of Hammond's arguments that, it seems to me, are less than convincing. Thus, whilst it seems beyond reasonable doubt that ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι should be retained in the text of Arrian, appearing, as it does, six times, this is not an argument that ⋯σθ⋯ππους should be read in Diodorus' text. Both it and F's reading of ⋯νθ⋯ππους are hapax legomena and it is possible that both readings are wrong. But even if we retain ⋯σθ⋯ππους as the correct reading, Hammond's explanation of its meaning is open to objection on several counts. (shrink)

We generalize two well-known model-theoretic characterization theorems from propositional modal logic to first-order modal logic. We first study FML-definable frames and give a version of the Goldblatt–Thomason theorem for this logic. The advantage of this result, compared with the original Goldblatt–Thomason theorem, is that it does not need the condition of ultrafilter reflection and uses only closure under bounded morphic images, generated subframes and disjoint unions. We then investigate Lindström type theorems for first-order modal logic. We show that FML has (...) the maximal expressive power among the logics extending FML which satisfy compactness, bisimulation invariance and the Tarski union property. (shrink)

Given a structure for a first-order language L, two objects of its domain can be indiscernible relative to the properties expressible in L, without using the equality symbol, and without actually being the same. It is this relation that interests us in this paper. It is called Leibniz equality. In the paper we study systematically the problem of its definibility mainly for classes of structures that are the models of some equality-free universal Horn class in an infinitary language Lκκ, where (...) κ is an infinite regular cardinal. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a rigorous explication of statements ascribing ability to agents and to develop the logic of such statements. A world is said to be feasible iff it is compatible with the actual past-and-present. W is a P-world iff W is feasible and P is true in W (where P is a proposition). P is a sufficient condition for Q iff every P world is a Q world. P is a necessary condition for Q (...) iff Q is a sufficient condition forP. Each individual property S is shown to generate a rule for an agent X. X heeds S iff X makes all his future choices in accordance with S. (Note that X may heed S and yet fail to have it). S is a P-strategy for X iff X's heeding S together with P is a necessary and sufficient condition for X to have S. (P-strategies are thus rules which X is able to implement on the proviso P).Provisional opportunity: X has the opportunity to A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X and X's implementing S is a sufficient condition for X's doing A. P is etiologically complete iff for every event E which P reports P also reports an etiological ancestry of E, and P is true. Categorical opportunity: X has the opportunity to A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X has the opportunity to A provided P. For X to have the ability to A there must not only be an appropriate strategy, but X must have a command of that strategy. X steadfastly intends A iff X intends A at every future moment at which his doing A is not yet inevitable. X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P iff X's steadfastly intending A together with P is a sufficient condition for X to implement S. Provisional ability: X can A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X, X's implementing S is a sufficient condition for X's doing A, and X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P. Categorical ability: X can A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X can A provided P. X is free w.r.t. to A iff X can A and X can non- A. X is free iff there is an A such that X is free w.r.t. A. (shrink)

In this paper, I use insights from post-structuralist anarchism to consider the relationship between a sense of the future, or “futurity”, and the notion of utopia for anarchist movements. At issue is whether anarchism requires a vision or sense of the future at all and, if so, whether that futurity should be utopian. Drawing from the post-structuralist anarchism of Todd May, Saul Newman, and Lewis Call, I consider the problems with utopia, as well as the potential irrelevance or impossibility of (...) even thinking the future. I then argue for the necessity of both and contend that post-structuralist anarchism does not preclude either futurity or provisional forms of utopia. I conclude by sketching the outlines of a utopia that would be acceptably post-structuralist and acceptably anarchist. (shrink)

As far as the history of logic is concerned, late nineteenth and twentieth century Central and Eastern Europe seem oddly obscure. The work of several influential individuals or national schools is...

Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 202-204.

On May 24, 1995, the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs issued a rather controversial opinion that it is ethically permissible to use anencephalic infants as living organ donors. Approximately 1,000 to 2,000 infants are born each year in the United States with anencephaly, a congenital birth defect whereby the infant has no forebrain and cerebrum. Without higher brain functions, the infants can never experience consciousness, thoughts, emotions, or pain. Fewer than half survive more than a day, (...) and more than 90 percent die within one week. However, by the time brain death occurs in anencephalic infants, their organs are no longer suitable for donor purposes because they have deteriorated beyond use.In 1988, the AMA Council declared that it is ethical to use the infants as organ donors only after they have died. Now the Council has revised that opinion, and it proposes to allow removal of organs before death, as long as the parents consent and two doctors concur in the diagnosis of anencephaly. (shrink)