In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pragmatist in Paris: Frédéric Rauh’s “Task of Dissolution”Richard HornerIntroductionRichard Rorty has suggested that we think of “pragmatism in the professorial sense” as “just a repudiation of the quest for certainty and foundations.” 1 In other words think of a pragmatist as someone who links the quest for privileged method with the quest for foundational knowledge and gives up both. As Rorty explained several years ago,If one believes, (...) as I do, that the traditional ideas of “an absolute (‘objective’) conception of reality” and of “scientific method” are neither clear nor useful, then one will see the interlocked questions “What should be the method of the social sciences?” and “What are the criteria of an objective moral theory?” as badly posed. 2Pragmatists not only give up the quest for grounding, foundations, or essences, then, but they also understand that the dissolution of essences leads in turn to “the dissolution of inquiry into a self-reweaving web of beliefs.” If this “seems wacky to you,” Rorty notes, “consider that such a dissolution is a natural and [End Page 289] easy consequence of a generalized antiessentialism.” 3 Whether he speaks in terms of foundations or essences, Rorty’s message remains the same: pragmatists not only let go of the quest for foundations, they also let go of the quest for privileged method.Perhaps the principle difficulty with this way of defining pragmatism is that not very many people seem to qualify as pragmatists. What Rorty has been able to do with remarkable consistency, others have been less willing and less able to do. There are, of course, still numerous foundationalists among us who are explicit about their commitment to the quest for foundations and to the quest for method that accompanies it. While anti-foundationalism may be all the rage, “it would be too much to say that the foundationalist argument lies in ruins. It is in fact remarkably resilient and resourceful in the face of attacks against it.” 4 Furthermore, even where the “death of foundationalism” is a given, 5 the quest for method continues to hold interest. To cite only one notable example among many, Jürgen Habermas may have successfully resisted the seductive attraction of the quest for Letzbegründung or ultimate foundations, but he clearly remains committed to “a metahermeneutical analysis” of communication, the purpose of which is “to identify universals and thus to produce a type of theoretical knowledge.” 6 This kind of “anti-foundationalist theory hope,” 7 can be found among Deweyan pragmatists as well. While many of them let go of the quest for foundations with relative ease, they find it difficult to abandon the quest for method 8 or to allow the epistemological enterprise to succumb to Rorty’s “vulgar pragmatism.” 9 Furthermore, in doing so they believe that Dewey would have sided with them rather than with Rorty.Given the difficulty in identifying pragmatists who have consistently abandoned both quests, it is especially striking to discover Frédéric Rauh practicing “pragmatism in the professorial sense” in the philosophy section of the Faculté [End Page 290] des lettres of the Sorbonne and Ecole normale supérieure during the first decade of the twentieth century. While this period of French history certainly produced intellectuals who were sympathetic to the American pragmatists, these intellectuals were, as Durkheim noted, “far from subscribing to all their theses.” 10 Renouvier, for instance, remained, in James’s own words, “too classic in the general rationalism of his procedure.” 11 Similarly, James’s good friend Boutroux, though “simpatico” toward American pragmatism, also “betrayed... a philosophical inheritance quite foreign to that of James.” 12 Ralph Barton Perry, comes to a similar conclusion with regard to Bergson, writing that Bergson and James “exchanged salutations and gifts, and then proceeded on their way. In no sense did they coincide either as systems or in their particular theorems.” 13 Apparent alliances, then, emerge finally as “misalliances,” showing that “what has passed as pragmatism in European philosophical thought has not been distinctive of the essential and most important features of American pragmatism.” 14 Whatever their affinities with pragmatism may have been and whatever their contributions to dissolving the... (shrink)

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is a technology which has been receiving considerable attention as of late. It is a fairly simple technology involving radio wave communication between a microchip and an electronic reader, in which an identification number stored on the chip is transmitted and processed; it can frequently be found in inventory tracking and access control systems. In this paper, we examine the current uses of RFID, as well as identifying potential future uses of the technology, including item-level (...) tagging, human implants and RFID-chipped passports, while discussing the impacts that each of these uses could potentially have on personal privacy. Possible guidelines for RFID’s use, including Fair Information Principles and the RFID Bill of Rights are then presented, as well as technological solutions to personal privacy problems, such as tag killing and blocker tags, as well as simple aluminum foil shields for passports. It is then claimed, though, that guidelines and technological solutions will be ineffective for privacy protection, and that legislation will be necessary to guard against the threats posed by the RFID. Finally, we present what we believe to be the most important legislative points that must be addressed. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Richard Rorty once wrote that inspired teaching “is the result of an encounter with an author, character, plot, stanza, line or archaic torso which has made a difference to the [teacher’s] conception of who she is, what she is good for, what she wants to do with herself: an encounter which has rearranged her priorities and purposes.” In a teaching career more than three decades long, no author has influenced me more profoundly as a teacher and as a human (...) being than Simone Weil. She has changed how I think about myself, my relationships, the world around me and ultimately about what transcends me. And this could not help but change how I am in the classroom. This essay is a reflection on how Simone Weil has changed my life, both in and out of the classroom. (shrink)

The paper provides a presentation and motivation of the concept of non-empirical theory confirmation. Non-empirical theory confirmation is argued to play an important role in the scientific process that has not been adequately acknowledged so far. Its formalization within a Bayesian framework demonstrates that non-empirical confirmation does have the essential structural characteristics of theory confirmation.

Beliefs come in different strengths. What are the norms that govern these strengths of belief? Let an agent's belief function at a particular time be the function that assigns, to each of the propositions about which she has an opinion, the strength of her belief in that proposition at that time. Traditionally, philosophers have claimed that an agent's belief function at any time ought to be a probability function (Probabilism), and that she ought to update her belief function upon obtaining (...) new evidence by conditionalizing on that evidence (Conditionalization). Until recently, the central arguments for these claims have been pragmatic. But these putative justifications fail to identify what is epistemically irrational about violating Probabilism or Conditionalization. A new approach, which I will call epistemic utility theory, attempts to remedy this. It treats beliefs as epistemic acts; and it appeals to the notion of an epistemic utility function, which measures of how epistemically valuable a particular belief function is for a particular way the world might be. It then formulates fundamental epistemic norms that are analogous to the fundamental practical norms that underlie decision theory. I survey the results obtained so far in this young research project, and present a sustained critique of certain assumptions that have been made by a number of philosophers working in this area. (shrink)

. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity, existing because of histories of conflicts of interest and arising as outcomes of the complexity of social interactions in groups of long‐lived individuals with varying conflicts and confluences of interest and indefinitely iterated social interactions. Although morality is commonly defined as involving justice for all people, or consistency in the social treatment of all humans, it may have arisen for immoral reasons, as a force leading to cohesiveness within human groups (...) but specifically excluding and directed against other human groups with different interests. (shrink)

This book challenges current thinking on professional ethics and suggests new ways of looking at ethical issues. The contributors to the volume (Michael Goldberg, Richard P. Vance, Deborah Fernhoff, Nancey Murphy, Theophus H. Smith, Jack L. Sammons Jr., William H. Willimon, and Senator John C. Danforth) are outstanding representatives of their respective professions. In this book, using the categories of religion and narrative as methodological tools, they move readers to a more responsive, hopeful, and truthful conduct of the (...) professions. (shrink)

First, this collection seeks to examine exactly what Levinass writings mean for both Jews and Christians. Second, it takes a snapshot of the current state of Jewish-Christian dialogue, using Levinas as the rationale for the discussion. Three generations of Levinas scholars are represented. Contributors: Leora Batnitzky, Jeffrey Bloechl, Richard A. Cohen, Paul Franks, Robert Gibbs, Kevin Hart, Dana Hollander, Robyn Horner, Jeffrey L. Kosky, Jean-Luc Marion, Michael Purcell, Michael A. Signer, Merold Westphal, Elliott R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod.

This paper begins with a discussion of two features of the everyday task environment. First, the everyday task environment is designed, and an important part of the design is the provision of explicit information to guide the individual in the adaptation of his activity. Second, some task environments are semi‐permanent. These two features of the task environment reveal some important characteristics in the psychology of the individual. When novelty occurs, expansion in the range of behavior of the individual is guided (...) by a process of internalization of information provided in the task environment by another. Because of the semi‐permanence of home task environments, there is pay‐off in organizing behavior in terms of the particulars of those environments. The body of this paper examines these ideas from the perspective of FLOABN. FLOABN is a computational cognitive model of an individual acquiring skill at using household and office devices. (shrink)

This unique book clearly explains genetic and neuroimaging research on intelligence and how neuroscience findings may lead to enhancing it.

Richard Sorabji presents a unique discussion of the development of moral conscience over a period of 2500 years, from the playwrights of the fifth century BCE to the present. He addresses key topics including the original meaning and continuing nature of conscience, the ideas of freedom of religion and conscience with climaxes in the early Christian centuries and the seventeenth, the disputes on absolution or 'terrorisation' of conscience, dilemmas of conscience, and moral double-bind, the reliability of conscience if it (...) is shaped by local custom, and modern opposition to the idea of conscience and its role in legislation. (shrink)

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner’s psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach’s engagement (...) with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach’s study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach’s emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. (shrink)

The Philosophical Imagination is a collection of essays ranging over a wide range of philosophical themes: from the emotional engagement with fictions, to the functioning of metaphor in poetry and in rhetoric, to the concept of beauty in Kant and in Proust, and the nature of the first-person perspective in thought and action.

Can any of us ever really be free? Do we follow the rules our society gives us because we want to, or because we are forced to? Discipline, Freedom, Resistance challenges the received wisdom that discipline and freedom are opposite and mutually exclusive. Though it is typically argued that a well-ordered liberal society must discipline its more unruly citizens to maintain freedom for all, Flathman shows how resistance to rules can mean more than criminals breaking laws. Resistance can also mean (...) political protest and political dialogues about what the rules can be. Discipline, Freedom, Resistance draws on Foucault's theories of the self to describe the inner discipline it takes to resist authority-declaring that individuals must sometimes resist forces that wish to destroy freedom, to ensure freedom. (shrink)

Inhalt: Klaus DÜSING: Strukturmodelle des Selbstbewußtseins. Ein systematischer Entwurf. Christian KLOTZ: Reines Selbstbewußtsein und Reflexion in Fichtes Grundlegung der Wissenschaftslehre. Hans-Peter FALK: Existenz und Licht. Zur Entwicklung des Wissensbegriffs in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1805. Akira OMINE: Das Problem der Reflexion bei Kierkegaard und Fichte. Erich HEINTEL: Zum Problem des "Ich" als "daseiende Transzendentalität". Von David Hume zu Ernst Mach und dem "Wiener Kreis". Günter ZÖLLER: Bestimmung zur Selbstbestimmung: Fichtes Theorie des Willens. VERMISCHTE BEITRÄGE. Richard SCHOTTKY†: Staatliche Souveränität und individuelle (...) Freiheit bei Rousseau, Kant und Fichte. DOKUMENTE. Erich FUCHS: Reinhold und Fichte im Briefwechsel zweier Jenenser Studenten 1793/94. Erich FUCHS: Aus dem Tagebuch von Johann Smidt. Klaus VIEWEG: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Weimar und Rußland. Ein neu aufgefundener Brief Fichtes an den Weimarer Geheimen Rat Wilhelm Ernst Friedrich Freiherr von Wolzogen vom 19. November 1803. REZENSIONEN. (shrink)

Review(s) of: A priesthood imprisoned: A crisis for the church, by John E. Ryan, (Bayswater, VIC, Coventry Press, 2017), pp. 126, $24.95.

ZHMUD. L. (2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

The article investigates and defends central elements of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Davidson’s coherentist attacks on Quine’s empiricismare dismissed. The view is advocated that sensory experience plays an essential epistemic role, and that, therefore, the study of perception must be taken seriously in the theory of knowledge. The author rejects, however, Quine’s behavioristic conception of experience as stimulation of sensory receptors and instead argues for a richer conception, according to which an experience is a sensory state of things appearing in certain (...) ways to us. Finally, it is shown that this standpoint allows us to acknowledge a given element in experience without falling victim to a myth. (shrink)

This chapter offers a review of standard views about the requirements for natural selection to shape evolution and for the sorts of ‘units’ on which selection might operate. It then summarizes traditional arguments for genic selectionism, i.e., the view that selection operates primarily on genes (e.g., those of G. C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, and David Hull) and traditional counterarguments (e.g., those of William Wimsatt, Richard Lewontin, and Elliott Sober, and a diffuse group based on life history strategies). It (...) then offers a series of responses to the arguments, based on more contemporary considerations from molecular genetics, offered by Carmen Sapienza. A key issue raised by Sapienza concerns the degree to which a small number of genes might be able to control much of the variation relevant to selection operating on such selectively critical organs as hearts. The response to these arguments suggests that selection acts on many levels at once and that sporadic selection, acting with strong effects, can act successively on different key traits (and genes) while maintaining a balance among many potentially conflicting demands faced by organisms within an evolving lineage. (shrink)

The Argument of the "Tractatus" presents a single unified interpretation of the Tractatus based on Wittgenstein's own view that the philosophy of logic is the real foundation of his philosophical system.

Quine rejects Peirce's theory of truth because, among other things, its notion of a limit of a sequence of theories is defective in that the notion of a limit depends on that of nearer than which is defined for numbers but not for theories. This paper shows that the missing definition of nearer than applied to theories can be supplied from within Quine's own epistemology. The upshot is that either Quine's epistemology must be rejected or Peirce's pragmatic theory of truth (...) is partially vindicated. (shrink)

By compiling an experimental method combining both dialectic and rhetoric, 'Dialectic, Rhetoric and Contrast: The Infinite Middle of Meaning' demonstrates how singular meanings can be rendered in a spectrum of 12 repeating concepts that are in a continuum, gradated and symmetrical. The ability to arrange meaning into this pattern opens enquiry into its ontology, and presents meaning as closer to the sensation of colours or musical notes than the bivalent oppositions depicted in classical logic. However, the experiment does not assert (...) that this pattern suggests some sort of constant or absolute principle; instead, it theorises on the ways in which meaning can be considered to be recursive. To explain this, the book explores the concept of contrast itself. No exactitude on the precise existence of contrast can ever be struck because the answer varies infinitely depending upon the scale of measurement used to gauge the meeting point. This characteristic of contrast helps to define a whole new dimension from which sensation, meaning, cognition and consciousness can be analogised to the infinite forms between forms. At a time when the widest consensus in philosophy is the exhaustion of its central themes, the significance of such a hypothesis provides fresh impetus to revise some of the key meanings and concepts underpinning contemporary thought. To do this, the method explores the opposing themes of idealism and realism that run throughout western philosophy from Plato to the Speculative turn. This book will be of interest to professional academic audiences in the humanities and social sciences, from graduates to senior scholars. It will also be an interesting read to anyone wishing to keep abreast of developments in continental philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)