This article considers the contribution of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology to the scientific realism debate by thematizing the problem of dubitability. After first considering the rigorous standards for apodictic evidence in phenomenology, particularly in terms of the intuitive givenness of evidence, I consider how scientific theory is open, in principle, to doubt. I argue that phenomenology has both a critical and descriptive function for scientific theory: it clarifies what scientific theory can or cannot tell us about the world, both (...) possibly and necessarily; and it describes the meaningfulness that scientific theory can have for us in our experience of the world—that is, in the living flow of conscious experience that is indubitably real. As such, I explain how phenomenology can take scientific theory as a serious field of investigation. (shrink)

_The Record of Great Doubts_ emphasizes the role of _qi_ in achieving a life of engagement with other humans, with the larger society, and with nature as a whole. Rather than encourage transcendental escapism or quietism, Ekken articulates a philosophy of material force as a basis of living a life of commitment to the world. In this spirit, moral cultivation is not an isolated or a self-centered preoccupation, but an activity that occurs within the dynamic forces of nature and amid (...) the rigorous demands of society. In this context, a vitalism of _qi_ is an emergent force, not only providing the philosophical grounding for this vibrant interaction but also giving a basis for an investigation of the natural world that plumbs the principle within things. Ekken thus aimed to articulate a creative and dynamic milieu for moral education, political harmony, social coherence, and agricultural sustainability. _The Record of Great Doubts_ embodies Ekken's profound commitment to Confucian ideas and practices as a method for establishing an integrative ethical vision, one he hoped would guide Japan through a new period of peace and stability. A major philosophical treatise in the Japanese Neo-Confucian tradition, _The Record of Great Doubts_ illuminates a crucial chapter in East Asian intellectual history. (shrink)

_The Record of Great Doubts_ emphasizes the role of _qi_ in achieving a life of engagement with other humans, with the larger society, and with nature as a whole. Rather than encourage transcendental escapism or quietism, Ekken articulates a philosophy of material force as a basis of living a life of commitment to the world. In this spirit, moral cultivation is not an isolated or a self-centered preoccupation, but an activity that occurs within the dynamic forces of nature and amid (...) the rigorous demands of society. In this context, a vitalism of _qi_ is an emergent force, not only providing the philosophical grounding for this vibrant interaction but also giving a basis for an investigation of the natural world that plumbs the principle within things. Ekken thus aimed to articulate a creative and dynamic milieu for moral education, political harmony, social coherence, and agricultural sustainability. _The Record of Great Doubts_ embodies Ekken's profound commitment to Confucian ideas and practices as a method for establishing an integrative ethical vision, one he hoped would guide Japan through a new period of peace and stability. A major philosophical treatise in the Japanese Neo-Confucian tradition, _The Record of Great Doubts_ illuminates a crucial chapter in East Asian intellectual history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Restless Affects and Democratic DoubtsA Response to Rachel Jones and Moira FradingerTina ChanterI would like to thank both Rachel Jones and Moira Fradinger for their generous, rigorous, careful, and typically thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to my work. Both are scholars for whom I have enormous respect.Jones follows a certain trajectory through my work, and I think she is absolutely right to articulate it as a dominant motif. Yet (...) as she also points out, in keeping with this very motif, to which I will return, in identifying this as a thematic strand she is at risk of suppressing other tracks that might have been mapped out. Let me begin, then, by taking up the invitation she thereby offers, by briefly indicating another path through my work as I see it, articulated less through theoretical inflection, less schematically, a path that maps itself by way of affective sites of investiture. So much of our theoretical enquiry is undergirded by affective attachments, created by the accidents of history—where, when, and in what circumstances we were born—through the contingent experiences we happen to have had and the pedagogical influences to which we happened to have been exposed, to the particular wounds life inflicts upon us, and to the particular happiness or solace it grants us, to our friendships, to those we have loved and to those we come to love.I embrace Fradinger’s suggestion that I am something of a radical democrat. So too the quasi-Levinasian sense of the necessity to be open to relationality and answerable to the interlocutor resonates with me, the difficult work of being called to account for what I would call the imaginary (rather than the representations) to which one finds oneself perhaps unconsciously beholden. [End Page 158] Indeed it is this difficult work to which Jones and Fradinger call me, with their challenging and apposite questions, not all of which admit of ready answers.My own affective genealogies are intimately bound up with the good old British class system as well as with the familial. No matter how adept I might be at deconstructing texts and ideas, no matter how well versed I might be in theory, when it comes to myself, so often, it seems, I find myself stuck, endlessly playing out the same story. I think this can be parsed out in terms of affective attachments; I do not think I am the only one to have discovered so many times that I have been profoundly wrong about profoundly important things.It is as if before we know it, we discover that we have played out a script—whether it is psychic, familial, or cultural—that has effectively locked us into a Hegelian master-slave narrative. Sometimes it is as if all any of us can ever do is robotically repeat such scenarios, as if we can never achieve anything beyond flipping the narrative, as if we cannot manage to intervene in the narrative itself, no matter how many theories we are armed with. It is as if, time and time again, we trundle along the same grooves that have been etched out for us by some narrative over which we cannot seem to achieve control. There is something automatic, perhaps unconscious, about these scripts to which we discover ourselves to have adhered, despite our best intentions, despite the fact that we know better, despite all our theoretical insights.It is as if your vision is habituated to a particular scenario, and no matter what you do, it simply keeps repeating itself, taking you by surprise each time. Then something happens, and the details start to compile themselves into another narrative, one that was there all the time, but that you didn’t, you couldn’t, wouldn’t allow yourself to see, to imagine. Only in retrospect do you begin to piece together the signs, to accord significance to the details you somehow managed to dismiss as insignificant, as failing to contribute any coherence or salience. You saw the individual details, but they didn’t add up to a compelling narrative. Or maybe you just didn’t want to be compelled by it... (shrink)

Doubts have been expressed about the virtue of toleration, especially in view of what some have seen as its complicity with a morality of anything goes. More rigorous arguments have been provided by Peter Gardner and Harvey Siegel against the relativism evident in certain versions of multiculturalism and in the new religious studies. This article examines their arguments. While it recognises the cogency of these arguments, it suggests that their concentration on matters of belief and mistaken belief is apt (...) to divert attention from what is most important with regard to questions of toleration in these areas of experience. In order to illustrate this, remarks of Wittgenstein on religion and on understanding other cultures are considered. In contrast to the standard analysis of toleration, where toleration is seen as a response to an object that arouses disgust or disapproval, the value and the limitations of an easy-going tolerance are examined. This is related to bearing witness and knowledge-by-acquaintance. In the final section attention is turned to aspects of the curriculum that may have an unexpected relevance to toleration and the multicultural society. (shrink)

En las últimas décadas los especialistas de la filosofía cartesiana se han enfocado en indagar si la naturaleza de la duda metódica que el meditador instaura en la primera de las Meditaciones debe ser considerada como una preocupación sistemáticamente rigurosa o si, por el contrario, corresponde a un artificio que cumple un valor instrumental dentro del planteamiento que propone el autor, con la esperanza de que la respuesta a esta pregunta logre esclarecer el proceso que guía a las Meditaciones. Tanto (...) quienes sostienen que la duda metódica es fingida como quienes piensan que, en algún sentido, debe ser considerada rigurosamente, recurren a una distinción conceptual advertida por el propio Descartes para validar sus respectivas lecturas, a saber: la distinción entre certeza metafísica y certeza moral. En el presente artículo se postula que la interpretación más apropiada es la que sostienen quienes consideran que la duda metódica guarda cierto nivel genuino de rigurosidad. Para justificar nuestra adhesión se evaluará el rendimiento explicativo de cada interpretación, tanto para el orden de desarrollo planteado en la primera meditación como para la aproximación a otros problemas filosóficos planteados en las Meditaciones. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne is without doubt one of the most powerful forces to reckon with in contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Whenever his name is mentioned, what immediately comes to mind is his declared philosophical project of rigorously defending the rationality of the Christian faith. This work attempts to streamline Swinburne's thought on the reasonableness of the Christian faith and to illuminate a good understanding of his arguments in its favour. Moreover, summoning his claims to the tribunal of reason, it considers (...) the plausibility of his arguments to see whether Swinburne has really achieved for the Christian faith the type of rational demonstration he envisaged."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that the public face of contemporary philosophy is the professional who goes by the name of “bioethicist.” Since the bioethics industry—which is what it is—sprang up in the 1970s, large numbers of professional philosophers have found it a congenial and remunerative way in which to make a reputation for themselves. A few general observations can be made about bioethicists. Some of them are well-meaning. For example, they are dedicated to the laudable notion that philosophy (...) should be heard in the public square and have an influence on the making of policy. Or they believe, rightly, that the bioethical problems of our day are of such grave moment that philosophers should try to grapple with them, at least, and provide solutions if possible. It is not only that the welfare of society depends on such solutions, but that if philosophers, who are supposed to be trained in rigorous thinking, do not do the hard conceptual work that needs to be done, the void will be filled by the looser and fuzzier moral thinking of others—especially lawyers, politicians, and economists. Some are simply committed to the idea, again admirable, that bioethics is a serious intellectual discipline that demands equally serious analytical application. Some find bioethics just interesting and worthy of philosophical pursuit in its own right. Again, this is true. On the other hand, it is all too evident that very many, perhaps the majority, of bioethicists are, to put it frankly, less than competent. I believe that this is a view a good number of philosophers share. The bioethics industry is, unfortunately, populated by many individuals whom one might even call second-rate philosophers. They have found themselves unable to grapple with the more technical or abstract areas of philosophy—or at least to make a name for themselves in such areas—but have found that it is relatively easy to forge a name for oneself in the bioethics business. For one, there is an insatiable demand by the media for comment upon the latest developments in biotechnology, medicine, genetics, and so on, or for comment upon someone else’s comment upon such developments.. (shrink)

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. (...) Part II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This essay points to parallel criticisms made by Charles Peirce and Polanyi against the “critical method”or “method of doubt.” In an early set of essays (1868–1869) and in later work, Peirce claimed that the Cartesian method of doubt is both philosophically bankrupt and useless because practitioners do not apply the method upon the criteria of doubting itself. Likewise, in his 1952 essay “The Stability of Beliefs” and in Personal Knowledge, Polanyi charges practitioners of the critical method with a (...) failure to apply the method rigorously enough. Polanyi contends that “critical” philosophers apply the method of doubt only to beliefs they find distasteful and rarely ever to the tacit beliefs that make doubt possible. (shrink)

Phenomenology, according to Husserl, is meant to be philosophy as rigorous science. It was Franz Brentano who inspired him to pursue the ideal of scientific philosophy. Though Husserl began his philosophical career as an orthodox disciple of Brentano, he eventually began to have doubts about this orientation. The Logische Unterschungen is the result of such doubts. Especially after the publication of that work, he became increasingly convinced that, in the interests of scientific philosophy, he had to go in a (...) direction which diverged from Brentano and other members of this school (`Brentanists') who believed in the same ideal. An attempt is made here to ascertain Husserl's philosophical relation to Brentano and certain other Brentanists (Carl Stumpf, Benno Kerry, Kasimir Twardowski, Alexius Meinong, and Anton Marty). The crucial turning point in the development of these relations is to be found in the essay which Husserl wrote in 1894 (particularly in response to Twardowski) under the title `Intentional Objects' (which is translated as an appendix in this volume). This study will be of interest to historians of philosophy and phenomenology in particular, but also to anyone concerned with the ideal of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

Scepticism, a philosophical tradition that casts doubt on our ability to gain knowledge of the world and suggests suspending judgment in the face of uncertainty, has been influential since its beginnings in ancient Greece. Harald Thorsrud provides an engaging, rigorous introduction to the central themes, arguments, and general concerns of ancient Scepticism, from its beginnings with Pyrrho of Elis to the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the second century A.D. Thorsrud explores the differences among Sceptics and examines in (...) particular the separation of the Scepticism of Pyrrho from its later form—Academic Scepticism—the result of its ideas being introduced into Plato's Academy in the third century B.C. Steering an even course through the many differences of scholarly opinion surrounding Scepticism, the book also provides a balanced appraisal of the philosophy's enduring significance by showing why it remains so interesting and how ancient interpretations differ from modern ones. _Copub: Acumen Publishing Limited _. (shrink)

Like _Beyond All Appearances_,_ _which it supplements, Paul Weiss’s new book is a fundamental work which faces all the hard issues which are not only at the heart of philosophy but at the core of our entire culture. Readers of Mr. Weiss’s phenomenology of religion will need no introduction to this new work which expands and clari­fies many of the issues raised in _Beyond All Appearances. _However, no knowl­edge of Paul Weiss’s previous books is required to understand and appreciate this (...) brilliant new exposition. Weiss’s plain style makes his ideas accessible to all intelligent readers, whether or not they have been trained as professional philosophers. Here in _First Considerations _Mr. Weiss addresses himself to such topics as actuality, internalization, evidence, names, substance, being, natures and possibilities, existence, unity and the cosmos—issues which have engrossed him as a moral philosopher and meta­physician throughout his distinguished career. In his progress through the ideas and issues expounded in this new book Mr. Weiss is concerned with the human condition distinctive of this species of ours. Rigorously applied, his moral philosophy is as complete and thorough as that of any of the major thinkers, and provides as complete a guide as, for example, that of Buddhism. A highly original work, no doubt well in advance of current trends in philosophy, _First Considerations _will provoke further thought and discussion and will be regarded as a seminal work in modern philosophical approaches. (shrink)

One can remember events and one can remember facts: to remember an event (e.g. the barista's pouring my coffee this morning), one needs to have personally witnessed this event. To remember a fact (e.g. that the barista was trained in Italy), it suffices to have learned this fact from some other source. The distinction between event-directed (i.e. experiential) and fact-directed (or propositional) attitudes is an established distinction in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science that is also exemplified by other attitudes (incl. (...) seeing, imagining, and dreaming). Until recently, semantics and the philosophy of language have assumed that experiential attitudes can be more or less straightforwardly reduced to propositional attitudes. However, new work has identified some key properties of experiential attitudes that cast doubt on this reducibility. The present paper discusses the most notable of these properties, focusing on experiential attitude reports. It links these properties to recent developments in formal and philosophical semantics in an effort to foster the development of a rigorous, empirically adequate account of experiential attitudes. (shrink)

The monumental works of Bertrand Russell and Louis Couturat have set a firm pattern of interpretation which many follow in their approach to the Philosophy of Leibniz. In the Preface to the second edition of The Philosophy of Leibniz , Russell reaffirms his contention that “Leibniz’s philosophy was almost entirely derived from his logic”. He welcomes the support provided in Couturat’s La Logique de Leibniz . Russell remarks “No candid reader—can doubt that Leibniz’s metaphysic was derived by him from (...) the subject-predicate logic. This appears, for example, from the paper ‘Primae Veritates’ where all the main doctrines of the Monadology are deduced, with terse logical rigor from the premises; ‘Always therefore the predicate or consequent adheres in the subject or antecedent, and in this fact consists the nature of truth in general—But this is true in every affirmative truth, universal or singular, necessary or contingent’.” Referring further to Couturat, he points out that in his book the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” and “The Identity of Indiscernibles” are “expressly deduced—from the analytic character of all true propositions”. In short, Russell is contending that in formulating his metaphysics Leibniz used the rigorous methods of deductive logic and employed “models” drawn from logic to construct his “picture of reality”, i.e. his metaphysics. (shrink)

n this paper I venture to bring out and disclose an element of faith at the heart of the kind of critical inquiry that we encourage and foster in philosophy with children. It is clearly distinct from doubt, the kind of doubt we customarily associate with what makes critical thinking critical, but, properly understood, it grants to doubt and critical reflection essential roles in the process. What I mean by “faith” in this connection may be understood as (...) trust and confidence in the process of thoughtful inquiry. Our coming to recognize the centrality of faith in this sense within philosophy with children may entail some changes in our thinking about where philosophy with children fits into the larger cultural movements of our time and as well about how involvement in philosophy with children bears upon the beliefs and traditions of the sub-cultural backgrounds of children who participate. I should make clear that my perspective is informed by the philosophical insights of Michael Polanyi into what he calls the tacit dimension of all kinds of knowing, even the most rigorous and formal, especially considering knowing as an ongoing process. Polanyi focuses a great deal on what he speaks of as “the fiduciary [i.e., faith] coefficient of our knowing” – indeed, of all explicit propositions we may happen to entertain or hold. He takes as his paradigm of knowing the anticipation of an approaching discovery, whether in the natural sciences or in other areas. I will also relate my discussion to the well-known controversy between W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” and William James’ “The Will to Believe.” I contend that James’ most important point in that controversy has much more to do with general epistemology than philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Decisions about brain surgery pose existential challenges because they are often decisions about life or death, and sometimes about possible personality changes. Therefore they require rigorous neuroethical consideration. However, we doubt whether metaphysical interpretations of ambiguous statements of patients are useful for deriving ethical and legal conclusions. Particularly, we question the application of psychological theories of personal identity on neuroethical issues for several reasons. First, even the putative “standard view” on personal identity is contentious. Second, diverse accounts of (...) personal identity have been introduced into the neuroethical debate, which are incompatible. Third, the criteria for “diagnosing” the supposed changes in “identity” are ambiguous and indeterminate. Fourth, the metaphysical theories of personal identity imply highly questionable ethical and legal revisions, namely the denial of advance directives, particularly of Ulysses contracts, and, for patients with brain cancer, even therapeutic nihilism.We discuss three examples in which ideas from the personal identity debate in metaphysics are straightforwardly applied to discuss ethical issues of neurosurgery. We discuss revisions of the current medico-legal practice that have been proposed on grounds of psychological theories of personal identity. We argue that the established status quo in law and clinical practice is beneficial to the patients concerned. Furthermore, it is metaphysically neutral, which is an important principle of liberal, democratic, pluralistic societies.We recommend a pragmatic approach: empirical research on personality changes arising from brain disorders or interventions, comprehensive information about risks of personality changes, and advance directives, particularly Ulysses contracts. (shrink)

Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment offers authoritative, jargon-free essays and critical commentaries on accelerating technological progress and the notion of technological singularity. It focuses on conjectures about the intelligence explosion, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many commentators however doubt the scientific rigor of these forecasts, rejecting them as speculative and unfounded. We therefore invited (...) prominent computer scientists, physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists and other thinkers to assess the singularity hypotheses. Their contributions go beyond speculation, providing deep insights into the main issues and a balanced picture of the debate. (shrink)

Non‐classical logicians do not typically reject classically valid logical principles across the board. In fact, they sometimes suggest that their preferred logic recovers classical reasoning in most circumstances. This idea has come to be known in the literature as ‘classical recapture’. Recently, classical logicians have raised various doubts about it. The main problem is said to be that no rigorous explanation has been given of how is it exactly that classical logic can be recovered. The goal of the paper (...) is to address this problem. First, I discuss a number of different ways to characterize the idea of classical recapture and I examine how far it can be pushed. Secondly, I argue that a palatable form of classical recapture is given by the thought that classical logic can be retained for statements that are grounded (in Kripke’s sense). To substantiate this view I provide a formal fixed‐point semantics for a language containing a predicate standing for the concept of groundedness and I address a couple of objections that have been deployed against the claim that classical recapture can aid the non‐classical logician’s cause. (shrink)

"Both Thomistic scholars and analytic philosophers interested in theories of human action and accountability will find this book a welcome addition to their libraries. Truly a substantive addition to both Thomistic scholarship and the ongoing analytic investigation into human action and responsible agency."—American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly "A first-rate book...Brock's lucid and illuminating analysis offers much of value to both intellectual historians and theologians, as well as philosophers."—Theological Studies"Brock's treatment of Aquinas's account of action exhibits a rare combination of rigor and (...) learning. It is, no doubt, the best we have."—The Thomist. (shrink)

From political scandals at the highest levels to inflated repair bills at the local garage, we are seemingly surrounded with unethical behavior, so why should we behave any differently? Why should we go through life anchored down by rules no one else seems to follow? Writing with wit and elegance, Simon Blackburn tackles such questions in this lively look at ethics, highlighting the complications and doubts and troubling issues that spring from the very simple question of how we ought to (...) live. Blackburn dissects many common reasons why we are skeptical about ethics. Drawing on all-too-familiar examples from history, politics, religion and everyday personal experience, he shows how cynicism and self-consciousness can paralyze us into considering ethics a hopeless pursuit. But ethics is neither futile nor irrelevant, he assures us, but an intimate part of the nitty gritty issues of living--of birth, death, happiness, desire, freedom, pleasure, justice. Indeed, from moral dilemmas about abortion and euthanasia, to our obsession with personal rights, to our longing for a sense of meaning in life, our everyday struggles are rife with ethical issues, whether we notice it or not. Blackburn distills the arguments of Hume, Kant and Aristotle down to their essences, to underscore the timeless relevance of our voice of conscience, the pitfalls of complacency, and our concerns about truth, knowledge and human progress. Blackburn's rare combination of depth, rigor and sparkling prose, and his distinguished ranking among contemporary philosophers, mark Being Good as an important statement on our current disenchantment with ethics. It challenges us to take a more thoughtful reading of our ethical climate and to ponder more carefully our own standards of behavior. (shrink)

A high profile context in which physics and biology meet today is in the new field of systems biology. Systems biology is a fascinating subject for sociological investigation because the demands of interdisciplinary collaboration have brought epistemological issues and debates front and centre in discussions amongst systems biologists in conference settings, in publications, and in laboratory coffee rooms. One could argue that systems biologists are conducting their own philosophy of science. This paper explores the epistemic aspirations of the field by (...) drawing on interviews with scientists working in systems biology, attendance at systems biology conferences and workshops, and visits to systems biology laboratories. It examines the discourses of systems biologists, looking at how they position their work in relation to previous types of biological inquiry, particularly molecular biology. For example, they raise the issue of reductionism to distinguish systems biology from molecular biology. This comparison with molecular biology leads to discussions about the goals and aspirations of systems biology, including epistemic commitments to quantification, rigor and predictability. Some systems biologists aspire to make biology more similar to physics and engineering by making living systems calculable, modelable and ultimately predictable—a research programme that is perhaps taken to its most extreme form in systems biology’s sister discipline: synthetic biology. Other systems biologists, however, do not think that the standards of the physical sciences are the standards by which we should measure the achievements of systems biology, and doubt whether such standards will ever be applicable to ‘dirty, unruly living systems’. This paper explores these epistemic tensions and reflects on their sociological dimensions and their consequences for future work in the life sciences. (shrink)

In 2021, the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (hereafter, BICS) sponsored an essay competition (hereafter, the Contest) designed to solicit the best evidence for the hypothesis that human consciousness survives bodily death, and more specifically, evidence that would prove this hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt. The summer 2022 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration featured a special subsection on the BICS contest and its winning essays. Robert Bigelow and Colm Kelleher outlined the motivation, design, and judging criteria for (...) the competition. Keith Augustine provided an extensive critical commentary on the contest design and eight of its prominent winning essays. Stephen Braude and several coauthors responded to Augustine’s criticisms, and Augustine provided a reply to Braude and his collaborators. Finally, the subsection concluded with a collaborative paper in which Etienne LeBel, Adam Rock, and Augustine proposed a more rigorous experimental design for testing the survival hypothesis. Augustine presented important criticisms of the Contest and several of its prominent winning essays. Moreover, many of his criticisms apply to survival literature in general and so are instructive for the wider survival debate. And Braude, one of the most important contributors to the survival debate since C.D. Broad and C.J. Ducasse, was at the helm of the reply to Augustine. Although the response to Augustine raised important concerns about skeptical assessments of the evidence for survival, it was hamstrung with several defects. 1. Preliminaries 2. Problematic Aspects of the Reply to Augustine 3. What is the Question? Honing in on the Actual Disagreement 4. Inference to Best Explanation 5. Confirmation Approaches to Evidential Support -- 5.1 Evidential Justification -- 5.2 When Does an Observation Favor One Hypothesis Over Another Hypothesis? The Law of Likelihood -- 5.3 When Should We Up Our Confidence in a Hypothesis? Incremental Confirmation -- 5.4 How Can We Determine the Net Plausibility of a Hypothesis? Bayes’ Theorem and Posterior Probabilities -- 5.5 Which of Two Hypotheses is More Probable than the Other? Principle of Contrastive Posterior Probabilities -- 5.6 When Does Evidence Justify Believing a Hypothesis? Principle of Absolute Confirmation -- 5.7 Survivalist Confusions about Bayesian Analyses -- 5.8 The Washing Out of Priors -- 5.9 The Subjectivism Objection -- 5.10 Summing Up Insights from Confirmation Theory -- 6. Back to Braude 7. Varieties of Skepticism 8. Neurophysiological Evidence and the Survival Hypothesis 9. The Data from Mediumship 10. The Alleged Improbability of Fraud and Other Counterexplanations 11. Mediumship and the Logic of Confirmation 12. The Significance of Failed Tests 13. Survivalist Rescues and Contrastive Confirmation 14. Evidential Support without Predictions -- 15. The Testability Problem -- Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Panpsychism is a solution to the mind-body problem that presumes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality instead of a product or consequence of physical processes (i.e., brain activity). Panpsychism is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem: it effectively rids itself of the explanatory gap materialist theories of consciousness suffer from. However, many theorists and experimentalists doubt panpsychism can ever be successful as a scientific theory, as it cannot be empirically verified or falsified. In this paper, I (...) present a panpsychist model based on the controversial idea that consciousness may be a so called higher physical dimension. Although this notion seems outrageous, I show that the idea has surprising explanatory power, even though the model (as most models) is most likely wrong. Most importantly, though, it results in a panpsychist model that yields predictions that can be empirically verified or falsified. As such, the model's main purpose is to serve as an example how a metaphysical model of consciousness can be specified in such a way that they can be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword*Alan D. SokalAlas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. 1 Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. One of (...) my goals here is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is [End Page 338] ambiguous; and confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example: linear, nonlinear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly, chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality, choice).I should emphasize that all works cited in my article are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Indeed, the most hilarious passages in my article were not written by me: they are direct quotes from the Masters.But why did I do it? I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true,” why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don’t aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit. Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left. 2 Alan Ryan said it well:It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth.... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it.... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. 3Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decriedthe rise of “postmodernist” intellectual fashions in Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all “facts” claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental. 4 [End Page 339](Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical scholarship can refute the fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And as the acerbic sociologist Stanislav Andreski noted long ago,So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of... (shrink)

`Erwin′s argumentative skills and knowledge of the literature are remarkable and most of his original claims are persuasive....The merit of the analysis Erwin offers is to provide a well-informed and accessible account of the current state of psychotherapy, its history and its philosophical grounds′ - Metapsychology Online `For those readers who favour an empirical-scientific approach to counselling and therapy, and who view therapy, at least potentially or in principle, as an objective science, this will no doubt be a very (...) useful and informative book... We should be grateful that Erwin has set out more fully than anyone to date the specifically philosophical case for a "science of therapy"; and those of a New Paradigm persuasion at least now know the nature of the arguments they will have to refute in order to sustain their position. I look forward with eager anticipation to their efforts, and to an emerging and fruitful engagement between philosophy and therapy - for both have a great deal to learn from each other′ - Counselling, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy This pioneering book analyzes the interface between philosophy and psychotherapy. The first authoritative work to apply rigorous philosophical discipline to therapeutic claims and counter-claims, it will encourage psychotherapists, counsellors and applied psychologists to examine their practice and clarify their thinking. Edward Erwin discusses some of the key philosophical issues that have a particular relevance to psychotherapeutic theory - autonomy and free choice, the nature of the self, epistemology, and values and morals - as well as examining specific interdisciplinary issues that cut across the boundaries between philosophy and psychotherapy. Finally, he looks at the `crisis′ in psychotherapy today, offering a valuable philosophical insight into the debate about the proliferation and efficacy of therapeutic approaches. (shrink)

Though Kant calls the prohibition against suicide the first duty of human beings to themselves, his arguments for this duty lack his characteristic rigor and systematicity. The lack of a single authoritative Kantian approach to suicide casts doubt on what is generally regarded as an extreme and implausible position, to wit, that not only is suicide wrong in every circumstance, but is among the gravest moral wrongs. Here I try to remedy this lack of systematicity in order to show (...) that Kant's position on suicide is more appealing and credible than it seems at first glance. Kant in fact offers three distinct lines of argument against suicide. The first, the chief argument in his Lectures on Ethics, holds that suicide violates the divine will, for in willing our own deaths we usurp God's right to determine the duration of our existence; as God's property, we are not entitled to end our own lives willfully. The second, rooted in the Groundwork, holds that suicide is incompatible with a system of willed ends conceived analogously with a system of nature, so a maxim to commit suicide cannot be coherently willed as a universal practical principle. The third argument, drawn from the Metaphysics of Morals, holds that because suicide obliterates the rational will from the world, and as the rational will is the source of moral worth, suicide cannot be consistently willed by beings subject to moral requirements. To authorize oneself to take one's own life, Kant claims, is to attempt 'to withdraw from all obligation.' We cannot, under the color of morality, seek to cancel the will that authorizes all obligation in the first place. This third argument is demonstrably superior to the other two in being both more philosophically plausible in its own right and more Kantian in flavor. (shrink)

In recent times evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued that such endeavors are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming, therefore severely limiting the role of the adaptationist program in psychology. More specifically, doubts have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychologists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human (...) psychological phenomena. We argue that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for evaluating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed. We illustrate how this approach can be fruitfully employed in evaluating claims about the evolutionary origins of language, and conclude with a brief discussion of the future of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

The study of the relationship between religion and health has grown substantially in the past decade. There is little doubt that religion plays an important role in many people's lives and that this has an impact on their health. The question is how researchers and clinicians can best evaluate the available information and how we can improve upon the current findings. In this essay we review the current knowledge regarding religion and health and also critically review issues pertaining to (...) methodology, findings, and interpretation of these studies. It is important to maintain a rigorous perspective with regard to such studies and also to recognize inherent limitations and suggest constructive ways in which to advance this field of study. In the end, such an approach can provide new information that will improve our understanding of the overall relationship between religion and health. (shrink)

Discussions of reproducibility are casting doubts on the credibility of experimental outcomes in the life sciences. Although experimental evolution is not typically included in these discussions, this field is also subject to low reproducibility, partly because of the inherent contingencies affecting the evolutionary process. A received view in experimental studies more generally is that standardization (i.e., rigorous homogenization of experimental conditions) is a solution to some issues of significance and internal validity. However, this solution hides several difficulties, including a (...) reduction of external validity and reproducibility. After explaining the meaning of these two notions in the context of experimental evolution, we import from the fields of animal research and ecology and suggests that systematic heterogenization of experimental factors could prove a promising alternative. We also incorporate into our analysis some philosophical reflections on the nature and diversity of research objectives in experimental evolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What about the Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It about? A Response to Thorsten Botz-BornsteinRalph WeberNo doubt Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is right to highlight that the debate of 2006 and 2007 (if indeed it can be called a debate1) between Jean François Billeter and François Jullien was particularly heated. It was to some extent a personal affair in that both protagonists overstepped the scholarly bounds set for an exchange (...) of arguments, the heat at times reaching the boiling point. Billeter reproached Jullien for no less than instrumentalizing China, fashioned as the absolute Other and instrumentalized for almost no other purpose than to continue a philosophical discourse established by Jullien himself, a discourse that became ever more auto-referential, furthering only the most dubious of ideological interests. In one passage, Billeter goes so far as to claim that, rather than allowing the “Chinese authors” their own voice and letting them develop their own arguments, in the end “it is always him [i.e. Jullien] who talks” (Billeter 2006a, p. 45). Regardless of just how personal Billeter’s opposition to Jullien was meant to be—and at least one commentator claims that beyond the polemical title the text offers a “rigorous argumentation” (Danjou 2006; cf. also Zufferey 2006)—Jullien certainly took it personally, asking himself in his riposte, Chemin faisant, just why Billeter was so angry at him (Jullien 2007, p. 137).His riposte is marketed on the title page in big letters as a “Réplique à ***,” which is explained by the series editors, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, in terms of the reaction to a splinter that more often than not swiftly removed is quickly forgotten but that occasionally provokes a considerable reflexive gesture, of just the kind that Jullien offers, thanks to ***. A quote by Foucault precedes the text itself, reading: “There are critiques to which one responds and others to which one gives a riposte. [End Page 228] Perhaps wrongly so, for why not similarly lend an ear that is attentive to incomprehension, to banality, to ignorance or to insincerity?” Only once, at the very beginning of the text, is Billeter’s name (by implication the subject either of incomprehension, banality, ignorance, insincerity, or a combination of all four) fully mentioned; thereafter only his initials, JFB, are used. Even until recently the practice of giving the silent treatment has persisted, as when Jullien in the interview with Martin and Spire simply observes “that the sinologists who criticize me … have themselves produced nothing since that critique—do you need names?” (Martin and Spire 2011, p. 209; italics in original), before referring the reader to the many books he has written since Chemin faisant. Needless to add, this point is premised on quantity trumping quality, which is at least slightly disconcerting given that Jullien’s works have been found as early as 1996 to be marked by “a great deal of overlapping if not outright repetition (or at least rewriting)” (Reding 1996, p. 162)—something that apparently still is the case in his many books “produced” since then.From one standpoint, Botz-Bornstein is also right in referring to the affair as mainly a French debate, involving a sizable number of participants and spanning a considerable period of time, from Billeter and Jullien’s 1989 and 1990 exchange in the pages of Études chinoises over how to read Wang Fuzhi (see Billeter 2006a, p. 37 n. 1); to several volumes on and in co-operative works with Jullien (Jullien and Marchaisse 2000, Marchaisse 2003, Cornaz and Marchaisse 2004, Chartier and Marchaisse 2005, Jousset 2006, and Serrurier and Bricout 2011); to the publication of the partisan Oser Construire: Pour Jullien (Chartier 2007) and Billeter’s answer to it (Billeter 2007); to the many discussions of Jullien that continue to take as their starting point the exchange with Billeter (cf. Keck 2009). The text by Martin and Spire, for instance, makes ample reference to the debate, as Botz-Bornstein mentions, and speaks out in favor of Jullien (Martin and Spire 2011, pp. 77–97). Yet, the debate is also the starting point for Jean Levi’s (2011) recent criticism of Jullien. Beyond the borders of France... (shrink)

J. Angelo Corlett’s new book, Interpreting Plato Socratically continues the critical discussion of the Platonic Question where Corlett’s book, Interpreting Plato’s Dialogues concluded. New arguments in favor of the Mouthpiece Interpretation of Plato’s works are considered and shown to be fallacious, as are new objections to some competing approaches to Plato’s works. The Platonic Question is the problem of how to approach and interpret Plato’s writings most of which are dialogues. How, if at all, can Plato’s beliefs, doctrines, theories and (...) such be extracted from dialogues where there is no direct indication from Plato that his own views are even to be found therein? Most philosophers of Plato attempt to decipher from Plato’s texts seemingly all manner of ideas expressed by Socrates which they then attribute to Plato. They seek to ascribe to Plato particular views about justice, art, love, virtue, knowledge, and the like because, they believe, Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece through the dialogues. But is such an approach justified? What are the arguments in favor of such an approach? Is there a viable alternative approach to Plato’s dialogues? In this rigorous account of the dominant approach to Plato’s dialogues, there is no room left for reasonable doubt about the problematic reasons given for the notion that Plato’s dialogues reveal either Plato’s or Socrates’ beliefs, doctrines or theories about substantive philosophical matters. Corlett’s approach to Plato’s dialogues is applied to a variety of passages throughout Plato’s works on a wide range of topics concerning justice. In-depth discussions of themes such as legal obligation, punishment and compensatory justice are clarified and with some surprising results. Plato’s works serve as a rich source of philosophical thinking about such matters. A central question in today’s Platonic studies is whether Socrates, or any other protagonist in the dialogues, presents views that the author wanted to assert or defend. Professor Corlett offers a detailed defense of his view that the role of Socrates is to raise questions rather than to provide the author’s answers to them. This defense is timely as intellectual historians consider the part played by Academic scholars centuries after Plato in systematizing Platonism. J. J. Mulhern, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

In his critique of my book Heidegger and Marcuse, Jeff Kochan (2006) asserts that I am committed to the possibility of private knowledge, transcendent truths, and individualism. In this reply I argue that he has misinterpreted my analysis of the Challenger disaster and Marcuse’s work. Because I do not dismiss Roger Boisjoly’s doubts about the Challenger launch, Kochan believes that I have abandoned a social concept of knowledge for a reliance on the private knowledge of a single individual. In fact, (...) I consider Boisjoly’s observations just as social, if not as scientific, as the results of rigorous scientific study. Kochan’s reliance on a principle of symmetry derived from science studies to explain such politically charged technological controversies tends to mask the role of power and ideology in social life. Kochan interprets Marcuse as a failed Heideggerian who regresses from Heidegger’s social conception of human being to traditional individualism. I am accused of sharing this view. This interpretation overlooks the importance of the Hegelian–Marxist category of ‘real possibility’ in Marcuse’s work and so mistakes his critique of conformist politics for individualist romanticism. Marcuse always attempted to ground radical opposition in a community of struggle without abandoning the heritage of a long critical tradition. This view I willingly share. Keywords: Philosophy of technology; Principle of symmetry; Challenger disaster; Herbert Marcuse; Martin Heidegger; Knowledge . (shrink)

Finnis claims that his theory proceeds from seven basic principles of practical reason that are self-evidently true. While much has been written about the claim of self-evidence, this article considers it in relation to the rigorous claims of logic and mathematics. It argues that when considered in this light, Finnis equivocates in his use of the concept of self-evidence between the realist Thomistic conception and a purely formal, modern symbolic conception. Given his respect for the modern positivist separation of (...) fact and value, the realism of the Thomistic conception cannot be the foundation for the natural law as Finnis would reconstruct it. Nor can the purely formal modern conception of self-evidence provide a foundation for practical reason. This raises some doubt as to whether there can be self-evident principles of practical reason as Finnis suggests. The article contributes to the analysis of the Finnis reconstruction of the natural law by providing a rigorous analysis of his claim for self-evidence. It frames this analysis historically, suggesting the roles that certainty and mystery play in the apprehension of moral meaning. (shrink)

Many people regard utility theory as the only rigorous foundation for subjective probability, and even de Finetti thought the betting approach supplemented by Dutch Book arguments only good as an approximation to a utility-theoretic account. I think that there are good reasons to doubt this judgment, and I propose an alternative, in which the probability axioms are consistency constraints on distributions of fair betting quotients. The idea itself is hardly new: it is in de Finetti and also Ramsey. (...) What is new is that it is shown that probabilistic consistency and consequence can be defined in a way formally analogous to the way these notions are defined in deductive (propositional) logic. The result is a free-standing logic which does not pretend to be a theory of rationality and is therefore immune to, among other charges, that of “logical omniscience”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant's DogDavid E. Johnson (bio)In a certain way, it is always too late to pose the question of time.—Jacques Derrida, Margins of PhilosophyIt is well known that Kant was notorious in Königsberg for his strict adherence to routine; he was so regular, Ernst Cassirer reports, that the citizens of Königsberg were able to set their clocks by his movements.1 The most public articulation of this regularity was his daily (...) walk through the city. It is doubtful Kant took a dog along on his constitutional; nevertheless, at the moment in the Critique of Pure Reason that he determines the possibility of the conceptualization of sense perception, which Heidegger considered the very heart of Kant's critical project and which ultimately turns on the regulation of the synthesis of time,2 Kant trots out man's best friend. Although he needs this dog in order to demonstrate the trick of temporal synthesis that makes any sensible conceptuality possible, it is also clear that he needs to keep this dog on a tight leash; he cannot afford to let it run off or go astray. On one reading, then, the Critique of Pure Reason institutes a sort of philosophical leash law. Indeed, Kant holds the dog so tightly that it is always already a dead dog—philosophical roadkill.In literature there is perhaps no more memorable instance of the problem of conceptuality than Jorge Luis Borges's "Funes el memorioso." Within that text, the key moment is the unforgettable example of Ireneo Funes's particular observation of the manifold that others reduce to a dog: "Not only was it difficult for him to see that the generic symbol 'dog' took in all the dissimilar individuals of all shapes and sizes, it irritated him that the 'dog' of three-fourteen in the afternoon, seen in profile, should be indicated by the same noun as the dog at three-fifteen, seen frontally" [Collected Fictions [End Page 19] 136].3 For Funes the inability to synthesize the manifold of experience under a general concept also contaminates the possibility of self-recognition: "His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them" [Collected Fictions 136].4 His surprise at his face and hands as much as his frustration at the generic concept "dog" must be read within the context of Funes's rejection of Locke's suggestion of a rigorously particular language: "In the seventeenth century, Locke postulated (and condemned) an impossible language in which each individual thing—every stone, every bird, every branch—would have its own name; Funes once contemplated a similar language, but discarded the idea as too general, too ambiguous" [Collected Fictions 136].5 In Funes's account, the untenability of Locke's language does not lie in the impossibility of a language grounded upon absolute singularity; he does not argue, for example, that even the most radical empiricism must ultimately depend upon the possibility of ideality. Rather, he argues that insofar as it does not account for the temporal difference of the same from itself, such a language is always already too general.6 In short, "every individual thing, every rock, every bird, every branch," in Funes's eyes, are each and every one more than one. The dog at 3:14 seen in profile is not the same dog when seen at 3:15 in full frontal view. For Funes, the possibility of identity conceived as self-identity and, accordingly, as self-possession over time, is suspended. My face and hands are always different from themselves; they always surprise me; thus they are not mine. In Signs of Borges Sylvia Molloy remarks that Funes's attempt to construct a rigorously particular language can only be "sustained by Funes' attention" and that the words of such a language "finally make sense only to him. Indeed, all that holds them together... is Funes himself" [118, emphasis added]. On Molloy's account, the singularity of Funes's language, grounded as it is only in Funes himself, explains "the narrator's inability to reproduce" it [118]. Yet, Molloy fails to read the maximal effect of Funes's radical empiricism: namely, the... (shrink)

The love of fame is a common theme in republican thought. But few, historically or now, have examined with rigor this sentiment's nature, purpose, and worth. The work of David Hume is an exception. Hume, this paper argues, dialectically took up not only all the classic reasons for loving fame--as spur to useful effort, motivator of virtue, consolation to virtue unrewarded, and safe harbor in the midst of historical flux--but the skeptical reasons for doubting that fame is attainable or that, (...) even if it is attainable, its pursuit motivates good actions. The theme pervades not only his systematic moral works but his essays and letters, his autobiography, and "History of England." Hume's subtle, ambivalent arguments suggest reasons to value the love of fame in spite of modern, or postmodern, doubts regarding the nature of true fame or even its existence--and perhaps to regard such love as unavoidable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic by Ian ProopsStephen HowardIan Proops. The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 512. Hardback, $105.00.Ian Proops's book is a substantial contribution to the thriving field of Anglophone scholarship on the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Across five hundred pages, Proops examines the whole of the Dialectic. (...) The book is divided into three parts, following the disciplines of previous special metaphysics with which Kant critically engages in the Dialectic: rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. Discussions of transcendental illusion and the regulative use of ideas of reason are slotted into the rational psychology and theology parts, respectively.Methodologically, Proops aims to take a middle course between historical and reconstructive approaches (31–32). In historical and reconstructive modes alike, though, Proops is primarily concerned with accurately presenting and rigorously evaluating Kant's arguments in the Dialectic. These arguments come in two forms: either those of the imagined rational psychologist, cosmologist, or theologian, whom Kant ventriloquizes in order to reveal their errors; or those arguments that Kant makes in his own voice. The Fiery Test of Critique distinguishes itself from existing studies through the detail and care with which these arguments are scrutinized. Specialists will find numerous illuminating exegeses and links to a wide range of Kant's published and unpublished writings. Proops does not hesitate to identify where, in his view, Kant's arguments fail (or where those of Kant's ventriloquized metaphysicians fail in a way Kant does not intend), but he endeavors to interpret charitably and to make his own evaluative criteria explicit.The wide-ranging introduction to the book offers intriguing reflections on a metaphor Kant uses for his critique of pure reason: a "fiery test" (8; A 406/B 433). This test, Proops suggests, is best understood not as a religious ordeal by fire but as a "metallurgical assay": the testing of a coin or an ore to determine its precious metal content (9–10). This means that the test of critique "is not pass-fail" (12). Kantian critique identifies some precious metal to be retained alongside the dross (the base-metal bearer) to be discarded. The "gold" [End Page 525] and "silver" found by Kant's fiery test are, Proops contends, respectively the indirect proof of transcendental idealism that emerges from the Antinomy chapter, and the doctrinal beliefs in God and an afterlife that remain after the Paralogism and Ideal (13, 453–54).This application of Kant's metaphor indicates how far Proops diverges from the dismissive views of older Anglo-American studies of the Dialectic (the paradigm being Bennett's Kant's Dialectic [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974]). Proops's opening questions and goals show that he aims to clarify the precise character of the dogmatic metaphysical claims criticized by Kant, and to identify what of this previous tradition Kant considers worth saving and why (2–7). This focus on the positive contribution of the Dialectic to Kant's philosophy—an approach Proops shares with other recent commentators—is very welcome.For all his illuminating discussion of Kant's Feuerprobe imagery, Proops neglects to note that Kant does not simply identify worthwhile aspects of previous special metaphysics. Rather, the philosophical findings that Proops takes to be the precious results of the critical test are significantly developed in Kant's hands. That is, no pre-Kantian rational cosmologist claims that their debates provide an indirect proof of transcendental idealism (of course). Neither do pre-Kantian rational psychologists or theologians make Kant's move of conceiving of God and the immortal soul as matters of doctrinal belief, where the latter is an epistemic attitude distinct from knowledge and cognition. In the cases that Proops highlights, then, the relevant image seems to be not only a metallurgical test but also an alchemical transformation of previous metaphysical doctrines into positive "critical" results.The parts of the book on the Paralogisms and the Ideal, on which Proops has previously published, will no doubt stimulate further detailed debate among specialists. I leave these debates aside to consider the part of the... (shrink)

Two opposite statements must be rejected with the same rigor. First (1) is that a few countries have identified themselves with modernity by their scientific, technical and economic achievement and that the rest of the world, which is lagging behind the ‘advanced countries’, must follow in their footsteps and imitate their example. The article first of all sets out the falsity of such a statement, because there is not one but many western paths of modernization, and indicates that it is (...) nothing but a colonialist ideology, which spread from European and American societies and cultures and destroyed all independent efforts of modernization in other countries, in particular China. The hegemony of the western capitalist model is more than challenged by other ways of modernization, for though the soviet model has failed, other countries are ‘emerging’ or have already emerged. Second (2) the opposite representation defends the idea of a complete multiculturalism including political regimes and human rights. It fights against the previous colonialist model and supports a total relativism. But this view makes impossible the communication between completely different countries and cultures and reciprocal fear leads to an extreme conflict between ‘civilizations’, such as S. Huntington has described. This view leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable if each civilization has a complete internal unity and a complete control on all its activities. But the world is not divided into various theocratic states: no single theocratic state commands the whole or the majority of Muslim population. The central problem remains real and difficult: how to combine unity and diversity, the difference between cultures and the capacity for them to communicate with each other? The most useful idea is to elaborate one general definition of modernity, as a culture which is based on universalistic principles. The western mode of modernization is not the only possible one; nor is it at all sure that the western process of separation of temporal and spiritual powers is the only possibility. We cannot assert that universalism must penetrate social life only through political institutions and citizenship. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that modernity, with its universalistic components, cannot be identified with only one type of social organization and cultural values. (shrink)

Mehlman and Li offer a framework for approaching the bioethical issues raised by the military use of genomics that is compellingly grounded in both the contemporary civilian and military ethics of medical research, arguing that military commanders must be bound by the two principles of paternal- ism and proportionality. I agree fully. But I argue here that this is a much higher bar than we may fully realize. Just as the principle of proportionality relies upon a thorough assessment of harms (...) caused and military advantage gained, the use of genomic research, on Mehlman and Li’s view, will require an accurate understanding of the connection between genotypes and phenotypes – accurate enough to ameliorate the risk undertaken by our armed forces in being subject to such research. Recent conceptual work in evolutionary theory and the philosophy of biology, however, renders it doubtful that such knowledge is forthcoming. The complexity of the relationship between genotypic factors and realized traits (the so-called ‘G→P map’) makes the estimation of potential military advantage, as well as potential harm to our troops, incredibly challenging. Such fundamental conceptual challenges call into question our ability to ever satisfactorily satisfy the demands of a sufficiently rigorous ethical standard. (shrink)

Abstract—How do judges decide cases? Are judges controlled by rules, principles and professional standards of reasoning or do they decide as politicians, using the law as an instrument to achieve predetermined goals. In Australia one influential view on this issue was expressed by Sir Owen Dixon when he called for a ‘strict and complete legalism’ for judges. Dixon’s strict legalism no longer commands the respect that it once did and his view is now commonly seen as naïve or as a (...) noble lie intended to hide the freedom open to judges when they decide cases. This article examines first Dixon’s understanding of strict legalism. It will argue that Dixon understood it as a form of practice and not as a rigorous scholarly system. Secondly, it will analyse Wilson v Darling Island Stevedoring to see whether the leading judgment of Fullagar J is in accord with Dixon’s judicial method. In Wilson the High Court was presented with a persistent legal problem—could stevedores claim the benefits of exemption and limitation clauses that commonly featured in bills of lading arising from the transport of goods and people? The third section of the article will consider the obvious belief of many of the judges in the authorities examined that the commercial inconvenience of not protecting stevedores was too great to ignore. These judges were willing to grant stevedores the protection of exemption clauses in contracts of carriage, a trend that continued, indeed accelerated, after Wilson. So, even if Fullagar J did judge as a strict legalist, does this perceived commercial imperative raise doubts about the appropriateness of this style of judging? In conclusion the article will consider the implications of showing that the reasoning in Wilson displayed a fidelity to Dixon’s notion of strict and complete legalism. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent., was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention. The editors recommend that to experience the drifiting thought (...) that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN SPACE & PLACE thread: April Vannini, Those Between the Common * Laura Dean & Jesse McClelland, Ballard: A Portrait of Placemaking * Amara Hark Weber, Crossroad * Isaac Linder & Berit Soli-Holt, The Call of the Wild: Terror Modulations * Ashley D. Hairston, Momma taught us to keep a clean house * Sean Smith, The Garage * * * * Instead of beginning with radical doubt, we start from naiveté. —Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. —Jack London, The Call of the Wild The figure of the feral remains a perpetual enigma, but the parameters remain relatively consistent. A person, usually a child, enters civilization after having been raised by wolves or kept in some kind of cruel captivity. The outsider perspective on domestication ensuing in an edge of a culture's self-recognition of its clumsier attributes, what has been taken for granted becomes apparent, is brought to the foreground with the stranger and made questionable. Amusement follows naïve questions or observations such as Kaspar Hauser in the Herzog film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, when Kaspar notes that while in his room he is engulfed by it, but when he looks at the tower he can turn away and it disappears. Ergo, the room is larger than the tower. How entertaining. The aberrant one destabilizes the comforting cultural normative. Places become seen as mere impressions out of space, a patterning, a rut that not everyone lives in like us. This is one figure of the feral. The naiveté that begs all the questions. As a figure for a certain philosophical disposition, the rapidity of one’s saccade scans the environment, intuits it’s space, not from an initial thaumazein or a Critchlean sense of disappointment, but from a child-like naiveté bent on survival. To serve the naïve is merely one form of critique, and it is not nearly used enough in lieu of the critique that provides answers. How dull. It is not necessary to be an outsider to entrench a critique with naiveté. After having forced to suffer in the most parched and rocky terror, itself for so long rooted upwards of fifty feet into the ground upon which it grows, even a grapevine can spontaneously produce a white grape on a red vine. The curious feral can arise from within, and like pinot grigio, it adds variety without admonishing its roots. There is also the feral dog. Not raised by wolves, but humans. Founded in place the figure of this feral denies this place. The trajectory of this feral roves from the cultivated to uncultivated, or in speaking of plants from controlled to volunteer, finding the necessary nutrients and survival patterns on its own. Finding other places, reaching out into space testing its fertility. And when introduced into a foreign environment, it withers or flourishes. We would like to attempt a thesis at this juncture and to accept neither feral figure in its entirety, but to argue for the intimate conjunction between a cultivated place and its resonance with the space it procures for its nest and kin. I'm not a biter, I'm a writer for myself and others. —Jay-Z, What More Can I Say? I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers. —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans There is no subjective disposition outlining an unambiguous individual of the para-academy. There is no para-academic. We all have day jobs. 'Para-academic' seeped through the cracks as an adjective in the call to frame publishing dedicated to the critical rigor expected by academic publishing, but to deny the limitations of guarded legitimation through capital means. Open-access holds hands with this parasitic descriptor. Para-academic publishing's refusal to adhere to the valuation of locked access of a site, the site “of a desperate initiation to the empty form of value,” 1 seeks to recognize not merely an inclusive interpretation of significance, but the significance of thinking practice. The practice inside the paywalls of academic 'education' is held in a deathgrip by its infatuation with value and information, both empty without the apprehension of human experience, the barbaric yawp. “I can't breathe in here.” It is not that a para-academic practice leads one to the childish wonder of Kaspar Hauser who wonders about the spatiality of his room. It is the academic legitimation that distorts that one can hold the understanding of both in a constellation of place and space. Led to believe there is only a place for things, we are led to disillusionment. It is also not that a para-academic practice relinquishes itself to the invasive growth outside of careful cultivation, an abandonment of pleasantries for the toothy growl of a predator. It is the academy's fear that thought does not require capital to signify value. Some of the most nutritious meals can be foraged. Defining a para-academic practice is not outlining a place of accreditation of the practice, it is the recognition that any place is subject to modulation by the space it inhabits as well as creates. The para-academic practice keeps an eye of the creation of spaces, follows those paths that eat themselves in the name of academia. This is not unlike Red Peter's report to the academy, only successful if we report in idle idiosyncratic banalities that we have once again become victorious in our acculturation and nullification within the confines of accredited mush and our trajectory of wild rigor is defeated in our desire for recognition as recognizable in this place. Weeds are integral to the functioning of a large ecosystem. The manicured garden is entirely reliant on its keeper. The pansy can also go wild once neglected, the daisy definitely does.... a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. At this stage the universe cannot be distinguished from how we act upon it, and the world may seem like shifting sand beneath our feet. —George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form Two edges are created: an obedient, conformist, plagiarizing edge, and another edge, mobile, blank, which is never anything but the site of its effect: the place where the death of language is glimpsed. These two edges, the compromise they bring about, are necessary. —Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text Between these two epigraphs, interminable questions of where and questions of happening, gesture, and interface. To stay buoyed between a site of visible happening and haptic perspicacity. Bounded by one or the other leads to a desiccation of potential knowledge. The tumbleweed tumbles until met with mud, a bare structure moving but not movement. A tumbleweed tumbleweeds, propagates only at a place. It becomes significant again, continues. Significance, the site where meaning is made known through kinesthetic apprehension. 2 The feral founds a gestural horizon; an outsider’s scrawl-becoming-law; Deleuze teaching Meno’s dog geometry. Place as marked, outlined, recognized, territorialized. The academies marked by their peculiar disciplines, outlined by their rigid boundaries, recognized as factories of value. This far from ensures complete purchase on the space of thought, but it has made an undeniably elaborate means of making work significant. The academy is a muddy spot, it is fertile, but its gates are high and its dogs are barking. The coordinates of concept and experience. Already claimed by a stabilizing suspension, the terms enter specificity of ‘this is this’. Another correlation: activity and the individual. The individual, a placeholder in the crosshairs of juridical identification. Activity, what expands and surrounds this location, but utterly indebted to the node of “one who”. What's happening in this oscillation of nature and nurture is practice. Practice, as Stengers tells us “is not the activity of an individual or the product of that activity. It is the ingredient without which neither that activity nor this product would exist as such.” 3 Moving outward from our own honing, we're curious about the ingredient creating the place for holding conceptual and experiential engagements in each hand. And we'd like to argue that this place is not a limiting specification, but a practice undulating daily, by the minute. And we call this practice the para-academic practice. I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason. —Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limit it discovers in itself—a limit where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist. — Albert Camus, The Rebel Anyone is a para-academic or practicer of such means. The academic can, and we argue should, be active para-academically, to escape the bounds, recognizing no site specific place as a place to rest on or the place to grab the Kafka's top and wonder at its disobedience not to continue. Yet, the para-academic practice must maintain the desire for rigor in scholarship. Indeed desiring past itself to claim a more naïve rigor, one that does not take its form for granted. Without a para-academic practice, the scholar spends half the time merely working on behalf of a hierarchy, to maintain it, and the other measly amounts of time are in the name of thinking, but only in name. Not to mention the amount of debt it takes to attend the halls of higher education. Not to mention the snoring tenures. Not to mention the barely scraping by adjuncts. Not to mention the materials that shake the very force of producible theory. Not to mention when swimming in texts becomes slogging through data. Academia is a barbaric food chain and it is our claim that there is, as always, an imperative for thought to move, with Heidegger, beyond the logics of calculation and planning, to a time of its own. The path, into the panic of the dark wood of this space can be followed by any; any who let the silence and the rigor enter the play. Where the little theater is larger when inhabited ; where the data of the tutor asymptotically refutes; and where, as much as one wouldn’t expect it here, ballet may turn out to be the most feral of forms… NOTES Jean Baudrillard, “Value's Last Tango” Simulacra and Simulation trans. Sheila Faria Glaser,. “What is significance? It is meaning, insofar as it is sensually produced.” Roland Barthes in The Pleasure of the Text. Isabelle Stengers, “The Science Wars” Cosmopolitics I trans. Robert Bononno, 47. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a rebirth of interest in the philosophy of Pierre Duhem. Although I applaud the spirit of this movement, one finds the critics of Duhem frequently lacking in a basic understanding of Duhem's tenets, sometimes to the extent that one doubts a familiarity with the Duhemian text. One of the few papers which is designed to remedy this state of affairs is that of Philip Quinn entitled “What Duhem Really Meant.” Quinn is to be applauded (...) for his meticulous and rigorous exegetical work on the Duhemian text. Unfortunately, Quinn's characterization of the logical relations of two of the central Duhemian theses is erroneous. I shall endeavor to correct these errors in this paper. (shrink)

This book offers the first systematic reading of Plato’s Laches in English after three decades of scholarly silence. It rekindles interest in this much-neglected dialogue by providing a fresh discussion of the major issues that arise from the text. Among these issues, pride of place is taken by the virtue of courage, for the definition of which Socrates is depicted as engaging in some long-winded dialectical exchange with his interlocutors. Yet, although there is no room for doubt that the (...) Laches is Plato’s most explicit treatment of courage, this dialogue ends in perplexity and is thus traditionally thought of as an unsuccessful attempt to define what courage is. The present study challenges this suggestion. This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato’s Laches. In fact, it constitutes the first systematic attempt to study the dialogue in light of the idea that its composition could well have formed part of Plato’s overall plan to establish a well-defined and rigorous justification of the life of philosophical inquiry The book will be of key interest to classicists, philosophers, and intellectual historians, but will also appeal to students or anyone interested in ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

"The Justice of Mercy is exhilarating reading. Teeming with intelligence and insight, this study immediately establishes itself as the unequaled philosophical and legal exploration of mercy. But Linda Meyer's book reaches beyond mercy to offer reconceptualizations of justice and punishment themselves. Meyer's ambition is to rethink the failed retributivist paradigm of criminal justice and to replace it with an ideal of merciful punishment grounded in a Heideggerian insight into the gift of being-with-others. The readings of criminal law, Heideggerian and Levinasian (...) philosophy, and literature are powerful and provocative. The Justice of Mercy is a radical and rigorous exploration of both punishment and mercy as profoundly human activities." ---Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking, Bard College "This book addresses a question both ancient and urgently timely: how to reconcile the law's call to justice with the heart's call to mercy? Linda Ross Meyer's answer is both philosophical and pragmatic, taking us from the conceptual roots of the supposed conflict between justice and mercy to concrete examples in both fiction and contemporary criminal law. Energetic, eloquent, and moving, this book's defense of mercy will resonate with philosophers, legal scholars, lawyers, and policymakers engaged with criminal justice, and anyone concerned about our current harshly punitive legal system." ---Carol Steiker, Harvard Law School "Far from being a utopian, soft and ineffectual concept, Meyer shows that mercy already operates within the law in ways that we usually do not recognize.... Meyer's piercing insights and careful analysis bring the reader to think of law, justice, and mercy itself in a new and far more profound light." ---James Martel, San Francisco State University How can granting mercy be just if it gives a criminal less punishment than he "deserves" and treats his case differently from others like it? This ancient question has become central to debates over truth and reconciliation commissions, alternative dispute resolution, and other new forms of restorative justice. The traditional response has been to marginalize mercy and to cast doubt on its ability to coexist with forms of legal justice. Flipping the relationship between justice and mercy, Linda Ross Meyer argues that our rule-bound and harsh system of punishment is deeply flawed and that mercy should be, not the crazy woman in the attic of the law, but the lady of the house. This book articulates a theory of punishment with mercy and illustrates the implications of that theory with legal examples drawn from criminal law doctrine, pardons, mercy in military justice, and fictional narratives of punishment and mercy. Linda Ross Meyer is Carmen Tortora Professor of Law at Quinnipiac University School of Law; President of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; and Associate Editor of Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities. Jacket illustration: "Lotus" by Anthony James. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century Arnold Schoenberg introduced into music an atonal style of polyphonic composition. The artistic success of his and his colleagues' oeuvre insured the wide diffusion of his technique of the twelve tone series. In the period immediately following World War II, the serial technique exercised a dominant influence over advanced musical practice. However, in the decades that followed, composers and theorists alike began to entertain doubts about the relation between the derivation of a composition from a (...) series and its audible musical structure. A reconsideration of the theory of atonal polyphony must rest on rigorous analyses both of the structure of the musical materials, and of the semiotic relation between score and performance, which is constitutive of musical works in the western common practice tradition. ;The aim of this dissertation is to advance the project of founding a reconsideration of the theory of atonal polyphony by constructing the concrete entities needed to provide a phenomenalistic semantic framework for the semiotics of contrapuntal theory. The starting point is Nelson Goodman's logical constructionalism, and, in particular, his theory of signs of Languages of Art, and his phenomenalist system of The Structure of Appearance. Chapter One is a contribution to phenomenalist theory. It introduces a systematic notion of the maximal phenomenal continuity that explicates the concept of the sense content, as it occurs in natural language philosophical discourse. Chapter Two begins with a discussion of the idealizations that are appropriate to a semantics of contrapuntal theory. This discussion results in a systematic notion of the primitive concrete entity of contrapuntal theory, the note, which is shown to be a species of sense content, as defined in Chapter One. By aggregating notes, the construction subsumes under the systematic notion of the sub-polyphony both whole compound polyphonic occurrences and their musically significant melodic and harmonic sub-divisions. The resulting explication of the concrete notions of contrapuntal theory both connects phenomenalist theory with a familiar realm of human experience, and provides a basis for a systematic examination and revision of contrapuntal theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mill on Capital Punishment-Retributive Overtones?Michael ClarkI.In his famous parliamentary speech of 18681 Mill defends the retention of capital punishment for the worst murderers on the Benthamite grounds of frugality and exemplarity.2 Punishment being an intrinsic "mischief," it should be no more severe than it needs to be to achieve its desired effect, principally that of deterring others from crime. That effect can be achieved more economically if the suffering (...) appears greater than it really is. Execution, Mill thinks, is less cruel than the alternative of life imprisonment with hard labour,3 for the offender would have died anyway sooner or later, probably in greater pain. It is also the most impressive way of punishing murder, since it closely resembles the offence. The more a penalty impresses itself upon people's minds the more likely it is to deter. And, as Bentham said, "exemplarity tends to increase the apparent, frugality to reduce the real [suffering]."4But the language Mill uses has seemed to import non-utilitarian, quasi-retributive elements into his thought. Thus Tom Sorrell says, "He brings in the appropriateness of execution to certain offences. The argument from appropriateness, if it is not retributivist, is at least consistent with retributivism, and has whatever intuitive appeal attaches to punishing purely on account of guilt."5 Is this perhaps another of those non-utilitarian elements in Mill's philosophy that many commentators have, rightly or wrongly, claimed to detect, like the supposed tension between the Principle of Utility and Mill's regard for the value of liberty? I shall argue, however, that it is a mistake to interpret Mill's remarks in a retributive way. [End Page 327]The critical passage is:[I]t appears to me that to deprive the criminal of the life of which he has proved himself unworthy—olemnly to blot him out from the fellowship of the living—is themost appropriate, as it is certainly the most impressive, mode in which society can attach to so great a crime the penal consequences which for the security of life it is indispensable to annex it.6The italicised phrases are those responsible for the retributive impression, particularly "the most appropriate." Is Mill here falling back on the idea that the criminal should receive a penalty which fits the crime because he has made himself worthy of it?Originally, Mill had opposed capital punishment, and, though he did allow that there might possibly be "atrocious crimes" against which it was the only effective deterrent, he doubted whether there were any such cases. "I have therefore always been favourable to the entire abolition of capital punishment, though I confess I do not attach much importance to it in the case of the worst criminals of all," he wrote in an 1841 letter to Robert Barclay Fox (CW XIII: 474). It is evident that he is making the usual assumption that the death penalty is more severe than life imprisonment. As a utilitarian, he could countenance the death penalty only if it were "the only effective deterrent" against aggravated murder.By the time of the Parliamentary Speech he had changed his mind about the relative severity of execution and life imprisonment. Execution was swift and generally less painful than the death the murderer would otherwise eventually face. The alternative was to immure "him in a living tomb, there to linger out what may be a long life in the hardest and most monotonous toil... cut off from all earthly hope" (CW XXVIII: 268). Life imprisonment seemed milder only because the suffering was at no time "of terrifying intensity."Indeed Bentham had made the same point about the exemplarity of capital punishment, which was "of all punishment, of the greatest apparent magnitude, the most impressive and the most exemplary" while being "less rigorous than it appears to be," and he noted that it was "often more gentle than natural death."72.Mill, of course, inherited his theory of punishment from Bentham, whom he regarded as leaving the theory nearly complete,8 and the consequentialist stance is clear from his early writings:The only right by which society is warranted in inflicting pain upon any... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leviathan after 350 YearsSharon VaughanTom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, editors. Leviathan after 350 Years. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. Pp. x + 308. Cloth, $74.00The editors introduce this collection as a testament to the continuing importance of Leviathan in political thought. Divided into three parts, these twelve essays are some of the papers presented at a May 2001 conference to mark the 350th anniversary of Leviathan's publication. Readers might (...) expect a discussion about Leviathan's endurance and relevance as a fundamental text of political philosophy, but this is not the book's main thrust. Instead, the authors engage in a discussion concerning some of the most provocative and controversial questions about Leviathan. Much of the debate centers on how one should interpret it, forcing readers not only to reconsider crucial parts of Hobbes's philosophy, but also the act of interpretation.Part one examines the place that Leviathan holds among Hobbes's political writings. Karl Schumann argues that one should not think of Leviathan as a radical departure from De Cive and that it did not mark the culmination of Hobbes's development as a political philosopher (14). Schumann's essay is not convincing because he effectively points out the consequential ways that Leviathan is distinct. Ted H. Miller suggests, "Leviathan's uniqueness is rooted in its poetic-philosophical innovations"(103). He points out that David Johnston, Quentin Skinner, and others have stressed the significance of its rhetorical style. Miller, however, proposes that it was the context and the company that Hobbes kept during this time that influenced his writing style. Kinch Hoekstra suggests that Hobbes is an unusual de facto theorist and Luc Foisneau believes that Leviathan is unique because of its theory of justice.Part two is devoted to investigating passions and politics in Leviathan. Richard Tuck believes that Hobbes's political philosophy is utopian because it demands a radical transformation of humans as passionate beings. Tuck says that while the Leviathan provides citizens with security, "they are also going to live a life without pride, their sense of their own individual importance reduced to nothing in the face of their commonwealth" (138). Tuck's essay stands in contrast to Tom Sorrell's analysis of the burdens on the sovereign. He concludes that he must be an individual with little, if any, regard for his own ambitions and passions (196). What one is left with is a Hobbesian version of a philosopher king who has his personal appetites in check always looking out for what benefits his subjects. Is [End Page 210] there any guarantee that the sovereign will be non-egotistical and public-spirited? No, because the sovereign has absolute freedom. Sorrell believes, however, that it is in the sovereign's best interest to be unselfish if she is to maintain her sovereignty (193).Quentin Skinner analyzes the classical theory of laughter, relating it to Hobbes's complicated views about it. Political agency in Leviathan is Yves Zarka's topic. It seems that the citizen is merely a subject, but Zarka cautions that one must carefully read the text and remember that certain rights are inalienable. How far one may take what Zarka interprets as the "the right of resistance" remains a debatable question (182). He believes that one might rethink Leviathan as a more complex piece of political philosophy by practicing "back-to front reading" as opposed to a direct-method reading of the text (182). Zarka thinks that citizens may have a more complex and passionate role than commonly thought (182). This is an alluring suggestion, but it is difficult to accept in light of Hobbes's preoccupation with security and obedience.The role of biblical and political authority is the theme for part three. Edwin Curley argues that Hobbes's treatment of covenants with God was possibly a vehicle for him to arouse skepticism about Christianity among his readers. A. P. Martinich rejects Curley's claim and concludes that not only does his argument fail on grounds of logic, but also it requires far too much "reading between the lines" (223). Martinich's analytic rigor and his attention to the process of interpretation raise serious doubts about Curley... (shrink)

An error in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which wrongly predicted the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers by 2035, fueled doubts about the authority, honesty and rigor of the IPCC as a leading institution in climate science and, correspondingly, raised questions about whether global warming is anything more than a hoax put forward by environmentalists. The late and confusing reaction of the IPCC to these allegations only worsened the matter. By comparing assessment reports issued by (...) the IPCC, this paper asks the question: ‘Why, despite extensive peer review, did the Himalayan glacier melting rate error get published?’ I chronicle exactly what happened, consider why it happened as it did, and show how these answers require us to rethink the concept of ‘peer review’ in scientific practice. I also identify several future directions for peer review if it wants to stay ahead of the game, bearing in mind the forthcoming IPCC Assessment Reports. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)