This anthology offers the key works of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz in their entirety or in substantial selections, along with a rich selection of associated texts by other leading thinkers of the period.

The leading anthology of its kind, this volume provides the key works of seven major philosophers, along with a rich selection of associated texts by other ...

This anthology offers the key works of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in their entirety or in substantial selections, along with a rich selection of associated texts by other leading thinkers of the period.

Entry into mitosis is driven by the activity of kinases, which phosphorylate over 7000 proteins on multiple sites. For cells to exit mitosis and segregate their genome correctly, these phosphorylations must be removed in a specific temporal order. This raises a critical and important question: how are specific phosphorylation sites on an individual protein removed? Traditionally, the temporal order of dephosphorylation was attributed to decreasing kinase activity. However, recent evidence in human cells has identified unique patterns of dephosphorylation during mammalian (...) mitotic exit that cannot be fully explained by the loss of kinase activity. This suggests that specificity is determined in part by phosphatases. In this review, we explore how the physicochemical properties of an individual phosphosite and its surrounding amino acids can affect interactions with a phosphatase. These positive and negative interactions in turn help determine the specific pattern of dephosphorylation required for correct mitotic exit. (shrink)

With contributions from medicine, psychology and philosophy, Pathways into the Jungian World looks at the central issues of commonality and difference in phenomenology and analytical psychology. The essays investigate how existential phenomenology and analytical psychology have been involved in the same fundamental cultural and therapeutic project. They both legitimize the subtlety, complexity, and depth of experience in an age when the meaning of experience has been abandoned to the dictates of pharmaceutical technology, economics and medical psychiatry. The contributors reveal how (...) Jung's relationship to the phenomenological tradition is being developed and rigorously show that the psychological resonance of the world is immediately available for phenomenological description. Contributors: Lionel Corbett, Veronica Goodchild, John Haule, David Michael Levin, Stanton Marlan, Bertha Mook, Robert Romanyshyn, Ronald Schenk, Charles E. Scott, Eva Marie Simms, Michael P. Sipiora, Mary Watkins, Mark Welman. (shrink)

According to a standard picture, normative reasons do not extend beyond the boundaries of agency. If something isn’t an agent, then there can’t be normative reasons for it to do one thing rather than another. This paper argues that the standard picture is false. There are reasons for smoke detectors to alarm when exposed to smoke, and for Venus Flytraps to close around their prey when stimulated. I argue that the collapse of the standard picture has important implications for philosophical (...) debates about reasons, and especially serious consequences for theories that analyse normative reasons in terms of the standards of good practical reasoning. (shrink)

In Rediscovering Colors: A Study in Pollyanna Realism, Michael Watkins endorses the Moorean view that colors are simple, non-reducible, properties of objects. Consequently, Watkins breaks from what has become the received view that either colors are reducible to certain properties of interest to science, or else nothing is really colored. What is novel about the work is that Watkins, unlike other Mooreans, takes seriously the metaphysics of colors. Consequently, Watkins provides an account of what colors are, (...) how they are related to the physical properties on which they supervene, and how colors can be causally efficacious without the threat of causal overdetermination. Along the way, he provides novel accounts of normal conditions and non-human color properties. The book will be of interest to any metaphysician and philosopher of mind interested in colors and color perception. (shrink)

In his book The Retreat to Commitment Professor Bartley raised an important problem: can rationalism can rationalism be held in a rational way, that is, in a way that complies with its own requirements? Or is there bound to be something irrational in the rationalist's position? Briefly, Hartley's answer was that an element of irrationalism is involved in extant versions of rationalism; however, Bartley proposed a new version of rationalism that can, he claimed, be held in a way that is (...) rational according to its own account of rationality. Bartley called this ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism’. (shrink)

kant’s critique of pure reason undertakes a systematic investigation of the possibility of synthetic cognition a priori so as to determine whether this kind of cognition is possible in the case of traditional metaphysics.1 While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments as well as to that between the a priori and the a posteriori, less attention has been devoted to understanding exactly what cognition is for Kant. In particular, it is often insufficiently (...) clear what kind of mental state cognition is, what the exact nature of the conditions on cognition is, and how they are satisfied in the case of human beings. To bring greater clarity to... (shrink)

The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response-dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs: 1 The belief that challenges brought against response-dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value. 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates this purported fact. 3 The belief that response-dependence (...) about aesthetic value alone accommodates the widely acknowledged anthropocentricity of aesthetic value. 4 The belief that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates aesthetic normativity. We argue that each of these beliefs is false, and that the dominance of response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value is therefore largely without foundation. (shrink)

Current psychiatric classification adopts a disorder-focused diagnostic approach, as exemplified within ICD-11 and DSM-V. Although this approach has improved reliability of categorization, its validity and utility has been questioned (Harvey, Watkins, Mansell, & Shafran, 2004; Insel et al., 2009; Sanislow et al., 2010). Limitations include high comorbidity between supposedly distinct disorders; heterogeneity within diagnoses; limited treatment efficacy; and similarities across disorders in aetiology, latent symptom structure, and underlying biology. There is also evidence of transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioural processes (Harvey et al., (...) 2004). An alternative approach is therefore to focus on fundamental underlying mechanisms of psychopathology rather than observed symptom clusters. This article considers the possible benefits, hurdles, and steps towards implementation of this transdiagnostic mechanistic approach, using the example of repetitive negative thought. (shrink)

Intentionalism holds that two experiences differ in their representational content if and only if they differ in phenomenal character. It is generally held that Intentionalism cannot allow for the possibility of spectrum inversion without systematic error, unless it abandons the idea that, for example, the qualitative character of color experience is inherited from the qualitative character of colors. The paper argues that the conjunction of all three -- the possibility of spectrum inversion, Intentionalism, and the inheritance thesis -- can be (...) consistently, and plausibly, accepted. (shrink)

Les milliers de milliards de dollars injectés pour renflouer les institutions financières pèseront sur les économies intérieures pour les années à venir. Mais les interventions massives des États ont-elles signé la fin du modèle néolibéral ? Au plan idéologique, les créations de richesse mirifiques de la haute finance ont été son principal instrument de légitimation. On a senti, et pas seulement à gauche, que le paradigme néolibéral ne sortirait pas indemne de la crise, qui pouvait même porter un coup fatal (...) à l’hégémonie américaine. L’humiliation des géants de Wall Street semblait indiquer que le monde se trouvait au seuil d’une nouvelle ère. Entre-temps, le système financier a été stabilisé sans qu’aucun de ses problèmes de fond n’ait été résolu. Malgré le déferlement d’analyses consacrées à la crise, sa portée historique reste obscure. À quoi la crise de septembre 2008 a-t-elle mis fin ? À quoi n’a-t-elle pas mis fin ? (shrink)

Existing accounts of data are unclear about whether the epistemic role objects play makes them data, or whether data have to be produced by human interaction with the world – these two features can come apart. I illustrate this ambiguity using the case of fossil data, which have rich histories and undergo many processes before they are encountered by humans. I then outline several philosophical positions that would resolve the ambiguity moving forward, and elaborate on my preferred option.

ABSTRACTIn this paper I argue that Kant’s complex argument against materialism involves not only his generic commitment to the existence of non-spatio-temporal and thus non-material things in themselves, but also considerations pertaining to reason and the subject of our thoughts. Specifically, I argue that because Kant conceives of reason in such a way that it demands a commitment to the existence of the unconditioned so that we can account for whatever conditioned objects we encounter in experience, our thoughts, which are (...) also conditioned, require something unconditioned that, because it is unconditioned, cannot be material. In this way, Kant’s attitude towards materialism is based not only on abstract features of his metaphysics and epistemology, but also on specific features that were under serious discussion in the early modern period. (shrink)

One of the most serious pre-occupations of post-medieval philosophy has been to distinguish those kinds of assertion which are either true or false from those which are neither true nor false. A solution to this problem would be of the highest importance. It would indicate in what areas rational inquiry has some hope of success and in what areas it is doomed to frustration. It would tell us, for example, whether it is worth trying to think about the possible mistakenness (...) of our moral principles, or whether such thinking is bound to be ineffective since no truth or falsity attaches to them. (shrink)

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This (...) innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume. (shrink)

Sellars and McDowell, among others, attribute a prominent role to the Myth of the Given. In this paper, I suggest that they have in mind two different versions of the Myth of the Given and I argue that Kant is not the target of one version and, though explicitly under attack from the other, has resources sufficient to mount a satisfactory response. What is essential to this response is a proper understanding of (empirical) concepts as involving unifying functions that can (...) take sensations as input and deliver normative representations as outputs. By understanding concepts in this way, one need not, as the second version of the Myth of the Given maintains, take sensations to be both natural and normative. Instead, they can be understood as the natural effects of external objects on us, but natural effects that can nonetheless play a role in a normative process because the concepts that are responsible for the normativity of the results can require that such natural effects be present as inputs into the process. (shrink)

Slavery has long stood as a mirror image to the conception of a free person in republican theory. This essay contends that slavery deserves this central status in a theory of freedom, but a more thorough examination of slavery in theory and in practice will reveal additional insights about freedom previously unacknowledged by republicans. Slavery combines imperium (state domination) and dominium (private domination) in a way that both destroys freedom today and diminishes opportunities to achieve freedom tomorrow. Dominium and imperium (...) working together are a greater affront to freedom than either working alone. However, an examination of slavery in practice, focusing on the experiences of American slaves, demonstrates that republicanisms’ acknowledged strategies for freedom-seeking, acquiring insulation from domination through law and through norms, do not encompass the full range of options. Slaves also seek freedom through physical absence, economic activity, and culture. The account of slavery and freedom developed here suggests republican accounts of freedom should either give up their focus on thresholds of freedom, or consider the possibility of a plural conception of freedom that extends beyond just freedom as non-domination to include freedom as collective world-making, or both. (shrink)

By treating colours as sui generis intrinsic properties of objects we can maintain that (1) colours are causally responsible for colour experiences (and so agree with the physicalist) and (2) colours, along with the similarity and difference relations that colours bear to one another, are presented to us by casual observation (and so agree with the dispositionalist). The major obstacle for such a view is the causal overdetermination of colour experience. Borrowing and expanding on the works of Sydney Shoemaker and (...) Stephen Yablo, the paper offers a solution. (shrink)

This essay looks at Norplant qua technology and uses analytic frameworks from the social construction of technology to explain the trajectory of its brief history. The author contend that there were multiple uses of Norplant, in terms of rhetorical strategies, symbolic representations, and contraceptive intentions, constructed by reproductive scientists, population control advocates, pharmaceutical manufacturers, doctors, birth control clinic staffers, government regulators, legislators, judges, women’s health activists, potential users, and actual users. However, while relevant social groups shaped the discourse surrounding Norplant (...) in the 1990s, its ultimate fate was determined by choices made by potential users. At the ‘‘consumption junction’’ of the late twentieth-century contraceptive marketplace, American women ignored the meanings constructed for Norplant by developers, producers, providers, and policy makers and made their decisions based on what Norplant meant to them. Individuals’ decisions to choose other methods of preventing pregnancy coalesced into a collective rejection of this contraceptive technology. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinarity (ID) is very diverse. Our contribution is a demonstration that considerable diversity exists also on the level of understandings of ID that researchers working in the same ID field express. Specifically, we analyse qualitatively, building on the method of culture contrast, six interviews with researchers working in computational linguistics and language technology in Estonia. We identify six understandings of ID expressed by the interviewees: centred on an ID method; a disciplinary method in an ID (...) field; an ID way of seeing and thinking; ID education; ID interests; one’s field as naturally ID. We show how understandings of ID are significant for analysing research practice, since they are involved in how researchers form a positive picture of themselves and their colleagues. We also show how an awareness of different understandings of ID is useful for discussing the significance of integration in ID. (shrink)

This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, (...) class='Hi'>Watkins shows how Kant comes to view both the generic conception of law which he develops and its different particular instances as crucial components of his systematic philosophy as a whole. This volume's new and unified account of a major current running through Kant's work will be important for scholars interested in numerous aspects of his philosophy, from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and empirical. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of non-reductive accounts of color assume that the only arguments for such accounts are a priori arguments. I put forward a posteriori arguments for a non-reductive account of colors which avoids those criticisms.

The plays written about AIDS in the past dozen years form a radical canon establishing gay men as the locus for public attention. These plays have been all but silent in their representation of women with AIDS. This article examines the marginalized women in early plays such as The Normal Heart and As Is, and the women more central to later plays such as The Baltimore Waltz, Before It Hits Home, and Patient A. It foregrounds some of the most problematic (...) issues surrounding the AIDS virus: the perception of women as vectors of disease for men and unborn children, the insistent representation of women as mothers and caregivers, and the denial of patterns of abuse, sexual exploitation, and poverty which contribute to the marginalization of woman and people of color. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering the extent to which he presents a similar doctrine in his theoretical philosophy, where he strikingly claims (e.g., in the Prolegomena) that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. It argues that even though there are important points of difference between the cases of theoretical legislation of the laws of nature and autonomy in moral philosophy, their extensive parallels make a strong, even if not (...) definitive case in favor of the Prolegomena forming at least an important part of the explanation of the emergence of autonomy in the Groundwork. In addition, the comparison proves instructive insofar as it reveals deep structural parallels between Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy regarding his conception of laws. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we (...) first (I) investigate Kant’s explicit characterizations of the nature of cognition. As it turns out, he introduces several different notions that must be carefully distinguished before identifying the one that is central to his project in the first Critique. We then (II) consider the basic features of Kant’s conception of knowledge, indicating both how it involves assent and objective justification and how it relates to our contemporary conception. Next (III), we compare and contrast Kant’s understanding of cognition and his conception of knowledge in a way that allows us to present their fundamental differences and connections. We argue that while cognition, in the most relevant sense, is a species of representation that differs from other representations in that it involves the conceptual determination of a sensibly given object, knowledge (for Kant) is a kind of assent to a judgment that requires consciousness of a sufficient epistemic ground. Finally (IV), by appreciating the differences between cognition and knowledge, we explain several of the implications this conception of cognition has for some of Kant’s main claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. Among other things, we show how Kant can deny cognition of specific things in themselves while allowing philosophical knowledge about things in themselves in general (e.g. that they exist, are not in space and time, etc.). (shrink)

: This paper argues that Kant's model of causality cannot consist in one temporally determinate event causing another, as Hume had thought, since such a model is inconsistent with mutual interaction, to which Kant is committed in the Third Analogy. Rather causality occurs when one substance actively exercises its causal powers according to the unchanging grounds that constitute its nature so as to determine a change of state of another substance. Because this model invokes unchanging grounds, one can understand how (...) Kant could have thought that causal laws could be justified. Further, because this model, along with the broader ontology it presupposes, is radically different from Hume's, Kant's Second Analogy cannot be understood as a refutation of Hume's position on Hume's own terms; instead, Kant must be proposing an alternative view that competes against Hume's thoroughgoing empiricist account. (shrink)