In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed.

This article responds to two arguments against ‘Epistemic Perceptualism’, the view that emotional experiences, as involving a perception of value, can constitute reasons for evaluative belief. It first provides a basic account of emotional experience, and then introduces concepts relevant to the epistemology of emotional experience, such as the nature of a reason for belief, non-inferentiality, and prima facie vs. conclusive reasons, which allow for the clarification of Epistemic Perceptualism in terms of the Perceptual Justificatory View. It then challenges two (...) arguments which purport to show that emotional experience is not a source of reasons for evaluative belief. The first argument claims that because normative why-questions are always appropriate in the case of emotions, then emotions can never be conclusive reasons for corresponding evaluative beliefs. The second purports to show that appeal to emotional experience as a source of reasons for evaluative beliefs renders emotions problematically self-justifying, and since emotions cannot be self-justifying, they cannot provide any sort of reason for corresponding evaluative beliefs. This article responds to these arguments, and in doing so shows there is still much to be learned about the epistemology of emotional experience by drawing analogies with perceptual experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has long been held that the structure of a protein is determined solely by the interactions of the atoms in the sequence of amino acids of which it is composed, and thus the stable, biologically functional conformation should be predictable by ab initio or de novo methods. However, except for small proteins, ab initio predictions have not been successful. We explain why this is the case and argue that the relationship among the different methods, models, and representations of (...) protein structure is one of integrative pluralism. Our defence appeals to specific features of the complexity of the functional protein structure and to the partial character of representation in general. We present examples of integrative strategies in protein science. _1._ Introduction _2._ Partiality of Representation _3._ Protein Functional Complexity _4._ Modelling Protein Structure _4.1_ Integrating ab initio and experimental models _4.2_ Integrating multiple experimental models _5._ Conclusion. (shrink)

At Sophist 253d-e the Eleatic Visitor offers a notoriously obscure description of the fields of one-and-many that the dialectician “adequately discerns.” Against the readings of Stenzel, Cornford, Sayre, and Gomez-Lobo, I propose an interpretation of that passage that takes into account the trilogy of Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman as its context. The key steps are to respond to the irony of Socrates’ refutations at the end of the Theaetetus by reinterpreting the last two senses of logos as directed to forms and to recognize (...) their correlation with the two different modes of diairesis practiced by the Eleatic Visitor. These steps position us to recognize in the Visitor’s remarks at Sophist 253d-e a schematic description of the two kinds of eidetic field that the two modes of diairesis trace. (shrink)

Slote has argued that empathy plays a crucial role in such speech acts as questions and assertions. After clarifying some of the aims and limitations of speech act theory, providing an account of empathy and its potential epistemic value, and sketching the role that some speech acts play in expressing psychological states, we consider Slote’s argument for the place of empathy in questions and assertions. We show that the most that Slote has established is that some cases of questioning and (...) asserting depend upon on empathetic engagement between speaker and addressee. That, however, is no basis for concluding that empathy plays a crucial role in either of these illocutions. (shrink)

In the Statesman , Plato brings together--only to challenge and displace--his own crowning contributions to philosophical method, political theory, and drama. In his 1980 study, reprinted here, Mitchell Miller employs literary theory and conceptual analysis to expose the philosophical, political, and pedagogical conflict that is the underlying context of the dialogue, revealing that its chaotic variety of movements is actually a carefully harmonized act of realizing the mean. The original study left one question outstanding: what specifically, in the metaphysical (...) order of things, motivated the nameless Visitor from Elea to abandon bifurcation for his consummating non-bifurcatory division of fifteen kinds at the end of the dialogue? Miller addressed in a separate essay, first published in 1999 and reprinted here. In it, he opens the horizon of interpretation to include the new metaphysics of the Parmenides , the Philebus , and the "unwritten teachings." "This study demonstrates how the Statesman is the culminating expression of Plato's lifelong effort, both in Athens and in the Academy, to bring metaphysical insight to the unending political crisis of his times."The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman a trail-blazing work. While not every reader will agree with the lessons Miller himself draws from this approach, none should fail to be impressed by its interpretive power. All this is exciting stuff. The interpretive pathway on which Miller has embarked has the potential for changing the face of scholarship on the late Platonic dialogues. Parmenides [Publishing] is to be commended for making these two important contributions available under a single cover." -- Kenneth Sayre, Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame "Miller casts considerable light on virtually every aspect of the dialogue. . . . All in all, this book is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the Statesman." -- Stanley Rosen, Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy, Boston University MITCHELL MILLER is Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. He is the author of Plato's Parmenides. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn’s supervenience argument—focusing on the mysterious “ban on mixed worlds”—is still subject to a variety of conflicting interpretations. In this paper, I hope to provide a defense of the argument that clarifies both the argument and the objections it must overcome. Many of the extant objections, I will argue, fail to engage the argument in its true form. And to counter the more compelling objections, it will be necessary to bring in additional argumentation that Blackburn himself does not clearly (...) provide. One important upshot of this discussion is that moral realism is not the only target of the argument: it raises trouble for a variety of metaethical views wed to realist-friendly construals of moral evaluation. Rightly understood, this argument not only survives the prominent responses, but turns out to be more powerful than his critics and Blackburn himself have recognized. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to argue that Nietzsche takes his own taste, and those in the relevant sense similar to it, to enjoy a kind of epistemic privilege over their rivals. Section 2 will examine the textual evidence for an anti-realist reading of Nietzsche on taste. Section 3 will then provide an account of taste as an ‘affective evaluative sensibility’, asking whether taste so understood supports an anti-realist reading. I will argue that it does not and that (...) we should resist construing the affects, which constitute taste for Nietzsche, as no more than Humean subjective preferences. Section 4 will then consider passages in which Nietzsche makes a connection between taste and epistemic considerations, suggesting that he appears to situate the epistemic privilege of his taste in a more fundamental method of evaluative disclosure, namely pre-reflective affective responses. Finally, Section 5 will argue that we can make sense of how such affective responses could provide us with evaluative knowledge by narrowing the scope of the objects of Nietzsche’s taste to other affective-evaluative states, such that the affective responses are meta-affective evaluations. On the basis of this idea, I construct a theory of meta-affective responses providing their subjects with access to the intrinsic phenomenal value of other affective-evaluative states, and then go on to show how Nietzsche can be read as applying this theory in a number of passages. (shrink)

that there is something rationally or conceptually defective in judging that an act is right without being in any way motivated towards it—is one which has tended to lead either to error theories of ethics on the one hand, or acceptance of the truth of internalism on the other. This paper argues that it does play a kind of subject-setting role, but that our responses to cases can be rationalised without requiring that internalism is true for ethical realism to be (...) vindicated. Instead what is required is that something like internalism be believed to be true. The widespreadness of the internalist intuition is part of what makes it the case that some actions are right and others wrong. Of course these beliefs might be false—as the present author holds—consistent with ethical realism, just so long as they are widely held, and whatever else it takes to vindicate realism is the case. In such a situation, widespread false belief would be part of what makes it so that some acts are right, and others wrong. (shrink)

We generalize the ultrapower in a way suitable for choiceless set theory. Given an ultrafilter, forcing is used to construct an extended ultrapower of the universe, designed so that the fundamental theorem of ultrapowers holds even in the absence of the axiom of choice. If, in addition, we assume DC, then an extended ultrapower of the universe by a countably complete ultrafilter must be well-founded. As an application, we prove the Vopěnka-Hrbáček theorem from ZF + DC only (the proof of (...) Vopěnka and Hrbáček used the full axiom of choice): if there exists a strongly compact cardinal, then the universe is not constructible from a set. The same method shows that, in L[ 2 ω ], there cannot exist a θ-compact cardinal less than θ (where θ is the least cardinal onto which the continuum cannot be mapped); a similar result can be proven for other models of the form L[ A ]. The result for L[ 2 ω ] is of particular interest in connection with the axiom of determinacy. The extended ultrapower construction of this paper is an improved version of the author's earlier pseudo-ultrapower method, making use of forcing rather than the omitting types theorem. (shrink)

A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know what’s going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes (...) from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing we’re smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isn’t really so. I’m not talking about Extra-Sensory Perception, channeling, auras, or about what. (shrink)

In this paper we will focus on the following points in Epictetus. First, we will concentrate our attention on the celebrated distinction between things up to us and things not up to us. Second, we will survey the distinction between the material and its use. According to this distinction, all external things are not up to us and consequently have no intrinsic value, although, as materials for the capacity of choice, their use has value, since humans can use things well (...) or badly. Third, we will demonstrate that the use of the materials corresponds to the use of presentations. Finally, we will present the three topics of Epictetus’ philosophy: the topic relative to desire, the topic relative to impulse and the topic relative to assent, being the first concerned with judgments about things and our desires; the second, about impulses and adequate actions; and the third, about assent and persuasiveness of presentations. The knowledge contained in these three topics constitute, for Epictetus, what we should know to make good use of presentations and, consequently, to achieve the human good, which is a capacity of choice according to nature that has at its disposal a comprehensive set of correct opinions about reality. (shrink)

Plotinus I. Enneades I-III cum vita Porphyrii.

This article discusses connections between grounded action, leverage points, and paradigm transformation and transcendence. Part one provides background on Meadows' (1999) approach to leverage points as well as the concept of paradigms. Part two argues that grounded action is inherently suited for leverage points analysis and paradigm-based interventions. Part three offers an example of individual paradigm transformation in the educational context vis-à-vis Olson's (2006) grounded theory of driven succeeding. The article concludes with considerations of how the application of grounded action (...) in one classroom might leverage system-wide paradigm transformation. (shrink)

Two seemingly complementary trends stand out currently in school science education in the United States: one is the increased emphasis on inquiry activities in classrooms, and the other is the high level of attention given to student understanding of the nature of science. This essay looks at the range of activities that fall within the first trend, noting, in particular, the growing popularity of inquiry activities that engage students in engineering-type tasks. The potential for public disengagement from science and technology (...) issues is described as a result of the continued juxtaposition of these sorts of inquiry activities with our current, idealized portrayals of the nature of science—the emphasis of the second trend. Drawing on Dewey's instrumental theory of knowledge, an alternative way of thinking about science is offered that would not only provide for a more authentic understanding of science, but also invite much needed public participation in the broad governance of science in modern-day democratic societies. (shrink)

Leibniz beschäftigte sich nicht nur in seiner Philosophie, sondern auch in seinen Arbeiten als Jurist, als Bibliothekar, als theologischer Ökumeniker und nicht zuletzt in seinem Alltagsleben in der Residenz Hannover immer wieder mit Juden und mit Judentum. Dennoch wurde bisher in der Forschung seine Einstellung zum Judentum kaum durchleuchtet - etwa zur jüdischen Religion, zur Kabbala, zur hebräischen Bibel und rabbinischen Tradition oder zu seinen jüdischen Zeitgenossen selbst, ihren Werken und ihrer Rechtsstellung. Hier blieb die Analyse von Leibniz' persönlicher Haltung (...) und theoretischer Reflexion ein Desiderat. Diese Forschungslücke schließt der vorliegende Band. Er präsentiert die Ergebnisse einer internationalen Konferenz in Potsdam, auf der ausgewiesene Leibniz-Forscher dessen Verhältnis zu Judentum und Juden diskutierten und aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven in den Blick nahmen. (shrink)

This article outlines current safe harbors in the law for healthcare practitioners who work in a disaster setting. It reviews available legal protection in crisis situations with respect to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), criminal liability, and licensure.

This paper focuses on the history of dzogchen within the heart essence tradition.

This paper focuses on the contributions of phenomenology to Dzogchen.

This paper focuses on Dzogchen and self liberation.

This paper focuses on the essence of dzogchen as Presence.

It is a pity that the question about the proper purpose of law has so often been formulated in terms of ‘the enforcement of morals’. Not only is that issue highly charged with emotion, but the sense of the expression is unclear and, taken in any ordinary sense, its importance is marginal. What Lord Devlin seems chiefly to be arguing, when he supports the enforcement of morals, is that there are in any society certain central institutions which receive and deserve (...) protection by law and that without such protection the society in question would disintegrate. His examples in our own society are monogamy and private property. It is true that these institutions are closely bound up with parts of our morality in two different ways: certain moral prohibitions are defined in terms of them, e.g. adultery and theft; a host of obligations is associated with them upon whose general acceptance and discharge their continuance depends. But it is only in an extended sense that one could describe the institutions themselves as parts of the common morality. It is possible, therefore, to hold that the law may properly be used to protect such institutions without necessarily taking the further step of maintaining that their protection requires and justifies legal prohibition of acts which offend against the associated morality. Professor Hart states this position clearly : ‘What is essential and to be preserved is the essential core. On this footing it would be an open and empirical question whether any particular moral rule or veto, e.g. on homosexuality, adultery or fornication, is so organically connected with the central core that its maintenance and preservation is required as a vital outwork or bastion.’. (shrink)