We conducted a study of how the metaphysical views of farmers might relate to their choices about how to farm. Our particular focus was on the farming of animals for meat and the environmental impacts of the choices about how to raise the animals. We interviewed farmers at six different operations. We analyzed the farms from the perspectives of ecofeminism, deep ecology, the land ethic, and American Pragmatism. Of the farms that participated in our study, one was a fish farm, (...) three raised cattle, and two raised multiple species of animals. Our questions consisted of the following: “How do you view the human relationship with the rest of nature ?“ and “How do these views affect your choices about how to farm?“. (shrink)

This article assesses undergraduate teaching students’ assertion that there are no right and wrong answers in teaching philosophy. When asked questions about their experiences of philosophy in the classroom for primary children, their unanimous declaration that teaching philosophy has ‘no right and wrong answers’ is critically examined across the three sub-disciplinary areas to which they were generally referring, namely, pedagogy, ethics, and epistemology. From a pedagogical point of view, it is argued that some teach­ing approaches may indeed be more effective (...) than others, and some pupils’ opinions less defensible, but pedagogically, in terms of managing the power relations in the classroom, it is counter-productive to continually insist on notions of truth and falsity at every point. From an ethical point of view, it is contended that anti-realist approaches to meta-ethics may represent a viable intellectual position, but from the point of view of normative ethics, notions of right and wrong still retain significant currency. From an epistemological point of view, it is argued using Karl Popper’s work that while it may be difficult to determine what constitutes a right answer, determining a wrong one is far more straightforward. In conclusion, it is clear that prospective teachers engaging in philosophy in the classroom, and also future teachers in general, require a far more nuanced philosophical understanding of the notions of right and wrong and truth and falsity. In view of this situation, if we wish to promote the effective teaching of philosophical thinking to children, or produce educators who can understand the conceptual limits of the claims they make and their very real and often serious practical and social consequences, it is recommended that philosophy be reinstated to a fundamental, foundational place within the pre-service teaching curriculum. (shrink)

Dans ce livre novateur, Caroline Muller nous propose une lecture minutieuse de la correspondance entre des femmes (et quelques hommes) de la haute société et leurs directeurs de conscience, ces prêtres chargés de guider la vie spirituelle et de sonder la vie intérieure des catholiques, principalement des femmes, au xixe siècle. En cela, son livre est à la fois une histoire de la spiritualité, de l’aristocratie, du mariage et de la vie familiale, ainsi que de l’intimité et du genre. Échappant...

Most scholars think of David Hilbert's program as the most demanding and ideologically motivated attempt to provide a foundation for mathematics, and because they see technical obstacles in the way of realizing the program's goals, they regard it as a failure. Against this view, Curtis Franks argues that Hilbert's deepest and most central insight was that mathematical techniques and practices do not need grounding in any philosophical principles. He weaves together an original historical account, philosophical analysis, and his own (...) development of the meta-mathematics of weak systems of arithmetic to show that the true philosophical significance of Hilbert's program is that it makes the autonomy of mathematics evident. The result is a vision of the early history of modern logic that highlights the rich interaction between its conceptual problems and technical development. (shrink)

Idealism is an ontological view, a view about what sorts of things there are in the universe. Idealism holds that what there is depends on our own mental structure and activity. Berkeley of course held that everything was mental; Kant held the more complex view that there was an important distinction between the mental and the physical, but that the structure of the empirical world depended on the activities of minds. Despite radical differences, idealists like Berkeley and Kant share what (...) Ralph Barton Perry called "the cardinal principle of idealism," namely, the principle that "being is dependent on the knowing of it."1 I believe that Hilary Putnam intends his "internal realism" to be a version of idealism in this broad sense; although many of his arguments concern semantic notions like truth and reference, he takes these semantic arguments to have ontological consequences. This is strongly suggested, for instance, by his claim that "'objects' themselves are as much made as discovered, as much products of our conceptual invention as of the 'objective' factor in experience."2 Or again there is this rather Kantian metaphor: "the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world."3 But just what is Putnam's ontology? (shrink)

This chapter treats in roughly chronological order ten Lutheran theologians other than Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, who were examined in the previous chapter. All of these figures can be discussed in relation to their reception of Søren Kierkegaard's writings, even though the level of appropriation of Kierkegaard varies significantly. They include German national Lutheran theologians Karl Holl, Friedrich Gogarten, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch, Scandinavian Lutheran theologians Anders Nygren, Knud Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren, and contemporary German Lutheran (...) theologians Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel. The chapter attempts to identify distinctive characteristics of each thinker and their connections to Kierkegaard. (shrink)

Attempts to articulate the real meaning or ultimate significance of a famous theorem comprise a major vein of philosophical writing about mathematics. The subfield of mathematical logic has supplie...

In this article I present a theory of what it is to be fair. I take my cue from Broome’s well known 1990 account of fairness. Broome’s basic thesis is that fairness is the proportional satisfaction of claims, and with this I am in at least partial agreement. But neither Broome nor anyone else (so far as I know) has laid down a theory of precisely what one must do in order to be fair. The theory offered here does just (...) this. (shrink)

In 1952, two well-known characters called ‘A’ and ‘B’ met for the first time to argue about the Identity of Indiscernibles (Black, 1952). A argued that the principle is true, and B that it is false. By all accounts A took a bit of a beating and came out worst-off. Forty-three years later John O’Leary-Hawthorne offered a response on behalf of A that looked as if it would work so long as A was willing to accept the universal-bundle theory of (...) substance (Hawthorne, 1995). In 1997, A and B met again (Zimmerman, 1997). A took Hawthorne’s advice and revealed himself as a universal-bundle theorist. But B was well-prepared, and once more A took a beating. Since then Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2004) has put the boot in, offering further criticism of A’s position. In recent years A has been rather quiet, leaving B to reign as the undisputed champion. However, it turns out that A is down, but not out. And now it’s time for A’s revenge. (shrink)

Charles Darwin's "Historical Sketch" has appeared as a preface to nearly every authorized edition of Darwin's Origin of Species since the second English edition was published in 1860. The "Historical Sketch" provides a brief history of opinion about the species question as a prelude to Darwin's own independent contribution to the subject, but its provenance is somewhat obscure. While some previous thinkers anticipated portions of Darwin's theory long before he did, none of them saw the complete picture as clearly as (...) Darwin. As such, he was able to claim originality and priority for the idea that has transformed our understanding of nature. His "Historical Sketch" was written as an attempt to address these issues. Some things are known about its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form in 1866. Other questions remain unanswered. How did it evolve in Darwin's mind? Why did he write it at all? What did he think he was accomplishing by prefacing it to Origin of Species? Curtis Johnson approaches these questions, offering some clarity on the originality of Darwin's work. Darwin's "Historical Sketch" is the first comprehensive study of Darwin's "Preface" to Origin of Species. Johnson conveys the pressure Darwin felt from friends and other correspondents to showcase the originality of his theory, and he tackles questions of originality by carefully examining the 35 authors Darwin referenced in this monumental text. (shrink)

William Whewell tried to explain how scientific knowledge of necessary and certain truth was possible by tracing it to ideas that arose not out of experience but had an independent origin in the mind. Although Whewell has generally been regarded as an a priorist in some sense and as a proponent of hypothetico-deductivism, Snyder tries to show that he can be assimilated to the twentieth-century inductivist mainstream. She fails to make her case, however, in part because she fails to pay (...) sufficient attention to Whewell’s insistence that scientific discovery is beyond the reach of method and always involves happy guesses. (shrink)

The debate over scientific realism, simply put, is a debate over what we can and should believe about reality once we've critically assessed all the available arguments and empirical evidence. Thinking earnestly about the merits of scientific realism as a philosophical thesis requires navigating contentious historiographical issues, being familiar with the technical details of various scientific theories, and addressing disparate philosophical problems spanning aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, and beyond. This issue of Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of (...) Science aims to make participating in the scientific realism debate easier for both newcomers and veterans, collecting over twenty invited and peer-reviewed papers under the title "The Future of the Scientific Realism Debate: Contemporary Issues Concerning Scientific Realism.". (shrink)

For evolutionary biologists, the concept of chance has always played a significant role in the formation of evolutionary theory. As far back as Greek antiquity, chance and "luck" were key factors in understanding the natural world. Chance is not just an important concept; it is an entire way of thinking about nature. And as Curtis Johnson shows, it is also one of the key ideas that separates Charles Darwin from other systematic biologists of his time. Studying the concept of (...) chance in Darwin's writing reveals core ideas in his theory of evolution, as well as his reflections on design, purpose, and randomness in nature's progression over the course of history.In Darwin's Dice: The Idea of Chance in the Thought of Charles Darwin, Curtis Johnson examines Darwin's early notebooks, his collected correspondence, and most of his published writing to trace the evolution of his ideas about chance in evolution. This proved to be one of Darwin's most controversial ideas among his reading public, so much so that it drew hostile reactions even from Darwin's scientific friends, not to mention the more general reader. The firestorm of criticism forced Darwin to forge a retreat, not in terms of removing chance from his theory--his commitment to it was unshakable--but in terms of how he chose to present his theory. Briefly, by changing his wording and by introducing metaphors and images, Darwin succeeded in making his ideas seem less threatening than before without actually changing his views. Randomness remained a focal point for Darwin throughout his life. Through the lens of randomness, Johnson reveals implications of Darwin's views for religion, free will, and moral theory. Darwin's Dice presents a new way to look at Darwinist thought and the writings of Charles Darwin. (shrink)

Many philosophers today accept the broadly Aristotelian view that one can explain de re necessary properties by invoking essence. These ‘Neo-Aristotelian essentialists’ hold that a property F is an essential property of x iff specifying F gives a correct answer to the Aristotelian ‘what is x?’ question. We are sceptical. According to neo-Aristotelian essentialists, essential properties are not themselves de re modal properties, but they are supposed to explain why things have their de re modal properties. Neo-Aristotelian essentialists accept the (...) following principle (ENL): If x is essentially F, then x is necessarily F. We ask: Why? We first clarify the neo-Aristotelian notion of essence via the Aristotelian “what is x?” question. So far as we can see, the only way to do this is by appeal to the notion of a substance sortal. We then consider the notion of a substance sortal itself, and argue that there is nothing in that notion that even so much as suggests that ENL is true. (shrink)

This study expands the application of deonance theory into organizations’ upper echelons by examining how CEOs imprinted with a sense of duty can influence managerial decision-making. We hypothesize an imprint of bounded autonomy, an ought-force that constrains their decision-making and understanding of behavioral freedom, influences duty-bound CEOs to self-report errors in past financial reporting. We test deonance theory propositions of instrumentality for behavioral expansion, namely loss avoidance and gain attainment, related to institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership. We use (...) CEOs that are graduates of U.S. service academies as a proxy for duty-bound executives and find firms they lead are more likely to issue a financial restatement to correct a previous reporting error. This finding is robust to alternate explanations such as being error-prone, earnings management, auditor oversight, and risk behaviors. We also find evidence that deonance may be subject to behavioral expansion. The likelihood of issuing a restatement decreases as institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership increases. This study shows imprinted deonance within the C-suite influences important organizational outcomes. (shrink)

In this paper, I shed light on Kant’s notion of Erkenntnis or cognition by focusing on texts pertaining to Kant’s thoughts on logic. Although a passage from Kant’s Logik is widely referred to for understanding Kant’s conception of Erkenntnis, this work was not penned by Kant himself but rather compiled by Benjamin Jäsche. So, it is imperative to determine its fidelity to Kant’s thought. I compare the passage with other sources, including Reflexionen and students’ lecture notes. I argue that several (...) of the text’s peculiarities stem from Jäsche rather than Kant, but that nevertheless Jäsche largely got Kant's view right, with two major exceptions. First, Jäsche’s text fails to reproduce Kant’s key thesis that kennen and verstehen are jointly sufficient for Erkenntnis. Second, Jäsche’s text gives the false impression that Kant holds that animals have consciousness. (shrink)

The papers where Gerhard Gentzen introduced natural deduction and sequent calculi suggest that his conception of logic differs substantially from the now dominant views introduced by Hilbert, Gödel, Tarski, and others. Specifically, (1) the definitive features of natural deduction calculi allowed Gentzen to assert that his classical system nk is complete based purely on the sort of evidence that Hilbert called ?experimental?, and (2) the structure of the sequent calculi li and lk allowed Gentzen to conceptualize completeness as a question (...) about the relationships among a system's individual rules (as opposed to the relationship between a system as a whole and its ?semantics?). Gentzen's conception of logic is compelling in its own right. It is also of historical interest, because it allows for a better understanding of the invention of natural deduction and sequent calculi. (shrink)

Almost any modern reader's first encounter with Darwin's writing is likely to be the "Historical Sketch," inserted by Darwin as a preface to an early edition of the Origin of Species, and having since then appeared as the preface to every edition after the second English edition. The Sketch was intended by him to serve as a short "history of opinion" on the species question before he presented his own theory in the Origin proper. But the provenance of the "Historical (...) Sketch" is somewhat obscure. Some things are known about its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form, for the fourth English edition, in 1866. But how it evolved in Darwin's mind, why he wrote it at all, and what he thought he was accomplishing by prefacing it to the Origin remain questions that have not been carefully addressed in the scholarly literature on Darwin I attempt to show that Darwin's various statements about the "Historical Sketch," made primarily to several of his correspondents between 1856 and 1860, are somewhat in conflict with one another, thus making problematic a satisfactory interpretation of how, when, and why the Sketch came to be. I also suggest some probable resolutions to the several difficulties. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power has generated a large body of work in many different disciplines. Much of it has considered the paradox of the power of “each and all” or has seen pastoral power as an extension of the disciplinary gaze into welfare state policy. The political economy of the pastorate and the mutual dependence of sovereign and pastoral power, by contrast, are both relatively neglected. This article focuses on the exercise of pastoral power in a moral and (...) political economy and examines the “arts of government” through which the Catholic Church attempted to claim that pastors lived from the flock only to live for it. While there is heuristic value in Foucault’s diagram of pastoral power, in practice that power cannot be separated from class relations and political sovereignty. Empirical material is drawn from the novel attempt of Britain to govern its Quebec colony through the Catholic Church. (shrink)

The loss of life that resulted from the sinking of the fisheries training vessel EhimeMaru by the nuclear submarine USSGreeneville off Hawaii in February 2001 exemplifies the risks to United States–Japan alliance relations posed by US global military deployments. Following a pattern of incidents involving the US military in Japan itself, the collision violated Japanese expectations of benevolence from its stronger partner and put considerable pressure on the government to seek public apology and reassurance. This article examines the interplay of (...) culture, national security interests and domestic politics in framing both perceptions and diplomacy during the crisis. While differences at both the cultural and security levels complicated diplomacy, asymmetry in the respective domestic political stakes, combined with overriding and largely congruent security interests, helped the United States to provide Japan with the requisite reassurance. After a decade of alliance drift, both Japan and the United States were determined to forestall defection by their alliance partner. (shrink)

The first thesis is that beliefs play a role in explaining behavior. This is reasonably uncontroversial, though it has been controverted. Why did I raise my arm? Because I wanted to emphasize a point, and believed that I could do so by raising my arm. The belief that I could emphasize a point by raising my arm is central to the most natural explanation of my action.

Belief states are only contingently connected with the objects of belief. Burge's examples show that the same belief state can be associated with different objects of belief. Kripke's puzzle shows that the same object of belief can be associated with different belief states. Nevertheless, belief states can best be characterized by a subset of the propositions one believes, namely those one directly or immediately believes. The rest of the things one believes are believed indirectly, by virtue of one's direct beliefs. (...) This distinction sheds light on Kripke's puzzle, the problem of the contingent a priori, and the problem of logical omniscience. (shrink)

The second volume of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion emphasizes the pulsating particularities that distinguish the religions of history from one another. This volume discloses Hegel’s philosophical theology to be an open system whose concepts, as Jon Stewart points out, are no mere abstractions but principles concretely instantiated in the real world. This article first reviews key analytical notions used in investigating religions, with the notion of freedom being the most important. Next are examined two models of the (...) God-world relation that have gained significant attention in the secondary literature on Hegel: pantheism, which affirms God as the substantial power in all things, and panentheism, which affirms all things as being in God. The essay’s final portion turns to a third model of the God-world relation, pantransentheism, which affirms that all things are being transformed in God. There I offer a very abbreviated gesture towards a Hegelian pantransentheism. (shrink)

Building on scholarship on Horace’s attribution of weakness to himself in the Epodes, this article finds a parallel for that practice, and for modern scholars’ analyses of it, in Quintilian’s theory of invective, which allows that mollitia, infirmitas, and lack of nervi may be advantageous for the orator. This comparison allows us to recognize Horace as a rhetorical innovator who, in response to the political upheaval of the civil wars, transforms not only poetic but also oratorical traditions of invective. It (...) also deepens our understanding of the function of poetic models in Quintilian’s treatise. (shrink)

In the noble tradition of Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget (Penguin, 2011), Curtis White's We, Robots takes the radical position that maybe we shouldn't cede every bit of control, humanity, and decision making to technology, and that the techno-futurists in our mix have things dangerously backwards. What a notion! In this sharply argued and rousing book, White not only attacks the technology-loving establishment, but offers a beautiful and essential alternative.

In this paper I argue that if a completed neuroscience of consciousness is to be attained, we must give the synchronic and diachronic application conditions for brain states and phenomenal states. I argue that, due to the temporal nature of our experiences, such states must be viewed as being temporally extended events, and illustrate how to give such application conditions using examples of other temporally extended events. However, I also raise some difficulties for the project of giving application conditions for (...) brain states and phenomenal states and suggest these as challenges for further philosophical work. (shrink)

ArgumentDespite the fact that “empathy” is often simply used as a translation ofEinfühlung, the two terms have distinct meanings and distinct disciplinary affiliations. This text considers the manner in which the moving image invites spatial forms of engagement akin to those described both by historical accounts ofEinfühlung, a form of engagement that pertains not only to the activities of humans represented within images, but also to the aesthetic qualities of images in a more abstract sense and to the forms to (...) be found there. (shrink)

Elise Reimarus was among the leading women intellectuals of eighteenth-century Hamburg. Rarely acknowledged today, her surviving writings contribute to central literary and philosophical debates in Europe at the time. This paper traces Reimarus’s intervention in controversy surrounding Joseph Addison’s tragedy Cato (1713) and its dramatization of republican liberty and virtue. Long erased from the literary canon, Reimarus’s German translation and adaptation (ca. 1776) radicalizes Addison’s critique of Cato’s Stoic leadership style. By rewriting the love-plots and foregrounding the women characters’ private (...) lives, her Cato engenders an alternative “art of politics”—one that steers a consequentialist path toward the common good. (shrink)

Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the disagreement (...) between advocates of perdurance and advocates of endurance as analyses of identity over time; the notion of identity across possible worlds and the question of its relevance to the correct analysis of de re modal discourse; the notion of contingent identity; the question of whether the identity relation is, or is similar to, the composition relation; and the notion of vague identity. A radical position, advocated by Peter Geach, is that these debates, as usually conducted, are void for lack of a subject matter: the notion of absolute identity they presuppose has no application; there is only relative identity. Another increasingly popular view is the one advocated by Lewis: although the debates make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. Identity is an utterly unproblematic notion. What there are, are genuine problems which can be stated using the language of identity. But since these can be restated without the language of identity they are not problems about identity. (For example, it is a puzzle, an aspect of the so-called “problem of personal identity”, whether the same person can have different bodies at different times. But this is just the puzzle whether a person can have different bodies at different times. So since it can be stated without the language of personal “identity”, it is not a problem about identity, but about personhood.) This article provides an overview of the topics indicated above, some assessment of the debates and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

This article considers the war against terror in relation to classical tragedy. It uses Heidegger's analysis of Sophocles's play Antigone to argue that human beings are essentially `homeless' and yet our destiny lies in the continual attempt to overcome this homelessness by establishing foundational principles that might bring our journeying to an end. The tragedy of this situation is that the search for foundations and a search for a home invariably bring differing worlds in conflict with each other as their (...) paths to truth collide. Lucien Goldmann's analysis of the tragedy of refusal is also considered in relation to a non-foundational politics that may permit us not only to endure, but actually to affirm our homelessness as an attempt to resist the terror and anabolic militarism that marks the current age. (shrink)

This essay seeks to scrutinize Kierkegaard’s critical philosophical theology. The intent is to demonstrate how his religious thought, especially on God’s relation to the world and to the human being, can contribute to generating a cogent response to the challenges presented by our accelerating secular world. Apart from the narrative on the Dane’s passionate reflections, I employ two other narratives to facilitate this inquiry into Kierkegaard. The first of these facilitating narratives comes from highlighting the work on the concept of (...) resonance by the social theorist Hartmut Rosa. Rosa’s rich analysis of our contemporary situation provides a persuasive case for the accelerating pace of our secular world, the complex dynamics of alienation that are at play within it, and the need for social transformation that creates space for increasing resonance within personal and social relationships and structures. The second facilitating narrative centers on the notion of dancing in God, which I believe holds promise for effectively communicating moving, bodily, rhythmic, passionate, and responsive thoughts and actions concerning God’s engagement in our contemporary world. I hope to show that these three complementary discourses together provide a provocative religious discourse and vision that can prove helpful in addressing many of the challenges of our time. (shrink)

Corporate governance scholarship focuses on executive malfeasance, specifically its antecedents and consequences. Academic efforts primarily focus on prevention while practitioners are often left to hold firms and executives (including directors) accountable through a variety of sanctions. Even so, executive malfea­sance still occurs even in the face of the vast resources used to monitor, control, and penalize firms and executives. In this paper, we posit equity markets do not adequately penalize firms for inaccurate earnings reports. Using a sample of 129 firms (...) identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office for reporting fraudulent earnings in 10K filings, we found support for our assertion. Consequently, the one party who may benefit but escape accountability is firm shareholders. Moreover, we find little empirical evidence that the subset of firms sanctioned by the SEC is penalized more heavily than the full sample by markets at the time they report and correct their 10K filings. Our results raise serious questions whether such mana­gerial opportunism can be eradicated given the apparent lack of consequences in equity markets for investors. We also question whether the SEC is able to discern between fraud and error in financial reporting and its implications. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of moral philosophers have held both that there are particular moral truths, and also that there are no general moral principles which explain these particular moral truths--either because there simply are no moral principles, or because moral principles are themselves explained by or derived from particular moral truths rather than vice versa. Often this combination of doctrines is held by philosophers interested in reviving an Aristotelean approach..

There is an ambiguity in the concept of deductive validity that went unnoticed until the middle of the twentieth century. Sometimes an inference rule is called valid because its conclusion is a theorem whenever its premises are. But often something different is meant: The rule's conclusion follows from its premises even in the presence of other assumptions. In many logical environments, these two definitions pick out the same rules. But other environments are context-sensitive, and in these environments the second notion (...) is stronger. Sorting out this ambiguity has led to profound mathematical investigations with applications in complexity theory and computer science. The origins of this ambiguity and the history of its resolution deserve philosophical attention, because our understanding of logic stands to benefit from their details. I am eager to examine together with you, Crito, whether this argument will appear in any way different to me in my present circumstances, or whether it remains the same, whet... (shrink)

Few philosophical topics are as intertwined with gender questions as the topic of love, which moved center-stage in the diverse literary and philosophical productions of the Renaissance. Situated in the rich cultural environment of Cinquecento, Italy, Tullia d'Aragona's Dialogo della Infinità d'Amore offers not only a unique contribution to Renaissance theories of love, but also forces a reexamination of the aims and methods of communication, and provokes a reflection on philosophy's very own self-conception.

The paper was read at a symposium in Eastern International Meeting of the American Academcy of Religion, Alfred, N.Y. April 16–17, 1993.

Utopias from ancient times to the present have come and gone. They remain as a part of literary, philosophical and historical texts and communal practices. Yet this subject has never ceased to inspire contemporary minds as well. My aim in this paper is to consider the communities known as favelas that have formed on the edges of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro as a contemporary form of utopian community. The paper begins with a brief analysis of the concept (...) of utopia. Then follows a discussion of the Favela as an urban utopia as seen from the perspective of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation as represented in his book, The Philosophy of Liberation. The remainder of the paper will consider in what sense the Favela settlements can be understood as a form of utopia. Among additional sources for this paper, I will refer to the research on the favelas by such scholars as Janice Perlman and Catalytic Communities. Other sources will include art projects in the favelas, the novel and film City of God made on site, and photographs of Miguel Rio Branco taken in the Favelas. All of these artists’ representations reflectactual experiences of life in the Favelas. An underlying question throughout will be the role that art might play in understanding utopias. (shrink)

This chapter describes the Danish church, with the focus centered primarily on its life during the years 1835 to 1855 when Søren Kierkegaard was productive. The beginnings of the church up to 1835 are briskly examined, and then contributions of Jacob Peter Mynster, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, and Hans Lassen Martensen are delineated. These three figures have been chosen because of their importance both for the Danish church and for Kierkegaard. The chapter ends with a few comments on some creative (...) thinkers who find in Kierkegaard's critique a resource for critically reforming the church so that it might more appropriately serve its intended purpose. At points in the chapter, the analysis utilizes the Kierkegaardian categories of the objective and the subjective. (shrink)

In this paper, I shed light on Kant’s notion of Erkenntnis or cognition by focusing on texts pertaining to Kant’s thoughts on logic. Although a passage from Kant’s Logik is widely referred to for understanding Kant’s conception of Erkenntnis, this work was not penned by Kant himself but rather compiled by Benjamin Jäsche. So, it is imperative to determine its fidelity to Kant’s thought. I compare the passage with other sources, including Reflexionen and students’ lecture notes. I argue that several (...) of the text’s peculiarities stem from Jäsche rather than Kant, but that nevertheless Jäsche largely got Kant's view right, with two major exceptions. First, Jäsche’s text fails to reproduce Kant’s key thesis that kennen and verstehen are jointly sufficient for Erkenntnis. Second, Jäsche’s text gives the false impression that Kant holds that animals have consciousness. (shrink)

Sartre’s phenomenological view of consciousness gives primacy to the thesis that all consciousness is nonthetically aware of itself, i.e., pre-reflectively aware of itself but not as an object. Few commentators, however, have explained Sartre’s grounds for holding this thesis, despite his view that the thesis’s truth underwrites the certainty of the Cartesian cogito and thereby the method of Sartre’s own phenomenological ontology. I document three lines of support for the thesis, the most promising of which consists in a proof by (...) cases. Namely, Sartre’s texts contain the argument that the existence of nonthetic consciousness is the only satisfactory explanation of the Cartesian cogito’s certainty. The paper concludes with an examination of whether and how nonthetic consciousness can serve as a foundation for Sartre’s method of phenomenological ontology. (shrink)

The use of motion pictures for research has a long history, of course, but beyond documenting a phenomenon and then projecting it for demonstration, scientists using this technology spent much energy figuring out how to extract information from a strip of film. Understanding film (or audiovisual) analysis is therefore necessary to grasping the relationship between an object of study, moving-image technology, and scientific evidence. This article explores one common technique within that history of film analysis: projecting a frame of the (...) motion picture and then tracing the object of study onto paper, which was especially important for behavioral sciences such as developmental psychology or ethology. Behavior became tangible through a variety of means, but for those who relied on film for their observations, such as developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell, behavior took form at least partly through the process of tracing. Gesell's use of this technique reveals the broader functions of tracing as well as the patterns that emerge from its interplay with other inscriptions in the creation of evidence. How does behavior take form? The practice of tracing provides one answer to this larger question. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is “rational sensory discrimination”: the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other, occurring through a capacity to become aware of and express judgments. With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the transcendental deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence that Kant (...) understood Hume as granting this assumption. (shrink)

Sartre's experimentation in February 1935 with the drug mescalin has been well documented by Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Prime of Life.1 She recalls that Sartre experienced under the influence of the drug not exactly hallucinations, ‘but the objects he looked at changed their appearance in the most horrifying manner:’ [POL 209]. The residual effects of this nightmarish experience left Sartre, not only for several days ‘in a state of deep depression’ [POL 210], but also produced moods that (...) ‘recalled those that had been induced by mescalin.’. (shrink)

For extravagant young Fellows, that have Liveliness and Spirit, come sometimes to be set right, and so make Able and Great Men: but Dejected Minds , timorous and tame, and Low Spirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to any thing. To avoid the Danger, that is on either hand, is the great Art; and he that has found a way, how to keep up a Child's Spirit, easy, active and free; and yet, at the same (...) time, to restrain him from many things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education. (shrink)

Scientific claims implicitly invite criticism. While we might expect that challenging an epistemic authority in religious circles would be seen as an illegitimate activity (e.g. heresy) and met with suppression, challenging an epistemic authority in scientific circles is supposed to be a legitimate form of engagement, and should (ideally) be met with reasoned argument based in empirical evidence. Given this implicit invitation to challenge scientific claims, and the sweeping knowledge claims often made by today’s scientists, it is hardly surprising that (...) people outside narrowly defined scientific communities (i.e. science’s “public”) often challenge the truth of scientific consensuses. The scrutiny of scientific claims by non-scientist members of the public is quite understandable and in many ways unobjectionable, given the role that science advice increasingly plays in our society’s governance structures and public policy making. As scientists increasingly play policy-maker, they become doubly subject to public criticism: first as a scientist making substantive claims about reality and second as public-interest decision-maker making important decisions about public policy. Thus, for the scientist’s social role as epistemic authority to remain justified, public criticism of science should ideally be entertained and answered by practicing scientists. (shrink)