In the present article, we consider the question of the primary elements in Plato’s Timaeus, the components of the whole universe reduced, by an extraordinarily elegant construction, to two right triangles. But how does he reconcile such a model with the infinite diversity of the universe? A large part of this study is devoted to Cornford’s explanation in his commentary of the Timaeus and its shortcomings, in order to finally propose a revised one, which we think to be entirely consistent (...) with Plato’s text. This analysis is an essential step for the understanding of the connection between the sensible world and the mathematical principles that underlies Timaeus’ cosmological account. (shrink)

Introduction -- Matter, form of cognition, form of sensibility, form of understanding, time and space -- Sensibility, imagination, understanding, pure a priori concepts of the understanding or categories, schemata, answering the question Quid Juris, answering the question Quid Facti, doubts about the latter -- Ideas of the understanding, ideas of reason, etc. -- Subject and predicate. the determinable and the determination -- Thing, possible, necessary, ground, consequence, etc. -- Identity, difference, opposition, reality, logical, and transcendental negation -- Magnitude, alteration, change, (...) etc. -- Truth, subjective, objective, logical, metaphysical -- On the I, materialism, idealism, dualism, etc. -- Short overview of the whole work -- My ontology -- On symbolic cognition and philosophical language. (shrink)

What is involved in acting together with others? Most shared agency theorists endorse the Shared Intention Thesis, i.e., the claim that shared agency necessarily involves shared intentions. This article dissents from this orthodoxy and offers a minimalist account of shared agency—one where parties to shared activities need not form rich webs of interrelated psychological states. My account has two main components: a conceptual analysis of shared agency in terms of the notion of plan, and an explanation of undertheorized agency‐sharing mechanisms. (...) My analysis states that we act together just in case our activities conform to a plan and that plan figures in an explanation of our activities’ joint conformity to it. To sloganize: shared activity is plan‐coordinated activity. Sometimes, plan‐coordination goes by way of shared intentions. However, besides shared intentions, there are at least two additional families of agency‐sharing mechanisms. The first features a central planner who determines the content of a plan and attributes the different parts of that plan to a collection of agents. The second does away with the planner and involves a roughly Darwinian selection of patterns of activity. Both families of mechanisms enable us to act together even in the absence of shared intentions. (shrink)

By definition, pain is a sensory and emotional experience that is felt in a particular part of the body. The precise relationship between somatic events at the site where pain is experienced, and central processing giving rise to the mental experience of pain remains the subject of debate, but there is little disagreement in scholarly circles that both aspects of pain are critical to its experience. Recent experimental work, however, suggests a public view that is at odds with this conceptualisation. (...) By demonstrating that the public does not necessarily endorse central tenets of the “mental” view of pain (subjectivity, privacy, and incorrigibility), experimental philosophers have argued that the public holds a more “body-centric” view than most clinicians and scholars. Such a discrepancy would have important implications for how the public interacts with pain science and clinical care. In response, we tested the hypothesis that the public is capable of a more “mind-centric” view of pain. Using a series of vignettes, we demonstrate that in situations which highlight mental aspects of pain the public can, and does, recognize pain as a mental phenomenon. We also demonstrate that the public view is subject to context effects, by showing that the public’s view is modified when situations emphasizing mental and somatic aspects of pain are presented together. (shrink)

This article articulates our everyday notion of cooperation. First, I topple an orthodoxy of shared agency theory by arguing that shared intentions to J are neither necessary nor sufficient for J to be cooperative. I refute the necessity claim by providing examples of shared intention-free cooperation (in institutional contexts and beyond). I refute the sufficiency claim by observing that coercion and exploitation need not preclude shared intentions but do preclude cooperation. These arguments, in turn, lead to my positive proposal. People (...) cooperate, I argue, just in case their activities are coordinated in ways that do not undermine any participant’s agency. (shrink)

Do participants in shared activity have mutual obligations to do their bit? This article shows this question has no one-size-fits-all answer and offers a pluralist account of the normativity of shared agency. The first part argues obligations to do one's bit have three degrees of involvement in shared activity. Such obligations might, obviously, bolster co-participants’ resolve to act as planned (degree 1). Less obviously, there also are higher and lower degrees of involvement. Obligations to do one's bit might provide our (...) agency-pooling mechanism. When they do, we act together by virtue of satisfying them (degree 2). Conversely, some shared activities involve no obligation (degree 0). In the second part, I argue shared agency theory is best served by a non-moralistic conception of obligation, one on which co-participants’ obligations need be neither strict-performance obligations, nor directed ones. Overall, my arguments suggest that we can choose how to coordinate normatively our shared activities. (shrink)

Extraits de la Source de vie de Salomon ibn-Gebirol.--Ibn-Gebirol, ses écrits et sa philosophie.--Des principaux philosophes arabes et de leurs doctrines.--Esquisse historique de la philosophie chez les Juìfs.--Appendice.--Texte hébreu des extraits de la Source de vie (2 p.l., 36 numb. l. at end).

L’auteur part de la distinction générale entre les droits de l’homme, les droits fondamentaux et les droits civiques. Etant donné que cette séparation terminologique n’est pas appliquée dans les traités européens, il note qu’une différenciation stricte entre les droits de l’homme, les droits fondamentaux et les droits civiques n’est pas indispensable, ni cohérente. C’est pourquoi il se tourne vers les valeurs communes en analysant et en évaluant la normalisation législative des droits de l’homme dans l’Union européenne : le Traité sur (...) l’Union européenne, la Charte des droits fondamentaux, ainsi que d’autres prescriptions et pratiques des institutions européennes. La paix, qui est le principal objectif de l’unification européenne, peut se maintenir surtout grâce à la liberté et le respect des droits fondamentaux et des droits de l’homme. Le pilier le plus important de la construction d’une identité européenne commune est la prise de conscience des valeurs européennes communes, des droits fondamentaux et des droits de l’homme qui marquent l’espace culturel européen de manière spécifique et qui constituent l’âme de l’Europe. (shrink)

Through such topics as emotive association, taboo, vagueness, and euphemism, the author explains to the reader how language conveys ideas.

Readers assume that commonplace properties of the real world also hold in realistic fiction. They believe, for example, that the usual physical laws continue to apply. But controversy exists in theories of fiction about whether real individuals exist in the story’s world. Does Queen Victoria exist in the world of Jane Eyre, even though Victoria is not mentioned in it? The experiments we report here find that when participants are prompted to consider the world of a fictional individual (“Consider the (...) world of Jane Eyre…”), they are willing to say that a real individual (e.g., Queen Victoria) can exist in the same world. But when participants are prompted to consider the world of a real individual, they are less willing to say that a fictional individual can exist in that world. The asymmetry occurs when we ask participants both if a real person is in the character’s world and if the person would appear there. However, the effect is subject to spatial and temporal constraints. When the person and the character share spatial and temporal settings, interchange is more likely to occur. These results shed light on the author’s implicit contract with the reader, which can license the reader to augment a fictional world with features that the author only implicates as part of the work’s background. (shrink)

The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon's hard-won success after a lifetime's pursuit of philosophical wisdom, originally published in Berlin in 1794. Timothy Franz presents its first translation, with the goal of allowing the New Logic to be an object of further study, accessible to the philosophical tradition. Maimon's work is the product of philosophical genius, and at its heart it is a serene account of reflection on thought that can instruct anyone to (...) unify the principles of logic, on the one hand, and the principles of our scientific approach to the world, on the other, culminating in a thought-provoking metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Maimon also intended the work to be the foundation of his ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. However, as a Jewish philosopher from Lithuania, he had learned his subject as a wanderer, and he struggled to be understood by his fellow Jews, by Germans, and by the philosophical community. Consequently, there is a severe tension between Maimon's serene vision and his persona and presentation. Franz translates the text of the New Logic, Maimon's Letters to Aenesidemus explaining himself to thinkers he felt to be close to him, two hostile reviews he vigorously annotated, and the letter to Kant introducing his idea for a critical philosophy of logic. Franz prefaces the work with a brief history of Maimon's philosophical development and an introduction that attempts to reconcile Maimon's presentation with his vision, and to come to understand both of them together. (shrink)

I argue that, in order to address the ideal world problem while remaining faithful to our concept of morality, Contractualists should no longer determine which actions I must perform by seeing whether they accord with certain principles for the general regulation of behavior. Instead, I argue, Contractualists should determine whether it is right or wrong for me to perform an action by evaluating any maxim that might be reflected by my action. I call the resulting view “Maxim Contractualism.” It states (...) that an agent’s action is morally required just in case any maxim that he might adopt that involves not performing that action is one that someone could reasonably reject. Finally, I argue that, although Act Contractualism also provides us with the materials to solve the Ideal World Problem, it is a worse solution because it cannot account for the fact that, sometimes, what would happen if I performed an action over time is relevant to whether I am permitted to perform that action right here, right now. (shrink)

At no time in the past century have there been fiercer battles over our public schools than there are now. Parents and educational reformers are challenging not only the mission, content, and structure of mass compulsory schooling but also its underlying premise—that the values promoted through public education are neutral and therefore acceptable to any reasonable person. In this important book, Rosemary Salomone sets aside the ideological and inflammatory rhetoric that surrounds today’s debates over educational values and family choice. She (...) offers instead a fair-minded examination of education for democratic citizenship in a society that values freedom of conscience and religious pluralism. And she proposes a balanced course of action that redefines but does not sever the relationship between education and the state. Salomone demonstrates how contemporary conflicts are the product of past educational and social movements. She lays bare some of the myths that support the current government monopoly over education and reveals how it privileges those of economic means. Through a detailed case study of recent controversy in a suburban New York school district, the author explores the legal and policy issues that arise when widely disparate world views stand in the way of political compromise on educational materials, techniques, and programs. Salomone builds a case for educational governance that places the developmental needs of the child at the center of family autonomy. She advances a plan that respects diverse values and visions of schooling while preserving the core commitments that bind our nation. (shrink)

Salomon Maimon: Geschichte des eigenen Lebens Erstdruck in zwei Teilen: Berlin (Vieweg) 1792 und 1793. Vollständige Neuausgabe. Herausgegeben von Karl-Maria Guth. Berlin 2014. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Maimon, Salomon: Geschichte des eigenen Lebens (1754–1800). Berlin: Schocken, 1935. Die Paginierung obiger Ausgabe wird in dieser Neuausgabe als Marginalie zeilengenau mitgeführt. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage. Gesetzt aus Minion Pro, 11 pt.

Redakcja naukowa i opracowanie – Kinga Kaśkiewicz Przekład – Kinga Kaśkiewicz i Mirosław Żelazny Salomon Maimon przynależał do trzech kultur: niemieckiej, żydowskiej i polskiej. Pisał po niemiecku i hebrajsku. Będąc intelektualistą swych czasów, postrzegał samego siebie jako Europejczyka należącego do kręgu kultury berlińskiej. Nigdy jednak nie zatracił swej przynależności żydowskiej, o czym najdobitniej świadczy nie tylko tematyka, którą się interesował, ale też pseudonim, jaki przybrał. Nigdy też nie zatracił poczucia przynależności do Polski. Swoje dzieło Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie. Mit (...) einem Anhang über die Symbolische Erkenntnis und Anmerkungen podpisał jako Salomon Maimon z Litwy w Polsce i zadedykował je polskiemu królowi. […] Maimon to myśliciel często przywoływany, ale rzadko studiowany. Wielka szkoda, bo znamy kilka przykładów zainteresowania naszych filozofów wczesnym idealizmem niemieckim, a nawet prób twórczego rozwoju tego idealizmu, by przypomnieć Szaniawskiego, Gołuchowskiego, Brzozowskiego, czy w nowszych czasach Siemka i pozostawioną przez niego szkołę. Niestety, choć zakrawa to na paradoks, niniejszy zbiór rozpraw o estetyce, jeśli nie liczyć przywołanej Autobiografii, jest pierwszą publikacją tłumaczeń dzieł filozoficznych Maimona na język polski. Z tym większą przyjemnością przekazujemy go w ręce czytelników. Z Wprowadzenia. (shrink)

"Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century.