Graham Harman describes the allure of art as the tension and fusion of a real object to sensual qualities so that it makes it seem that the inwardness of reality is opened to us. Yet real objects are withdrawn; how are we aware of their fusion? Since Harman’s ontology mandates that contact between real objects occurs only through sensual objects, this essay explores the idea that art’s allure must be a tension between sensual objects that draw the experiencer to believe, (...) or alieve, they are in contact with the withdrawn real. By looking at the examples in representational painting and sleight of hand magic, we see that ontographic art objects use at least four, carefully separated sensual objects to produce their aesthetic effect. The conclusion summarises allure as a sensual object process, speculates on art’s dialetheic confusion of sensual and real objects giving an enduring allure to idealism, and notes potential motifs of an infra-realist resistance. (shrink)

Scientific realism driven by inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes empirically confirmed objects to exist, independent, pace empiricism, of whether those objects are observable or not. This kind of realism, it has been claimed, does not need probabilistic reasoning to justify the claim that these objects exist. But I show that there are scientific contexts in which a non-probabilistic IBE-driven realism leads to a puzzle. Since IBE can be applied in scientific contexts in which empirical confirmation has not yet (...) been reached, realists will in these contexts be committed to the existence of empirically unconfirmed objects. As a consequence of such commitments, because they lack probabilistic features, the possible empirical confirmation of those objects is epistemically redundant with respect to realism. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the notion of an inertial frame is central to Newtonian mechanics and that the correct space-time structure underlying Newton’s methods in Principia is neo-Newtonian or Galilean space-time. I argue to the contrary that inertial frames are not needed in Newton’s theory of motion, and that the right space-time structure for Newton’s Principia requires the notion of parallelism of spatial directions at different times and nothing more. Only relative motions are definable in this framework, never absolute (...) ones. (shrink)

Jürgen Osterhammel’s book, first published in 1998 and now updated and translated from the original German, is a masterful survey of travel literature on and theoretical treatments of Asia by Europ...

This book, designed for high-level undergraduates, postgraduates and fellow researchers, introduces the reader to the main areas of metaethical work today. As we as introducing familiar positions and arguments, Kirchin argues clearly and engagingly for a set of distinctive and arresting views.

By examining an exemplar sample of mental health nursing educational policies and related legislation, in this article, we trace the discursive production of madness as an “othered” identity category. We engage in a critical discourse analysis of mental health nursing education in Canada, drawing on provincial and federal policies and legislation as the main sources of data. Theoretically framed by critical posthumanism and mad studies, this article outlines how the mad subjectivity becomes decontextualized out of its identity‐based understanding and recontextualized (...) as an inferior category of “the human,” circulating within discourses of pedagogy, economics, law, and psychiatry. The article maps the intertextual nexus of the discourse of mental health nursing education, making visible the complex, the arbitrary, and the sometimes‐contradictory nature of the discipline's grappling with identity‐based mental health concepts. We close with several implications for nursing policy, education, and practice. (shrink)

I explore the process of changes in the observability of entities and objects in science and how such changes impact two key issues in the scientific realism debate: the claim that predictively successful elements of past science are retained in current scientific theories, and the inductive defense of a specific version of inference to the best explanation with respect to unobservables. I provide a case-study of the discovery of radium by Marie Curie in order to show that the observability of (...) some entities can change and that such changes are relevant for arguments seeking to establish the reliability of success-to-truth inferences with respect to unobservables. (shrink)

The author of the highly popular book Think, which Time magazine hailed as "the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy," Simon Blackburn is that rara avis--an eminent thinker who is able to explain philosophy to the general reader. Now Blackburn offers a tour de force exploration of what he calls "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy"--the age-old war over truth. The front lines of (...) this war are well defined. On one side are those who believe in plain, unvarnished facts, rock-solid truths that can be found through reason and objectivity--that science leads to truth, for instance. Their opponents mock this idea. They see the dark forces of language, culture, power, gender, class, ideology and desire--all subverting our perceptions of the world, and clouding our judgement with false notions of absolute truth. Beginning with an early skirmish in the war--when Socrates confronted the sophists in ancient Athens--Blackburn offers a penetrating look at the longstanding battle these two groups have waged, examining the philosophical battles fought by Plato, Protagoras, William James, David Hume, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and many others, with a particularly fascinating look at Nietzsche. Among the questions Blackburn considers are: is science mere opinion, can historians understand another historical period, and indeed can one culture ever truly understand another. Blackburn concludes that both sides have merit, and that neither has exclusive ownership of truth. What is important is that, whichever side we embrace, we should know where we stand and what is to be said for our opponents. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to refute the metaphysicians ‘methodological continuation’ argument supporting epistemic realism in metaphysics. This argument aims to show that scientific realists have to accept that metaphysics is as rationally justified as science given that they both employ inference to the best explanation, i.e. that metaphysics and science are methodologically continuous. I argue that the reasons given by scientific realists as to why inference to the best explanation is reliable in science do not constitute a (...) reason to believe that it is reliable in metaphysics. The justification of IBE in science and the justification of IBE in metaphysics are two distinct issues with only superficial similarities, and one cannot rely on one for the other. This becomes especially clear when one analyses the debate about the legitimacy of IBE that has taken place between realists and empiricists. The metaphysician seeking to piggyback on the realist defense of IBE in science by the methodological continuation argument presupposes that the defense is straightforwardly applicable to metaphysics. I will argue that it is, in fact, not. The favoured defenses of IBE in scientific realism make extensive use of empirical considerations, predictive power and inductive evidence, all of which are paradigmatically absent in the metaphysical context. Furthermore, I argue that the metaphysician, even if the realist would concede to the methodological continuation argument, fails to offer any agreed upon conclusions resulting from its application in metaphysics. As a result, the scientific realist is not committed to believing that there is metaphysical knowledge. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 3 Heft: 2 Seiten: 300-318.

The molecular clock hypothesis remains controversial more than a quarter of a century after it was first proposed. A variety of approaches have been applied to testing the molecular clock in mammals. In many of these studies apparent refutation of the molecular clock has based on false assumptions about the pattern of mammalian evolution. With a few exceptions there now appears to be little evidence for variation in the rate of molecular evolution among mammalian lineages, although comparison of more genes (...) and proteins among a greater variety of mammalian orders is needed before a definitive conclusion can be reached on the issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to understand what Buridan means when he suggests that "every proposition, by its very form, signifies or asserts itself to be true." I show how one way of construing this claim - that every proposition is in fact a conjunction one conjunct of which asserts the truth of the whole conjunction - does lead to a resolution of the Liar paradox, as Buridan says, and moreover is not vulnerable to the criticism on the basis of (...) which Buridan came to reject this view. However, I go on to argue that the view causes Truth-Teller worries when applied to non-Liar propositions. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to interpret Fichte’s terminology of ‚light‘ and ‚imaging‘ in the WL-1804-ii as a rendition of transcendental principles. This analysis is intended as a contribution to the discussion concerning the theoretical status and methodology of the later doctrines of science. i begin with an exposition of four criteria for transcendentally constitutive principles: 1. presuppositional character, 2. constitutivity, 3. categorial difference between conditions and conditioned, 4. immanent justification. The systematic function of ‘light’ is exemplarily reconstructed according (...) to these criteria. The focus of analysis lies on the fourth criterion, which is framed as the philosophical problem which Fichte’s conception of a ‘law of imaging’ in the 24th and 25th lectures answers to. The ‘law of imaging’ is reconstructed as a special form of performative self-validation which is intended to satisfy the criterion of immanent justification. A further upshot of this reading is a reappraisal of Fichte’s treatment of light’s perpetual ‘objectivization’. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore both the legal difficulties and policy objections in using public nuisance against conduct which exposes others to the risk of contracting a harmful disease. Drawing on the judicial and legislative responses in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, I will identify the important issues of legal principle and public policy which must be addressed when considering the imposition of criminal liability in these circumstances.

The last thirty years have seen significant developments in Pentecostal studies. Among them are a broader understanding of key Pentecostal symbols such as Spirit baptism, glossolalia, and eschatology; the grounding of Pentecostal experience in the larger spiritual tradition; and the development of pneumatological perspectives on various theological and practical concerns. The articles dealing with spiritual formation from a Pentecostal perspective are examples of some of these new developments.

Using the category of metric spaces as a template, we develop a metric analogue of the categorical semantics of classical/intuitionistic logic, and show that the natural notion of predicate in this “continuous semantics” is equivalent to the a priori separate notion of predicate in continuous logic, a logic which is independently well-studied by model theorists and which finds various applications. We show this equivalence by exhibiting the real interval $[0,1]$ in the category of metric spaces as a “continuous subobject classifier” (...) giving a correspondence not only between the two notions of predicate, but also between the natural notion of quantification in the continuous semantics and the existing notion of quantification in continuous logic.Along the way, we formulate what it means for a given category to behave like the category of metric spaces, and afterwards show that any such category supports the aforementioned continuous semantics. As an application, we show that categories of presheaves of metric spaces are examples of such, and in fact even possess continuous subobject classifiers. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explore some of the relations between morality and politics. Areas in which these are explored include the role of ideals in foreign policy , committing evil for the sake of a greater good in wartime, and lying and deception in political affairs. Illustrative examples are used throughout and include the Iraq war and its political fallout , Allied and Axis actions during the Second World War, decisions made by former Australian Prime Minister John (...) Howard and thought-experiments such as whether to lie about the Jewish family hiding in the basement when the Nazis come knocking at the door.Chapters 1 and 2, making up the first half of the book, are the highlight of it. In them, Coady confronts the realist critique of morality in foreign …. (shrink)

We make two major comments. First, negative reinforcement contingencies may generate some apparent “drug-like” aspects of money motivation, and the operant account, properly construed, is both a tool and drug theory. Second, according to Lea & Webley (L&W), one might expect that “near-money,” such as frequent-flyer miles, should have a stronger drug and a weaker tool aspect than regular money. Available evidence agrees with this prediction. (Published Online April 5 2006).