In his book on The Mathematics of Great Amateurs Coolidge starts the chapter on Bolzano saying that he included Bolzano because it seemed interesting to him ‘that a man who was a remarkable pulpit orator, only removed from his chair for his political opinions, should have thought so far into the deepest problems of a science which he never taught in a professional capacity’ [Coolidge, 1990, p. 195]. In fact, considering Bolzano's poor health and his enormous productivity in his ‘professional (...) areas’, the results, the breadth and the extent of this ‘great amateur's’ thoughts on mathematics, and its proper scientific presentation are simply astonishing. Even this new selection of more than 650 printed pages of text, well edited and translated by Steve Russ, represents only a part of Bolzano's legacy on mathematical topics: the complete German edition of Bolzano's writings, the Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe edited by J. Berg, E. Morscher, B. van Rootselaar, and others is projected to include over 120 volumes of which more than 36 volumes will contain his mathematical works. About 25 volumes have been published so far in this mathematical subseries including Bolzano's extensive Miscellanea Mathematica .To most readers of this journal, Bolzano will be well-known for his contributions to logic—his ‘logic of variation’ is viewed as a precursor of the modern semantic conception of logical consequence—and his contributions to the foundations of calculus, especially his ‘purely analytic proof’ of the intermediate-value theorem and the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem, or his early discovery of a counterintuitive function which is continuous in its domain, but nowhere-differentiable.Despite his lifelong interest in the foundations of mathematics, Bolzano studied theology and taught philosophy of religion in his native city, Prague, from 1805 until his dismissal in 1820. Part of Bolzano's duties …. (shrink)

Our project in this essay is to showcase nonnaturalistic moral realism’s resources for responding to metaphysical and epistemological objections by taking the view in some new directions. The central thesis we will argue for is that there is a battery of substantive moral propositions that are also nonnaturalistic conceptual truths. We call these propositions the moral fixed points. We will argue that they must find a place in any system of moral norms that applies to beings like us, in worlds (...) similar to our own. By committing themselves to true propositions of these sorts, nonnaturalists can fashion a view that is highly attractive in its own right, and resistant to the most prominent objections that have been pressed against it. (shrink)

Can an event’s blameworthiness distort whether people see it as intentional? In controversial recent studies, people judged a behavior’s negative side effect intentional even though the agent allegedly had no desire for it to occur. Such a judgment contradicts the standard assumption that desire is a necessary condition of intentionality, and it raises concerns about assessments of intentionality in legal settings. Six studies examined whether blameworthy events distort intentionality judgments. Studies 1 through 4 show that, counter to recent claims, intentionality (...) judgments are systematically guided by variations in the agent’s desire, for moral and nonmoral actions alike. Studies 5 and 6 show that a behavior’s negative side effects are rarely seen as intentional once people are allowed to choose from multiple descriptions of the behavior. Specifically, people distinguish between “knowingly” and “intentionally” bringing about a side effect, even for immoral actions. These studies suggest that intentionality judgments are unaffected by a behavior’s blameworthiness. (shrink)

This paper presents completeness and conservative extension results for the boolean extensions of the relevant logic T of Ticket Entailment, and for the contractionless relevant logics TW and RW. Some surprising results are shown for adding the sentential constant t to these boolean relevant logics; specifically, the boolean extensions with t are conservative of the boolean extensions without t, but not of the original logics with t. The special treatment required for the semantic normality of T is also shown along (...) the way. (shrink)

From Socrates and the Sophists to Kant, from Augustine to Aquinas and the Reformers, Colin Brown traces the turbulent, often tension-filled, always fascinating story of the thinkers, ideas and movements that have shaped our intellectual landscape. Is philosophy the "handmaiden of faith" or "the doctrine of demons"? Does it clarify the faith or undermine the very heart of Christian belief?Brown writes, "This book is about the changes in preconceptions, world views and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people (...) have thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular in the Western world.... It is a historical sketch, written to help students--and anyone else who might be interested--to get a better grasp of the love-hate relationship between philosophy and faith that has gone on for close to two thousand years."Students, pastors and thoughtful Christians will benefit from this rich resource. The first in a proposed three-volume work, Brown's easy-to-read, hard-to-put-down introduction to Christianity and Western thought focuses on developments from the ancient world to the Age of Enlightenment. (shrink)

THIS IS AN EARLY DRAFT OF MY PAPER "RESEARCH PROBLEMS" PUBLISHED IN BJPS IN 2021. PLEASE REFER TO THAT PAPER INSTEAD OF THIS ONE. -/- Philosophers increasingly study how scientists conduct actual scientific projects and the goals they pursue. But as of yet, there are few accounts of goals that can be used to identify different kinds, and specific instances, of goals pursued by scientists. I propose that there are at least four distinct kinds of goals pursued by scientists: ameliorating (...) problems, addressing questions, satisfying values, and achieving epistemic aims. I focus on the first two kinds, and I provide tools to help conceptualize, distinguish, and identify the problems and questions pursued by scientists. This paper illustrates the use of those tools with two examples. (shrink)

This reflection on the fiftieth anniversary of Philosophy and Rhetoric begins by recalling a debate on its pages about the origins of rhetoric, which queried the relationship between Plato and the Sophists. I argue that contrary to the shared assumption of the debate, the two sides differed less over what counts as good philosophical/rhetorical practice than over whether its access should be free or restricted. An implication of this proposed shift in interpretation is that Plato and the Sophists are both (...) reasonably seen as "post-truth" thinkers, concerned more with the mix of chance and skill in the construction of truth than with the truth as such. Focusing on Plato's hostility to playwrights, I argue that at... (shrink)

This work is a response to a request from the phenomenology group at Edith Cowan University. The paper is based on seminar discussions, experiences and ideas that have been contextualized within phenomenological literature. The notion of phenomenology as intervention has become increasingly apparent owing to the value of its practical applications in the human and social sciences. The paper explores the theme with special reference to research and psychotherapeutic interventions. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 1, Edition 2 September 2001.

"The Knowledge Book" is a unique interdisciplinary reference work for students and researchers concerned with the nature of knowledge. It is the first work of its kind to be organized on the assumption that whatever else knowledge might be, it is intrinsically social. The book consists of 42 alphabetically arranged entries on key concepts at the intersection of philosophy and sociology - what used to be called "sociology of knowledge" but is now increasingly called "social epistemology". The entries include concepts (...) common to disciplines that in recent years have devoted more of their attention to knowledge: cultural studies, communication studies, information science, education, policy studies and business studies. Special attention is given to concepts from the emerging field of science and technology studies. Each entry presents a short, self-contained essay providing an overview of a concept and concludes with suggestions for further reading. All the entries are fully cross-referenced, allowing readers to both make connections and follow their own interests. (shrink)

The ‘critique of intellectuals’ refers to a genre of normative discourse that holds intellectuals accountable for the consequences of their ideas. A curious feature of the contemporary, especially American, variant of this genre is its focus on intellectuals who were aligned with such world-historic losers as Hitler and Stalin. Why are Cold War US intellectuals not held to a similar standard of scrutiny, even though they turn out to have been aligned with the world-historic winners? In addressing this general question, (...) some self-serving tendencies of intellectual history are observed, in particular the asymmetry between the ease with which intellectuals are credited with the good consequences of their ideas and the difficulty with which they are blamed for the bad consequences. This asymmetry is particularly noted in Richard Rorty, whose pragmatism treats past ideas as a legacy intended for the (American) reader’s benefit. As a corrective, I advocate, in Paul Ricoeur’s terms, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ that treats intellectual life as fraught with danger, as our adoption of ideas always amounts to passing judgement over those who have borne them in the past. (shrink)

Over the last century, psychoanalysis has transformed the ways in which we think about our relationships with others. Psychoanalytic concepts and methods, such as the unconscious and dream analysis, have greatly impacted on social, cultural and political theory. Reinterpreting the ways in which geography has explored people's mental maps and their deepest feelings about places, The Body and the City outlines a new cartography of the subject. Mapping key coordinates of meaning, identity and power across the sites of body and (...) city, author Steve Pile explores a wide range of critical thinking, particularly the work of Lefebvre, Freud and Lacan to present a pathbreaking psychoanalysis of space. (shrink)

I believe that tenured historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science—when presented with the opportunity—have a professional obligation to get involved in public controversies over what should count as science. I stress ‘tenured’ because the involved academics need to be materially protected from the consequences of their involvement, given the amount of misrepresentation and abuse that is likely to follow, whatever position they take. Indeed, the institution of academic tenure justifies itself most clearly in such heat-seeking situations, where one may appear (...) to offer a reasoned defense for views that many consider indefensible. To be sure, the opportunities for involvement will vary in kind and number, but I believe that we are obliged to embrace them. In the specific case of ‘demarcation’ questions of what counts as science, the people who possess the sort of general and comparative knowledge most relevant for adducing this matter are historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science—not professional scientists unschooled in these areas.. (shrink)

This is a periodical publication devoted to original philosophical work on the foundations of ethics and includes study being carried out at the intersections ...

A rich collection of critical essays, authored by philosophers and practicing artists, examining Deleuze and Guattari's engagement with a broad range of art forms.

Philip Tetlock underestimates the import of his own Expert Political Judgment. It is much more than a critical scientific evaluation of the accuracy and consistency of political pundits. It also offers a blueprint for challenging expertise more generally-in the name of scientific advancement. “Thinking the unthinkable”-a strategy Tetlock employs when he gets experts to consider counterfactual scenarios that are far from their epistemic comfort zones-has had explosive consequences historically for both knowledge and morality by extending our sense of what is (...) possible. Thinking the unthinkable might also put into question contemporary assumptions about the legitimacy of science. (shrink)

William Lynch has provided an informed and probing critique of my embrace of the post-truth condition, which he understands correctly as an extension of the normative project of social epistemology. This article roughly tracks the order of Lynch’s paper, beginning with the vexed role of the ‘normative’ in Science and Technology Studies, which originally triggered my version of social epistemology 35 years ago and has been guided by the field’s ‘symmetry principle’. Here the pejorative use of ‘populism’ to mean democracy (...) is highlighted as a failure of symmetry. Finally, after rejecting Lynch’s appeal to a hybrid Marxian–Darwinism, Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes are contrasted en route to what I have called ‘quantum epistemology’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Key: Losing Oneself Windsurfing Performance, Psychology, and Embedded Cognition Windsurfing and Flow.

We prove a number of results about countable Borel equivalence relations with forcing constructions and arguments. These results reveal hidden regularity properties of Borel complete sections on certain orbits. As consequences they imply the nonexistence of Borel complete sections with certain features.

The author compares the different interpretations by Castoriadis and Lefort of democratic autonomy. For both, autonomy involves questioning all pregiven meaning. Castoriadis, while rejecting any law of historical progress, regards the history of autonomy as the development of a movement which commenced in a limited political domain in ancient Greece and expanded in other domains in Western Europe from the 11th century on. In theory, it has eliminated pregiven meaning, but has remained stuck in a liberal oligarchy, bogged down by (...) a tide of insignificance. It remains to further the project of autonomy to the point where a truly autonomous society will be able to accept as such the “Abyss” (the “Chaos”) it experiences without hiding behind replicas such as those provided by religion. Lefort, on the other hand, while similarly accepting democracy’s desire for autonomy, believes the source of its principles are enigmatic and it will continue to remain open to the authentic human experience of radical transcendence even without God. He believes that the threat of relativism can be avoided as democracy is more just since it allows its members to be more open to this radical transcendence than other forms of society. (shrink)

We apply linear algebra to the study of the inconsistent figure known as the Crazy Crate. Disambiguation by means of occlusions leads to a class of sixteen such figures: consistent, complete, both and neither. Necessary and sufficient conditions for inconsistency are obtained.

This is a short critique of sufficiency views.

Given the significance of developments in the philosophy of science over the course of the twentieth century and their centrality to philosophy in general, the appeal of teaching the philosophy of science at the introductory level is compelling. But given the abstract and sometimes technical nature of its problems and approaches, teaching this curriculum at the introductory level is bound to be challenging. This challenge has been admirably taken on by a number of authorsin recent years. In this article I (...) will examine four recent introductory texts in the philosophy of science. While the philosophy of science has a fairly stable core curriculum, we will find that it admits of a variety of approaches. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the intersections of ethical theory with metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to (...) acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well to start here. This paperback set presents the complete series to date, over the first decade of this prestigious forum for new work. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the intersection of ethical theory and metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to (...) acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well to start here. (shrink)

Moral entrepreneurship is the fine art of recycling evil into good by taking advantage of situations given or constructed as crises. It should be seen as the ultimate generalisation of the entrepreneurial spirit, whose peculiar excesses have always sat uneasily with homo oeconomicus as the constrained utility maximiser, an image that itself has come to be universalised. A task of this essay is to reconcile the two images in terms of what by the end I call ‘superutilitarianism’, which draws on (...) the lore of both superheroes and utilitarianism. After briefly surveying the careers of three exemplars of the moral entrepreneur (Robert McNamara, George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs), I explore the motives of moral entrepreneurs in terms of their standing debt to society for having already caused unnecessary harm but which also now equips him with the skill set needed to do significant good. Such a mindset involves imagining oneself a vehicle of divine will, which would be a scary proposition had it not been long presumed by Christians touched by Calvin. In conclusion, I argue that moral entrepreneurship looks most palatable – and perhaps even attractive – if the world is ‘reversible’, in the sense that every crisis, however clumsily handled by the moral entrepreneur, causes people to distinguish more clearly the necessary from contingent features of their existence. This leads them to reconceptualise past damages as new opportunities to assert what really matters; hence, a ‘superutilitarian’ ethic that treats all suffering as less cost than investment in a greater sense of the good. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the intersection of ethical theory and metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to (...) acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well to start here. (shrink)

Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself. One of the major themes in the Dune novels is what Friedrich Nietzsche calls self‐overcoming. This is an internal struggle against one's own physical, mental, and moral limits, in pursuit of a more powerful form of self‐expression. Hinduism says we're all born into samsara, the unending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In effect we're all players in the repertory theater of the cosmos, and director is the dharma, the cosmic (...) law behind both nature and morality. In the end, Hinduism says, we all reap what we sow. Self‐examination and self‐sacrifice in the name of self‐overcoming. But it's not selfish, as Nietzsche's philosophy is so often thought to be. (shrink)