This is a very important book. It has already become required reading for researchers on the relation between the exact sciences and Kant’s philosophy. The main theme is that Kant’s continuing program to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the science of his day is of crucial importance to understanding the development of his philosophical thought from its earliest precritical beginnings in the thesis of 1747, right through the highwater years of the critical philosophy, to his last (...) unpublished writings in the Opus postumum. In the course of articulating this theme, Friedman has made extensive use of detailed historical information about their scientific and mathematical background to illuminate Kant’s texts. Over and over again, such information is used to suggest interesting and quite subtle interpretations for texts that may have seemed puzzling or just wrong-headed. (shrink)

This paper uses Popper's treatment of probability and an epistemic constraint on probability assignments to conditionals to extend the Bayesian representation of rational belief so that revision of previously accepted evidence is allowed for. Results of this extension include an epistemic semantics for Lewis' theory of counterfactual conditionals and a representation for one kind of conceptual change.

ABSTRACT Much has been made of the apparent tensions in Nietzsche's ethical and metaethical views. In this essay I examine a kind of value standard available to Nietzsche that is present in his work. I offer an interpretation of honesty as both a Nietzschean virtue and a means of ethical assessment. Despite Nietzsche's well-known criticisms of truth, he upholds honesty as the only remaining virtue of his free spirits. Honesty has been treated in the literature primarily in the contexts of (...) truth or life affirmation, but I argue that we should instead recognize honesty as a virtue within the context of valuing. I defend honesty as a distinct kind of truthfulness and sincerity involving what I call confrontation. The seeds of Nietzsche's mature view are first evident in his work on tragedy, then developed further in Zarathustra, ultimately revealing a constraint on valuing that is essential to Nietzsche's broader normative projects. (shrink)

I take Newton's arguments to inverse square centripetal forces from Kepler's harmonic and areal laws to be classic deductions from phenomena. I argue that the theorems backing up these inferences establish systematic dependencies that make the phenomena carry the objective information that the propositions inferred from them hold. A review of the data supporting Kepler's laws indicates that these phenomena are Whewellian colligations-generalizations corresponding to the selection of a best fitting curve for an open-ended body of data. I argue that (...) the information theoretic features of Newton's corrections of the Keplerian phenomena to account for perturbations introduced by universal gravitation show that these corrections do not undercut the inferences from the Keplerian phenomena. Finally, I suggest that all of Newton's impressive applications of Universal gravitation to account for motion phenomena show an attempt to deliver explanations that share these salient features of his classic deductions from phenomena. (shrink)

Discourses of recovery and resilience have risen to positions of dominance in the mental health field. Models of recovery and resilience enjoy purchase, in both policy and practice, across a range of settings from self-described psychiatric survivors through to mental health charities through to statutory mental health service providers. Despite this ubiquity, there is confusion about what recovery means. In this article we problematize notions of recovery and resilience, and consider what, if anything, should be recovered from these concepts. We (...) focus on three key issues, i) individualization, ii) the persistence of a deficit model, and iii) collective approaches to recovery. Through documentary analysis we consider these issues across third sector organizations, and public and mental health policy. Firstly, definitional debates about recovery reflect wider ideological debates about the nature of mental health. The vagueness of these concepts and implicit assumptions inherent in dominant recovery and resilience discourses render them problematic because they individualize what are social problems. Secondly, these discourses, despite being seen as inherently liberatory are conceptually dependent on a notion of deficit in that talk of “positives” and “strengths” requires the existence of “negatives” and “weaknesses” for these concepts to make sense. We argue that this does little to substantially transform dominant understandings of psychological distress. Thirdly, these issues combine to impact upon the progressive potential of recovery. It comes to be seen as an individualistic experiential narrative accompaniment to medical understandings where the structural causes of distress are obscured. This in turn impacts upon the potential for recovery to be used to explore more collective, political aspects of emotional distress. Drawing on the work of Fraser, we use this critique to characterize “recovery” as a “struggle for recognition,” founded on a model of identity politics which displaces and marginalizes the need for social, political and economic redistribution to address many of the underlying causes of emotional distress. We conclude by stating that it is only when the collective, structural experiences of inequality and injustice are explicitly linked to processes of emotional distress that recovery will be possible. (shrink)

Newton's methodology is significantly richer than the hypothetico-deductive model. It is informed by a richer ideal of empirical success that requires not just accurate prediction but also accurate measurement of parameters by the predicted phenomena. It accepts theory-mediated measurements and theoretical propositions as guides to research. All of these enrichments are exemplified in the classical response to Mercury's perihelion problem. Contrary to Kuhn, Newton's method endorses the radical transition from his theory to Einstein's. The richer themes of Newton's method are (...) strikingly realized in a challenge to general relativity from a new problem posed by Mercury's perihelion. †To contact the author, please write to: Talbot College, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The eight papers in this book are drawn from two conferences that honored Lewis White Beck, an influential Kant scholar.

The recent decrease in public confidence in the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine has important implications for individuals and public health. This article presents moral arguments relating to conflicts between individual autonomy and collective responsibilities in vaccination decisions with a view to informing and advising health professionals and improving the effectiveness of education policies in avoiding resurgence of endemic measles. Lower population immunity, due to falling uptake, is hastening the need for greater public awareness of the consequences for the population. (...) Vaccination refusals go hand in hand with responsibilities owed to future generations and society in not knowingly contributing to preventable harms. Issues such as parents’ rights are considered and balanced against: collective responsibilities for public health; permissibility of ‘free-riding’; conflicting duties of health professionals; and possible enforcement of vaccination. It is suggested that the arguments may form a persuasive tool for the practice of health professionals involved in informing and supporting parents’ vaccination decisions. (shrink)

This article argues, against contemporary experimentalist criticism, that conceptual analysis has epistemic value, with a structure that encourages the development of interesting hypotheses which are of the right form to be valuable in diverse areas of philosophy. The article shows, by analysis of the Gettier programme, that conceptual analysis shares the proofs and refutations form Lakatos identified in mathematics. Upon discovery of a counterexample, this structure aids the search for a replacement hypothesis. The search is guided by heuristics. The heuristics (...) of conceptual analysis are similar to those in other interesting areas of scholarship, and so hypotheses generated by it are of the right form to be applicable to diverse areas. The article shows that the explanationist criterion in epistemology was developed and applied in this way. The epistemic value of conceptual analysis is oblique because it contributes not towards the main purpose of conceptual analysis but towards the reliable development of epistemically valuable hypotheses in philosophy and scholarship. (shrink)

I explicate the distinction between ethics and morality in terms of four central contrasts, and argue (1) that moral theories that embrace the implicit divide are both theoretically and practically problematic in their failure to meet certain widely accepted standards of theoretical coherence and in their resulting propensity to generate indeterminable conflicts among norms, and (2) that social roles represent one aspect of the moral life that cannot be understood in terms of this distinction. My suggestion will be that we (...) ought to explore an interpretation of the moral realm according to which all moral attributes are relative to social roles, since a role-centered morality promises a way of overcoming this problematic divide. (shrink)

Play is typically associated with carefree or frivolous activity, yet Nietzsche makes surprising claims about the nature of play. He insists that playfulness is the appropriate attitude for addressing the challenges of human life, and he describes maturity as the ability to play seriously like children. To understand Nietzsche’s serious play, some have emphasized the affinity between play and fiction. Notably, Nadeem Hussain has offered a fictionalist interpretation, according to which nothing has value in itself and valuing resembles make-believe. I (...) hold that illusions and fictions misconstrue Nietzsche’s play and values. In this paper I argue that Nietzsche embraces play in the context of nihilism, which he considers the fundamental problem of modernity. Play ultimately proves central to Nietzsche’s strategy to avert nihilism. I explicate his comments on play, and I use the features of play to illuminate Nietzsche’s response to nihilism found in his enigmatic project of value creation. (shrink)

Recent articles, including those by Dixon and Torres and Hager, criticize tournament playoffs, primarily for reasons of fairness and integrity. Many suggest that playoff and tournament prominence reflect monetary and entertainment interests rather than the pursuit of athletic excellence. Nevertheless, tournament playoffs are increasingly popular. While the concerns are serious, in this paper I defend the overlooked value of playoffs and tournaments. Playoff critics employ too narrow a conception of the best team and too limited a view of excellence. Rather, (...) playoffs and seasons highlight distinct and valuable conceptions of athletic excellence. To better capture this, I consider two alternative championship formats: the hybrid system and championship pluralism. The hybrid system includes a playoff informed by the regular season. Despite its apparent advantages, I reject the hybrid approach. Instead, I propose championship pluralism as a preferred championship model. (shrink)

Summary Meteorology, a scientific discipline almost exclusively associated with weather forecasting in the first half of the twentieth century in the USA, was viewed with disdain by more mathematically based scientific communities. A descriptive science lacking in physical and mathematical rigor, meteorology was typically without an academic home in US colleges and universities. This stood in sharp contrast to the meteorological communities across the Atlantic which were supported by dedicated geophysical institutes. Four factors kept US meteorologists, unlike their European colleagues, (...) on the fringes of the scientific mainstream: a lack of ?rigor?, a lack of academic presence, a lack of patronage (governmental or private), and a pervasive public view that meteorological information was ?free? and yet should be tailored to a variety of users. The symbiotic relationship of these factors created an almost insurmountable hurdle to disciplinary advancement. That hurdle was effectively overcome in mid-century when the military demands of the Second World War presented meteorology with the opportunity to leave behind its legacy as a ?guessing science? and assume its place as a mathematically and physically based theoretical scientific discipline. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the thesis advanced by Lawrence J. Schneiderman and Nancy S. Jecker that physicians should be forbidden from offering futile treatments to patients. I distinguish between a version of this thesis that is trivially true and Schneiderman and Jecker's more substantive version of the thesis. I find that their positive arguments for their thesis are unsuccessful, and sometimes quite misleading. I advance an argument against their thesis, and find that, on balance, their thesis should be rejected. (...) I briefly argue that a resolution of the debate about medical futility will require addressing deeper issues about value. (shrink)

Modernism is both a contested aesthetic category and a powerful political statement. Modernist music was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis and forcibly replaced by socialist realism under the Soviets. Sympathetic philosophers and critics have interpreted it as a vital intellectual defence against totalitarianism, yet some American critics consider it elitist, undemocratic, and even unnatural. Drawing extensively on the philosophy of Heidegger and Badiou, Quilting Points proposes a new dialectical theory of faithful, reactive, and obscure subjective responses to musical modernism, (...) which embraces all the music of Western modernity. (shrink)

Recent work has explored the extent to which intercollegiate athletics even belong at the university or meet the university’s mission. Just as play seems evident in athletics, it is also present in music, art, and theater. While these programs are popular targets when discussing possible cuts, few question their legitimacy at the university. In this article I argue that the justification for retaining the extracurricular status of intercollegiate sports should be based on their being especially playful. Indeed, on the basis (...) of this argument, I suggest that universities offer even greater and wider access to sport through club and intramural sports. However, while athletics might appear to be more playful, I hold that there is substantially more play present in university music, art, and theater programs than there is in intercollegiate sports. (shrink)

Traditionally, intuitions about cases have been taken as strong evidence for a philosophical position. I argue that intuitions about concept deployment have epistemic value while intuitions about matters of fact have none. I argue this by use of the explanationist criterion which contends that S is justified in believing only those propositions which are part of the best explanation of S’s making the judgements she makes. This criterion accords with scientific practice. Bealer suggests, as a defence of intuition, that naturalists (...) rely on intuition in their arguments against intuition and thus that their arguments are self-undermining. But beliefs based on intuitions about the application of concepts, like ‘justification’ and ‘theory,’ are epistemically justified by the explanationist criterion. It is only intuitions about matters of fact which are rejected. Thus, epistemically-respectable intuitions about concepts are used to undermine intuitions about metaphysics. There is nothing self-undermining about this. (shrink)

Abstract As religious-environmental awareness in the United States becomes more widespread, many faith-based institutions find themselves unaware of the range of environmental actions that they can take, and methods for organizing their efforts for greatest impact. This essay conceptualizes Spirit, Stewardship, and Justice as organizing values for understanding religious-environmental efforts. The essay then reviews environmental action steps that faith-based institutions can take, including the integration of environmental focus into worship, religious education, spiritual practices, energy and water conservation, food practices, waste (...) management, toxics reduction, environmental justice education, alliance building, advocacy, and community organizing. The essay concludes with a review of research on community-based social marketing and organizational transformation, offering these as methods for increasing the impact of religious efforts to address energy and protect the environment. (shrink)

SUMMARYThis essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit. Although the importance of his (...) work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons. (shrink)

In 2013 I wrote a paper entitled “A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World,” in which I criticized the views of Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy, labeling their views as something that I called “epistemic deism.” Since the publication of that paper another, similar, view by Bradley Monton was brought to my attention, one called “noninterventionist special divine action theory.” I take this paper as an opportunity to accomplish several goals. First, (...) I take it as an opportunity to clarify and correct some of my previous claims. Secondly, I present and analyze Monton’s view. And, finally, I discuss the similarities that Monton’s view holds with those of Murphy’s and Tracy’s and discuss how they all can be reduced to being part of the same family of ontological views which are, ultimately, implausible. (shrink)

Fallibilism is ubiquitous in contemporary epistemology. I argue that a paradox about knowledge, generated by considerations of truth, shows that fallibilism can only deliver knowledge in lucky circumstances. Specifically, since it is possible that we are brains‐in‐vats (BIVs), it is possible that all our beliefs are wrong. Thus, the fallibilist can know neither whether or not we have much knowledge about the world nor whether or not we know any specific proposition, and so the warrant of our knowledge‐claims is much (...) reduced and second‐order skepticism is generated. Since this is the case in both skeptical and everyday contexts, contextualism cannot resolve the paradox. (shrink)

This paper argues for the inclusion of ethnography as a research methodology for understanding the effects of public health policy. To do this, the implementation of DOTS (Directly Observed Therapy, Short-course) is explored in the context of Nepal. A brief history of DOTS and its implementation in Nepal is outlined, and the way it has been represented by those within the Nepal Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) is described. This is followed by an outline of the research done in relation to this, (...) and the ethnographic methods used. These ethnographic data are then interpreted and analysed in relation to two specific areas of concern. Firstly, the effects around the epidemiological uses of is explored; it is argued that a tightening of the definitional categories so necessary for the programme to be stabilized for comparative purposes has profound material effects in marginalizing some from treatment. Secondly, the paper examines some of the implications and effects relating to the way that the component was implemented. The discussion explores how current debate on DOTS has been played out in some medical journals. It argues for the importance of ethnography as a method for understanding certain questions that cannot be answered by particular, and increasingly dominant, research ideologies informed by randomized controlled trials. This raises important issues about the nature of in debates on the relationship of research to policy. (shrink)

Newton's methodology emphasized propositions "inferred from phenomena." These rest on systematic dependencies that make phenomena measure theoretical parameters. We consider the inferences supporting Newton's inductive argument that gravitation is proportional to inertial mass. We argue that the support provided by these systematic dependencies is much stronger than that provided by bootstrap confirmation; this kind of support thus avoids some of the major objections against bootstrapping. Finally we examine how contemporary testing of equivalence principles exemplifies this Newtonian methodological theme.

As van Fraassen pointed out in his opening remarks, Henry Kyburg's lottery paradox has long been known to raise difficulties in attempts to represent full belief as a probability greater than or equal to p, where p is some number less than 1. Recently, Patrick Maher has pointed out that to identify full belief with probability equal to 1 presents similar difficulties. In his paper, van Fraassen investigates ways of representing full belief by personal probability which avoid the difficulties raised (...) by Maher's measure-theoretic version of the lottery paradox. Van Fraassen's more subtle representation dissolves the simple identification of full belief with maximal personal probability. His investigation exploits the richer resources for representing opinion provided by taking conditional, rather than unconditional, personal probability as fundamental. It has interesting implications for equivalent alternative approaches based on non-Archimedean probability, as well as for equivalent approaches in which assumption contexts representing full belief relative to suppositions are taken as fundamental. (shrink)