Stephen Read has advanced a solution of certain semantic paradoxes recently, based on the work of Thomas Bradwardine. One consequence of this approach, however, is that if Socrates utters only ‘Socrates utters a falsehood’ (a), while Plato says ‘Socrates utters a falsehood’ (b), then, for Bradwardine two different propositions are involved on account of (a) being self-referential, while (b) is not. Problems with this consequence are first discussed before a closely related analysis is provided that escapes it. Moreover, this (...) alternative analysis merely relies on quantification theory at the propositional level, so there is very little to question about it. The paper is the third in a series explaining the superior virtues of a referential form of propositional quantification. (shrink)

Drawing on the 1870s-1880s work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, William James famously characterised the specious present as ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’. Literature on the pre-history of late nineteenth century specious present theories clusters around the work of John Locke and Thomas Reid, and I argue it is incomplete. The pre-history is missing an inter-connected group of English philosophers writing on the present between 1749 and 1785: David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, (...) Abraham Tucker, and William Watson. With William Herschel, Watson even conducted experiments to determine the limits of human temporal perception. These thinkers do not appear in the specious present literature, or broader historical surveys of temporal consciousness. Yet this paper shows that they all produced important work on our experience of the present, variously defending theses that can be found in subsequent specious present theories. It argues their texts reward study, and may have influenced later theorists; contextualises the nineteenth century theories of James and others; and pushes back the start date of the 'standard history' of micro time by over half a century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE GREAT GATSBY: ROMANCE OR HOLOCAUST? Thomas J. Cousineau Washington College In an otherwise appreciative response to The Great Gatsby, H. L. Mencken expressed a reservation about the plot ofthe novel, which he characterized as "no more than a glorified anecdote" (Claridge 156). Writing to Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald suggested, in turn, that what Mencken did not find in Gatsby was "any emotional backbone at the very height of (...) it" (Turnbull 342). Critics ofthe novel, however, have tended to overlook the self-evident fact that the novel's ostensible emotional center—the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy—does not possess sufficient significance to justify the classic status that has been largely accorded to Fitzgerald's novel. We need only remember Daisy's effusive appreciation ofGatsby's "beautiful shirts," or the even more telling detail that the truly "romantic" moments in Daisy and Gatsby's relationship all occurred several years earlier in Louisville and that the period of the reunion is scarcely mentioned in the novel to convince ourselves that the putative grandeur of Gatsby's dream does not adequately account for the novel's power or its lasting significance. Reading Gatsby as a novel about its hero's dream makes of it, in fact, a precarious literary achievement, one whose numerous absurdities were perceptively delineated by the English novelist L.P. Hartley, who admired Fitzgerald's literary gifts but thought that he had squandered them in Gatsby. In a 1926 review of the novel, Hartley offered the following summary of its plot: An adventurer of shady antecedents builds a palace at a New York seaside resort, entertains on a scale which Lucullus would have marveled at but could not have approved, and spends untold sums ofmoney, all to 22Thomas J. Cousineau catch the eye ofhis one time sweetheart, who lives on an island opposite, unhappily but very successfully married. At last, after superhuman feats ofostentation and display, the fly walks into the web. A train ofdisasters follows, comparable in quantity and quality with the scale ofthe Great Gatsby's prodigies of hospitality. Coincidence leaps to the helm and throws a mistress under a motor-car. The car does not stop, which, all things considered, is the most natural thing that happens in the book. An injured husband finds the Great Gatsby in suicidal mood sitting on a raft in his artificial lake and (apparently) forestalls him; anyhowthey are both discovered dead. The elder Gatsby is unearthed and gives a pathetic account ofhis son's early years. All the characters behave as though they were entitled to grieve over a great sorrow, and the book closes with the airs oftragedy. (Claridge 178) Minor inaccuracies aside, this must be among the most cogent, disabused responses that the plot of The Great Gatsby has ever received. It is such a welcome antidote to the reams of interpretation ofthe novel produced by critics who, dutifully aping Nick Carraway in this respect, have allowed their conviction as to Gatsby's "greatness" to be matched only by their equally adamant certainty as to the moral tawdriness of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. As Hartley's exasperated summary reminds us, The Great Gatsby, read as the account ofthe eponymous hero's dream, simply cannot support the weight of morally serious interpretation that it would like to invite or that so many ofits critics, in their turn, would like to bestow upon it.1 Nor do we move any closer to appreciating the greatness of Gatsby by shiftingourattention tothe growth in moral awareness thatcountless critics have attributed toNick Carraway, whose self-evaluation as "one ofthe few honest people that I have ever known" (64) should in itself arouse our suspicions.2 As we shall see, the fruits ofNick's presumed moral education The seemingly indestructible resistance to Hartley's lucidity that has been displayed by the great majority ofthe novel's critics may be observed in the chapter that Jeffrey Hart devotes to Gatsby in his recently published Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe. Arguing that "magical transformation" is the novel's true subject (230), Hart credits Nick with achieving an "epiphany" whereby he recognizes Gatsby's superiority to "the whole damn bunch put together" (238) and concludes that the larger... (shrink)

A discussion of the relationship between Ricardo and his Unitarian Minister Thomas Belsham, a New Testament scholar and the author of a philosophical treatise inspired by the Hartley-Priestley philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S IDEAS In the eighteenth century, there was widespread acceptance of a physiological basis for cognition. Some writers even argued for a rather detailed correlation between awareness and physiological changes, suggesting that (a) the former could be adequately explained in terms of the latter or, in some few instances, (b) that the former are the latter. David Hartley may come to mind as fitting one or the other (...) of these alternatives, but Robert Hooke had earlier argued for ideas as brain impressions, as of course did Descartes in his early scientific treatises. There was also one medical doctor in the eighteenth century, Dr. Astruc, who seems (on the basis of what Chambers reports) to have attempted a very specific correlation between specific forms of awareness and specific states and changes in physiology. There were also writers in this century who warned against the dangers of using physical-object vocabulary when talking about the mind and acts of awareness. Berkeley is one such writer,- Thomas Reid at the end of the century traced, to the use of this vocabulary, what he took to be the indirect realism of the way of ideas. Hume is writing in both these traditions: the tradition of using physical language for characterizing mental operations and the tradition of physiological explanations and correlations. The phrase used by Alexander Pope and Hume, 'the anatomy of the mind', seems to be a mixed metaphor, but it is a phrase which I take as an indication that Hume is doing what we would call 'cognitive psychology'. Another phrase used by Hume (this time in the Enquiry), 'mental geography', may capture his enterprise better: 'geography' still sounds physical, but it is modified by 'mental'. Hume is engaged in mental mapping. I want to take a look at the use of the term 'idea' in Hume's writing (mainly in the Treatise) in order to see 2. whether Hume's text enables us to say anything about the nature of his ideas, to discover what role they play in his mental geography. As far as I can determine, there are three possible candidates for the nature of ideas in Hume: images, brain impressions, and cognitive contents. The first of these is, I think, the standard reading of Hume's ideas. Professor Anderson has presented strong argument and evidence to support the second. I will be suggesting that the third is the best candidate, given the full range of the text of the Treatise. Of course, the correct answer 4 may be all three of these. The Treatise opens by dividing all perceptions of the human mind into two kinds. Impressions and ideas differ in the degree of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind. Even though the language of 'force' and 'liveliness' may be borrowed from physical talk, it is the mind, not the brain, on which perceptions strike. The examples of impressions are sensations, passions, and emotions. Ideas are said to be the faint images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning. The term 'image' throughout the eighteenth century never receives any clear explication. Its inheritance from optical treatises always hangs about it. We should look to the examples cited by Hume, in order to see whether we can construct a meaning for that term when used in these psychological contexts. Let us look first at his very first example of 'ideas': all the perceptions excited by the present discourse. (Tl) He explicitly excludes from these perceptions those which arise from the sight and touch, as well as the immediate pleasure or uneasiness his discourse may excite in us. The perceptions which are thus excluded are sensations and emotions, the impressions he has just distinguished. The only candidate left for ideas would seem to be what this discourse says, our thoughts about it, my understanding of what it says. The distinction is not one Hume thinks is difficult to follow: Every one of himself will readily perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking. (Tl-2) Last week I was sad, today I recall that feeling of sadness/ the difference between being sad and remembering that I was sad. Hume gives a different example: the perceptions formed when... (shrink)

Introduction -- Defining pluralism : Simon Pokagon, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Thomas fortune -- Evolution and American Indian philosophy -- Feminist resistance : Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Labor, empire and the social gospel : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams -- A new name for an old way of thinking : William James -- Making ideas clear : Charles Sanders Peirce -- The beloved community and its discontents : Josiah Royce and the (...) realists -- War, anarchism, and sex : Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger -- Democracy and social ethics : John Dewey -- Naturalism and idealism, fear, and conventionality : Mary Whiton Calkins and Elsie Clews Parsons -- Race riots and the color line : W. E. B. du Bois -- Philosophy reacts : Hartley Burr Alexander and Morris R. Cohen -- Creative experience : Mary Parker Follett -- Cultural pluralism : Horace Kallen and Alain Locke -- War and the rise of logical positivism : Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap -- Mccarthyism and American empiricism : Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and Charles Morris -- The linguistic turn : Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, and W. V. O. Quine -- Resisting the turn : Donald Davidson, Wilfrid Sellars, and the pluralist rebellion -- Philosophy outside : John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson -- Economics and technology : Lewis Mumford, C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith -- Politics : John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Noam Chomsky -- Civil rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright and James Baldwin -- Black power : Malcolm X, James Cone, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Cornel West -- Latin American American philosophy -- Red power, indigenous philosophy : Vine Deloria, Jr. and contemporary American Indian thought -- Feminism -- Engaged philosophy and the environment -- American philosophy today -- Recovering and sustaining the American tradition -- American philosophy revitalized -- The spirit of American philosophy in the new century. (shrink)

Non-epistemic values play important roles in classificatory practice, such that philosophical accounts of kinds and classification should be able to accommodate them. Available accounts fail to do so, however. Our aim is to fill this lacuna by showing how non-epistemic values feature in scientific classification, and how they can be incorporated into a philosophical theory of classification and kinds. To achieve this, we present a novel account of kinds and classification, discuss examples from biological classification where non-epistemic values play decisive (...) roles, and show how this account accommodates the role of non-epistemic values. (shrink)

"De ente et essentia" from Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), sanctus, doctor Ecclesiae catholicae, theologus italianus et philosophus mediaevalis.

While attention is widely recognised as central to perception, the term is often used to mean very different things. Prominent theories of attention — notably the premotor theory — relate it to planned or executed eye movements. This contrasts with the notion of attention as a gain control process that weights the information carried by different sensory channels. We draw upon recent advances in theoretical neurobiology to argue for a distinction between attentional gain mechanisms and salience attribution. The former depends (...) upon estimating the precision of sensory data, while the latter is a consequence of the need to actively engage with the sensorium. Having established this distinction, we consider the intimate relationship between attention and salience. (shrink)

Thomas Wheatland examines the influence of the Frankfurt School, or Horkheimer Circle, and how they influenced American social thought and postwar German sociology.

We provide a formally rigorous framework for integrating singular causation, as understood by Nuel Belnap's theory of causae causantes, and objective single case probabilities. The central notion is that of a causal probability space whose sample space consists of causal alternatives. Such a probability space is generally not isomorphic to a product space. We give a causally motivated statement of the Markov condition and an analysis of the concept of screening-off. 1. Causal dependencies and probabilities1.1Background: causation in branching space-times1.2What are (...) probabilities defined for?2. Basic transitions2.1Basics of basic transitions2.2Sets of basic transitions3. Causal probability theory3.1Some simple cases3.2General causal probabilities3.3Application: probability of suprema of a chain. (shrink)

Der Gedanke, der sich in der modernen Idee der Autonomie verdichtet, ist ein doppelter: Die Figur der Autonomie enthält zugleich eine neue Auffassung von Normativität und eine eigene Konzeption von Freiheit. Dem Gedanken der Autonomie zufolge ist ein Gesetz, das wahrhaft normativ ist, eines, als dessen Urheber wir uns selbst betrachten können; und eine Freiheit, die im vollen Sinne wirklich ist, drückt sich in Gestalt eben solcher selbstgegebener Gesetze aus. Die Idee der Autonomie artikuliert so die Einsicht, dass man Freiheit (...) und Gesetz nicht durch ihre Entgegensetzung bestimmen kann, sondern durcheinander erläutern muss. Wirkliche Freiheit ist nicht Freiheit von Gesetzen, sondern Freiheit in Gesetzen; verbindliche Normen sind nicht das, was Freiheit äußerlich beschränkt, sondern das, was Freiheit innerlich verwirklicht. Die Idee der Autonomie, die für die moderne praktische Philosophie seit Rousseau und Kant grundlegend ist, zielt so darauf, Freiheit und Verbindlichkeit in einem Zuge zu artikulieren: durch die Form selbstgegebener Gesetze. -/- Mit Beiträgen von Robert Brandom, Judith Butler, Thomas Khurana, Christoph Menke, Terry Pinkard und Sebastian Rödl. (shrink)

Communication involves a great deal of uncertainty. Prima facie, it is therefore surprising that biological communication systems—from cellular to human—exhibit a high degree of ambiguity and often leave its resolution to contextual cues. This puzzle deepens once we consider that contextual information may diverge between individuals. In the following we lay out a model of ambiguous communication in iterated interactions between subjectively rational agents lacking a common contextual prior. We argue ambiguity’s justification to lie in endowing interlocutors with means to (...) flexibly adapt language use to each other and the context of their interaction to serve their communicative preferences. Linguistic alignment is shown to play an important role in this process; it foments convergence of contextual expectations and thereby leads to agreeing use and interpretation of ambiguous messages. We conclude that ambiguity is ecologically rational when interlocutors’ contextual expectations are generally in line or they interact multiple times in an informative context, enabling for the alignment of their expectations. In light of these results meaning multiplicity can be understood as an opportunistic outcome enabled and shaped by linguistic adaptation and contextual information. 1Meaning Multiplicity in Communication 2Ambiguous Signalling through Pragmatic Inference 2.1Preliminaries 2.2Signalling behaviour 2.3Communicative success 2.4Iterated interactions 3Predictions for Single and Iterated Interactions 3.1Simulations 3.2Exploration and past experience 3.3Preemptive adaptation 4Discussion 5Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)

Current psychology of human reasoning is divided into several different approaches. For instance, there is a major dispute over the question whether human beings are able to apply norms of the formal models of rationality such as rules of logic, or probability and decision theory, correctly. While researchers following the “heuristics and biases” approach argue that we deviate systematically from these norms, and so are perhaps deeply irrational, defenders of the “bounded rationality” approach think not only that the evidence for (...) this conclusion is problematic but also that we should not, at least not very often, use formal norms in reasoning. I argue that while the evidence for heuristics and biases is indeed questionable, the bounded rationality approach has its limits too. Most especially, we should not infer that formal norms play no role in a comprehensive theory of rationality. Instead, formal and bounded rules of reasoning might even be connected in a more comprehensive theory of rationality. (shrink)

"Unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published ... in 1950." Bibliographical footnotes.

If you were to list the perennial issues in philosophy, the nature of time would no doubt be on that list. The essays in the present volume all touch upon the problem of time. The volume includes four contributions from different perspectives within the history of philosophy of time.Jani Hakkarainen and Todd Ryan delve into David Hume's account of time. Hume thinks there can be no time without succession. Consequently, unchanging, steadfast objects do not have a duration. They are stationary, (...) not subject to any change. Although they lack a duration, they coexist with a temporal succession. This introduces a problem: What is the relation between unchanging objects and time? Hakkarainen and Ryan draw on what they call Hume's Principle of Quantitative Comparison. Each indivisible temporal extent is equal to any other temporal extent; differences in duration are due to the different number of temporal parts. Steadfast objects may be thought to undergo a certain number of calculable changes when they are compared to ordinary successions we experience. This experience is provided, for example, by the ticking of a clock. We have the capacity to think that steadfast objects have precise durations. We humans nevertheless cannot give any deep explanation as how we come to this conclusion.Emily Thomas focuses on the graphic representation of time. Whereas the visual representation of time has typically been done with matrices or grids, Joseph Priestley represented time in a line in 1765. Priestley's line divides time “by an equal scale” into centuries. Many have interpreted this as being evidence of a Newtonian influence, as if there is an absolute time flowing equably. Thomas situates Priestley's position in the modern debates on the nature of our ideas. She argues that the absolutist reading does not have merit. Thomas thinks rather that Priestley sides with David Hartley, who explained how we acquire the ideas of duration and time from sensation. Thomas's essay advances our understanding of the history of space-time parallelism. With timelines, the analogy between time and space becomes a possibility. In my essay I assess Ernst Mach's criticism of Isaac Newton's substantivalist account of time. Newton's argument for absolute time relates to his mathematical-empirical physics and theology. In his Science of Mechanics, Mach largely neglects the laws of motion, calculus and the omnipresence theology that is at the background of Newton's concept of time. Mach did however criticize Newton's absolutist argument on the basis that the self-existing flow cannot be observed, measured, or experimented with, and he provided an alternative relational account of time. I point out that this was not only extreme positivism or phenomenalism, but an epistemology and ontology suited for the subsequent physical theories of relativity. Finally, I argue that Mach's denial of the independent atomic structure of matter should not be entirely assimilated to his denial of substantivalism about time. The two phenomena are different, so we should evaluate Mach's reasoning concerning them accordingly. Matyáš Moravec and Peter West go through Susan Stebbing's criticism of Arthur Eddington's popular account of the passage of time. Stebbing's target, Moravec and West argue, is Eddington's largely Bergsonian view on time. She objects to the view that our minds have “a private door” to the physical reality which no measurements can disclose. Stebbing believes that our experience of the passage of time belongs to our ordinary, every-day experience, and she thinks Eddington mystifies the whole idea by leaning on a peculiar form of introspection. Moravec and West build a case for Bergson's influence on Eddington, arguing that Bergson probably did contribute to Eddington's idea of “the intuition of becoming.” Both seem to think that we may access the dynamic temporal reality in ways not captured by scientific investigation, by means of an introspective internal experience of duration. As a final remark, I think I should note, with regret, that out of the six authors in this volume only one is a woman. Let the reader know that as an editor I tried to strike a better balance. I still trust that the quality of the articles is high, and most importantly, worthwhile for readers interested in the history of philosophy of time. (shrink)

This chapter examines eighteenth-century British discussions of human freedom, which focused on the question of whether the will is a self-determining, or active power, or whether the will is determined, or necessitated, by motives. The chapter begins with a consideration of the libertarian position of Samuel Clarke, which was taken up by the later libertarians Richard Price and Thomas Reid. It considers two necessitarians: David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. Although David Hume was taken to be a necessitarian, both (...) by his contemporaries and recent commentators, the chapter suggests that Hume challenged assumptions about the nature of the very problem of liberty and necessity shared by his contemporaries, libertarians and necessitarians alike, although this challenge remained unanswered, because ignored, in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

While some philosophers believe disabilities constitute a “bad-difference,” others think they constitute a “mere-difference” (Barnes 2016). On this latter view, while disabilities may create certain hardships, having a disability is not bad in itself. I argue that chronic pain problematizes this disability-neutral view. In doing so, I first survey the literature on chronic pain (§1). Then, I argue that Barnes’s mere-difference view cannot adequately accommodate the lived experiences of many people who suffer from chronic pain (§2). Next, I consider two (...) ways Barnes might respond and I explain why these responses are not workable (§3). Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of disability variantism, the view that just as some disabilities can be neutral or even positive for some individuals, other disabilities like chronic pain can understandably make some people’s lives miserable not because society has failed them but simply because some conditions can openly conflict with well-being (§4). (shrink)

In recent years historians have revisited the creation of the United Nations (UN) system by highlighting the enduring influence of Empire and recognizing the substantial role of cultural and scientific actors in wartime international diplomacy. The British biochemist Joseph Needham, who participated in the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was one of them. Yet, if historians have recognized his role as the leading architect of the sciences at UNESCO, they still fall short of engaging (...) with the Chinese and imperial geography of his involvement with UNESCO. During the Second World War, Needham was stationed in war-torn China. As director of the Sino-British Scientific Cooperation Office, Needham not only organized Sino-British scientific cooperation against the Japanese invasion, but his mission inspired his engagement for a reform of international science and fueled an international campaign that led him to become the director of UNESCO’s Natural Science division after the war. By reconstructing his campaign in context, this article seeks to demonstrate how the imperial and transnational scientific networks of the wartime era fostered the creation of a scientific mandate for UNESCO. It situates Needham’s activism and ideas in the context of the Sino-Japanese war, imperial wartime technocracy, and China’s scientific nationalism. In so doing, it reveals a string of forgotten partners from China and the British Empire. Their conception of a reorganized international science and shared belief in modern science and its ideal of universality shaped Needham’s vision for science at UNESCO, while their activism contributed decisively to the success of his campaign. This inquiry hence participates in recent efforts to challenge the existing Eurocentrism corseting the historiography of the UN and expands the historiography of scientific internationalism beyond Europe and North America. Importantly, it also contributes to uncovering the technocratic ties established between Empire and the UN system from its onset. (shrink)

This chapter discusses eighteenth-century British theories of perception, beginning with George Berkeley’s Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. The chapter traces Berkeley’s influence through Thomas Reid, David Hume, David Hartley, Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart. The chapter presents theories of perception in this time a place a primarily concerned with metaphysics, mind and methodology rather than epistemology.

Hass wird in der Arbeit als eine anhaltende affektive Gesinnung verstanden, die auf eine erlebte Kränkung oder Ungerechtigkeit zurückgeht und auf Rache an ihrem Urheber, in extre­men Fällen auf die Vernichtung des Feindes gerichtet ist. Die Dynamik und Radikalität insbesondere des malignen Hasses resultiert, so die These des Autors, aus einer Affektretention, die durch die selbst empfundene Schwäche oder Ohnmacht des Hassenden bedingt ist. Durch diesen Rückstau wird der Hass demnach in der Latenzphase immer weiter genährt, bis er schließlich in (...) akute destruktive Handlungen umschlagen kann. Als charakteristische Struktur des Hasses wird dabei eine Dialektik von Selbststeigerung und Selbstdestruktivität mit fortschreitender Entleerung des Selbst herausgearbeitet. Diese indivi­duelle Dynamik findet sich in oft potenzierter Form im Hass von Gruppen wieder. Der Autor untersucht die Phänomenologie des Hasses und die daraus resultierende Form von Destruktivität anhand literarischer Beispiele, psychischer Störungen und gesellschaftlicher Phänomene. (shrink)

In this paper I will develop the argument that a cognitivist and virtue ethical approach to moral reasons is the only approach that can sustain a non-alienated relation to one’s character and ethical commitments. [Thomas, 2005] As a corollary of this claim, I will argue that moral reasons must be understood as reasonably partial. A view of this kind can, nevertheless, recognise the existence of general and positive obligations to humanity. Doing so does not undermine the view by leading (...) to a highly demanding view of morality. Indeed, it offers a defence against the view that an analogy between obligations of immediate rescue to particular individuals and general and positive obligations to humanity leads to the conclusion that morality is highly demanding. The plan of this paper is as follows. The first section sets out the main elements of a cognitivist and virtue ethical approach to moral reasons. The second applies it to the test case of an argument that claims that one way in which one seeks to lead a non-alienated ethical life, a life of integrity, is incompatible with the requirements of consequentialism given certain very general facts about the moral state of the world. [Ashford, 2000] My.. (shrink)

Paragraph 50 of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigationsfamously says that there is one thing of which one can neither state that it is 1 m long nor that it isn't: the standard metre in Paris. Consensus appears to be that (1) exegetically speaking, Wittgenstein affirms this claim, and (2) systematically, whether or not one agrees with it, the practice of using a material artefact as a measurement standard has important philosophical consequences. In this paper, in contrast, we show that (1') Wittgenstein does not (...) affirm the standard metre claim and (2') historical facts about material length standards do not warrant deeper philosophical conclusions. References to material measurement standards in the literature gravely distort the actual metrological practices of developing and using such standards. (shrink)

Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy's beginning and end, while Heidegger argued it concluded with Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy's end, with some even calling for the advent of "postphilosophy." In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions—which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject—Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel undertakes the (...) first systematic treatment of "the end of philosophy," while also recasting the history of western thought itself. Thomas-Fogiel begins with postphilosophical claims such as scientism, which she reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. She discovers similar issues in Rorty's skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, Thomas-Fogiel finds both traditions followed the same path—the road of reference—which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Levinas and Habermas, Thomas-Fogiel reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference. Trained under the French philosopher Bernard Bourgeois, she remakes philosophy in exciting new ways for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas W. (...) Merrill shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

Standard definitions of lying imply that intending to deceive others is a necessary condition of one's telling a lie. In an earlier paper, which appeared in this journal, Wokutch, Murrmann and I argued that intending to deceive others is not a necessary condition of one's telling a lie and proposed an alternative definition. In a reply which also appeared in this journal, Gary Jones argues that our arguments fail to establish the claim that it is possible to lie without intending (...) to deceive others, and that the objections which we raise for standard definitions apply equally to our own. The present paper argues that one can lie without intending to deceive others. I concede Jones' second criticism and propose a new alternative definition. (shrink)

Because wicked problems are beyond the scope of normal, industrial-age engineering science, sustainability problems will require reform of current engineering science and technology practices. We assert that, while pluralism concerning use of the term sustainability is likely to persist, universities should continue to cultivate research and education programs specifically devoted to sustainable engineering science, an enterprise that is formally demarcated from business-as-usual and systems optimization approaches. Advancing sustainable engineering science requires a shift in orientation away from reductionism and intellectual specialization (...) towards integrative approaches to science, education, and technology that: draw upon an ethical awareness that extends beyond the usual bounds of professional ethics or responsible conduct of research to include macroethics, adopt anticipatory and adaptive approaches to unintended consequences resulting from technological innovation that result in more resilient systems, and cultivate interactional expertise to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchange. Unfortunately, existing education and research training programs are ill-equipped to prepare scientists and engineers to operate effectively in a wicked problems milieu. Therefore, it is essential to create new programs of graduate education that will train scientists and engineers to become sustainable engineering science experts equipped to recognize and grapple with the macro-ethical, adaptive, and cross-disciplinary challenges embedded in their technical research and development programs. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-18 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9342-2 Authors Thomas Seager, School of Sustainability and The Built Environment, Arizona State University, Phoenix Metropolitan Area, AZ, USA Evan Selinger, Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Henrietta, NY, USA Arnim Wiek, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Phoenix Metropolitan Area, AZ, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

Although several theories of online syntactic processing assume the parallel activation of multiple syntactic representations, evidence supporting simultaneous activation has been inconclusive. Here, the continuous and non‐ballistic properties of computer mouse movements are exploited, by recording their streaming x, y coordinates to procure evidence regarding parallel versus serial processing. Participants heard structurally ambiguous sentences while viewing scenes with properties either supporting or not supporting the difficult modifier interpretation. The curvatures of the elicited trajectories revealed both an effect of visual context (...) and graded competition between simultaneously active syntactic representations. The results are discussed in the context of 3 major groups of theories within the domain of sentence processing. (shrink)

Overview of the definition of art and its relationship to definitions of the individual art forms, with an eye to clarifying the issues separating dominant institutionalist and skeptical positions from non-skeptical, non-institutional ones. Section 2 indicates some of the key philosophical issues which intersect in discussions of the definition of art, and singles out some important areas of broad agreement and disagreement. Section 3 critically reviews some influential standard versions of institutionalism, and some more recent variations on them. Section 4 (...) discusses some recent reductionist approaches to definitional questions, which advocate a shift of philosophical focus from the macro- to the micro-level —from art to the individual art forms. Section 5 outlines an alternative, non-institutionalist and non-reductionist approach to definitional questions. (shrink)

Condorcet's jury theorem shows that when the members of a group have noisy but independent information about what is best for the group as a whole, majority decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. When voting is supplemented by communication, however, the resulting interdependencies between decision makers can strengthen or undermine this effect: they can facilitate information pooling, but also amplify errors. We consider an intriguing non-human case of independent information pooling combined with communication: the case of nest-site choice by honeybee (...) (Apis mellifera) swarms. It is empirically well documented that when there are different nest sites that vary in quality, the bees usually choose the best one. We develop a new agent-based model of the bees' decision process and show that its remarkable reliability stems from a particular interplay of independence and interdependence between the bees. (shrink)