The process-dissociation procedure was used to estimate the influence of spatial and form-based processing in the Simon task. Subjects made manual responses to the direction of arrows . The results provide evidence that the form and spatial location of a single stimulus can have functionally independent effects on performance. They also indicate the existence of two kinds of automaticity—an associative component that reflects prior S-R mappings and a nonassociative component that reflects the correspondence between stimulus and response codes.

This edited volume of original contributions deals with the economic and political thought of Michael Polanyi. Requiring little prior knowledge of Polanyi, this volume further develops a somewhat neglected side of Polanyi's work. In particular it examines the 'tacit integration', of subsidiary details into focal objects or actions as central to all knowing and action. It traces ontological counterparts in the structures of comprehensive entities and complex actions, and a multi-level universe in which lower levels have their boundary conditions, the (...) extents to which they apply, determined by those of the next higher level, whilst each possessing its own laws or operative principles. This schema of 'dual control' preserves the reality and relative autonomy of each level, and its interactions with others, against the various reductions. The essays in this volume also employ and develop important additional concepts and distinctions such as: 'corporate' and 'spontaneous' order; 'public' and 'private' liberties; 'general' and 'specific authority'; and 'moral inversion'; which, as the essays show, are necessary for understanding and maintaining a free society and the freedom of institutions within it. Among the topics treated with them are: more of the prerequisites of freedom in public liberties dedicated to principles and transcendent values; totalitarianism and society as spontaneous order; the balance of general and specific authority in society and particular institutions; reductionism, totalitarianism and consumption in consumer societies, as moral inversions; the mutual interactions of economics and politics as distinct and autonomous but interacting levels; the sociological aspects of economics; and Polanyi's own contributions to sociology. Although, as indicated, Polanyi has his special terms, the essays in this volume, like his works, give them meaning with concrete examples and so avoid merely shuffling a mass of abstractions. Together the essays show that his work is a rich seam of ideas and inspiration for yet further extension and application--Publisher. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

While discussing critical individuality as oneof the main goals of liberal education, theemphasis has usually been on direct educationalmeasures. Much less attention has been given tothe social preconditions for its development.This paper discusses the societal aspect of thequestion by employing the notion of spherepluralism. The attempt is to point out someways in which the diversified nature of societycan be employed in its full potential for thedevelopment of critical individuality. Thearticle aims to outline a form of spherepluralism, which is based on (...) structuraldifferentiation, cultural diversity, communalvitality, confessional pluralism andcross-communal criticism. The suggestion isthat the critical potential of sphere pluralismpresupposes a proper balance between sphereautonomy and inter-sphere criticism as well asthat between social construction of meaning andobjective-structural constraints. (shrink)

This is a comment on Tihamér Margitay’s “From Epistemology to Ontology,” where he criticizes Polanyi’s claim that there is a systematic correspondence between the levels of ontology and the levels of tacit knowing. Margitay contends that Polanyi supports this correspondence by appealing to a “purely ontological argument,” one which concludes that it is impossible to reduce machines to a singular, chemical-physical type, and criticizes this claim by pointing to industrial standards (machines that do reduce to singular physical-chemical type). I respond (...) to Margitay’s claim by distinguishing two different “purely ontological arguments” in Polanyi’s thought (one relying on the multi-realizability of a machine in different physical-chemical types, the other pointing to the inability of a purely physical-chemical ontology to account for the artificial shaping and functioning of machines). With these two arguments clarified, Margitay’s criticism by appealing to industrial standards loses much of its initial force. (shrink)

In this paper we reexamine the question of whether questions areinherently intensional entities. We do so by proposing a novelextensional theory of questions, based on a re-interpretation of thedomain of t as a bilattice rather than the usual booleaninterpretation. We discuss the adequacy of our theory with respect tothe adequacy criteria imposed on the semantics of questionsby (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1997). We show that the theory is able to account in astraightforward manner for some complex issues in the semantics ofquestions (...) including coordinated questions, combined indicative andinterrogative sentences, questions with quantifiers, and theimpossibility of negating questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Playful Metaphysics Greg Moses Let us revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the Epicureans, Cicerothe Academic, andBrutus the Stoic, could, all of them, live in unreserved friendship together, and were unsensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished agreeable matter to discourse and conversation.1 This paper argues, firstly, that contrary to appearances, the mature Hume allows for engagementin a certain style ofmetaphysical reasoning (...) in a rather strong sense of'metaphysics'. The proviso is that this be done in a carefully defined playful 'Pyrrhonian' spirit (sees. 1-5). It argues, secondly, that engagementinmetaphysics in such aHumean playful spirit might be available to us and of some value for us nowadays (sees. 6-7). The strategy ofthe argument in sections 1-5 is that the character Philo in Hume'sDialogues ConcerningNaturalReligion engages injust that kind ofmetaphysics that Hume rules out in the Treatise and the Enquiries, but that he does so in such a playful fashion as to be able to get away with it. (1) The word 'metaphysics' is used in the Hume text interpretation part of this paper (sees. 1-5) to refer to enquiry concerning 'ultimate principles/causes'. These ultimate causes are more than just very general constant conjunctions the reality of which is supposed, given habit, on the basis of experience. They are characterized in Hume by the fact that: 1) there is a relations of ideas connection between the 'essence' or 'nature' of whatever it is we are talking about, the soul/mind/human nature, or external bodies, such that 2) could we know the 'nature' or 'essence' we could come to know the principle without consulting experience, and, consequently, 3) they are such that if and when we came to know them we could give a reason for them, beyond our experience of their reality, namely by showing them to follow from the 'essence' or 'nature' ofthe object in question.2 The search for these ultimate springs and causes motivates our researches. "This is our aim in all our studies and reflections" (T 266), tofind the ultimate and operatingprinciple, which resides in the object. We are not satisfied, we would not willingly stop until acquainted with them, or until we are convinced that such a goal is beyond us human Volume XVII Number 2 63 GREG MOSES beings and despair has the same effect on us as enjoyment. Science, in fact, only "staves off our ignorance a little longer" (E 31). The most general and most refined principles we discover are as inexplicable to us as the phenomena themselves are to the vulgar; we have no idea even of what it is we are looking for when we search for them.3 There is thus a kind of natural desire for insight into causes, which natural and moral science does notfully satisfy,4 a sort ofnatural desire for the vision of, if possible, ultimate causes. (2) The attitude ofthe Treatiseand theEnquiries withrespect tothe search for ultimate principles is to stay away from it—as every first year philosophy student knows. This is Hume's position even antecedent to science and enquiry, taken over from the example of the natural philosophers whose empirical method he is adopting. Note that we are using the word 'metaphysics' here as a temporary convenience in a non-Humean sense: for Hume, 'metaphysics' = the more difficult parts of learning, profound reasonings of any kind (cf. E 11). Hume himself engages in such profound reasonings, for a variety of reasons (under five headings in E, sec. 1), including the idea that we "must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate" (E 12). One of Hume's purposes in book 1 of the Treatise and in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is to turn us away from "specious and agreeable" (T 272) hypotheses and towards those subjects where alone we can expect assurance and conviction (T 272-73), in order to Uve at ease ever after, having rejected, after deliberate enquiry, the most uncertain and disagreeable part of learning (E 12-13). This is accomplished by his investigation of belief inmattersoffactbeyond testimonyofsenses ormemory;thatis, relying on causal reasoning and... (shrink)

For deliberations on the ethical and meta-ethical implications of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, here are abstracts and papers from the Ethics Section of the 6th International Whitehead Conference held at the University of Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria in July 2006. In accordance with the conference schedule, there are three subsections. The subsection on "Metaphysics of Morals and Moral Theory" includes contributions from Franklin I. Gamwell (Does Morality Presuppose God?), John W. Lango (abstract only), Duane Voskuil ("Ethics' Dipolar Necessities and (...) Theistic Implications), and Theodore Walker Jr. ("Neoclassical Cosmology and Matthew 22:36-40). The subsection on "Evaluating Moral Practices" includes contributions from Frederick Ferrè (abstract only), Seung Gap Lee (Hope for the Earth: A Process Eschatological Eco-ethics for South Korea), Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore (Compassion, Creativity, and Form: The Ethics of Institutions), and George W. Shields (Ruse, Altruism, and Process Philosophy). The subsection on "Ethics and Aesthetic Values" includes contributions from Stephen T. Franklin (abstract only), Brian G. Henning (Is There an Ethics of Creativity?), Mihàly Tòth (Art of Life and the Ethics of Life Forming), and Guorong Yang (Problems and Perspectives in the Emerging of Global Society). (shrink)

The main aim of this work is to contribute tothe elucidation of the concept of informationby comparing three different views about thismatter: the view of Fred Dretske's semantictheory of information, the perspective adoptedby Peter Kosso in his interaction-informationaccount of scientific observation, and thesyntactic approach of Thomas Cover and JoyThomas. We will see that these views involvevery different concepts of information, eachone useful in its own field of application. This comparison will allow us to argue in favorof a terminological `cleansing': it (...) is necessaryto make a terminological distinction among thedifferent concepts of information, in order toavoid conceptual confusions when the word`information' is used to elucidate relatedconcepts as knowledge, observation orentropy. (shrink)

The problem of Kant's first Critique is the problem of pure reason: how are synthetic judgments possible a priori? Many of his readers have believed that the problem depends upon a delimitation within the class of a priori truths of a class of irreducibly synthetic truths—a delimitation whose possibility is doubtful—because absent this it is not excluded that all a priori truths are analytic. I argue, on the contrary, that the problem depends on nothing more than the human knower's everyday (...) consciousness of her own finitude: her dependence in thinking and knowing on what is given to her. The problem is a difficulty about how the concepts which figure in metaphysical judgments could represent reality given that they cannot do so in the way in which concepts figuring in empirical judgments do. Empirical judgment here functions as exemplary of thought and knowledge because it is exemplary of finite thought and knowledge. Mere analysis could not, therefore, dissolve the problem even in principle, because to say that a concept can be analyzed is not yet to explain the possibility of its real representative power. The significance of the analytic-synthetic distinction in the context of the problem of pure reason is that its formulation allows Kant to say this. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Does the Scientist of Man Observe? Janet Broughton In the introduction to the Treatise, Hume cautions the reader that the scientist of man cannot "go beyond experience" and "discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature."1 "[T]he only solid foundation we can give to this science," tie says, "must be laid on experience and observation" (Txvi). This methodological principle is a familiar Newtonian one; indeed Hume makes a (...) point of saying it applies to "all the sciences" (T xviii), not just to the science of man. Although the principle is familiar, just what it enjoins is not clear. We are to renounce investigations that go "beyond experience," and we are not to seek "ultimate" qualities. But exactly which investigations and qualities are these? The question is a difficult one for Newton as well as for Hume. But Hume's invocation of the familiar methodological principle raises two additional questions, ones that need not especially trouble Newton. When the scientist of man goes about his task ofgathering "experience and observation," what sort ofthing is he to observe? And how is he to make his observations? My mainaimin this paperisto answerthose two questionsas they arise for the early stages ofHume's investigation ofhuman nature in the Treatise. I hope also to persuade the reader that these questions are more difficult, and more important, than they may at first seem, andthattheyare connected with evenbroader questions aboutthe sort ofproject Hume undertook in the Treatise. "Perceptions" Without explanation, Hume begins the Treatise proper by distinguishing between two kinds of"perceptions ofthe human mind" and drawsthe distinction accordingtohow the perceptions"maketheir way into our thought or consciousness"(T 1). Afew pageslater, he asks which of these "impressions and ideas are causes and which effects" and then announces that the "full examination ofthis question is the subject of the present treatise" (T 4). The scientist ofman, then, is to observe perceptions in our consciousness. Most commentators assume therefore that Hume takes himselfto be studying what Locke called ideas: states of awareness whose 'immediate objects' are dependent for their existence on the existence Volume XVIII Number 2 155 JANETBROUGHTON ofthe states ofawareness themselves, and can be theimmediate objects of awareness for one mind only. Many commentators make the additional assumptionthatforHume, thepropersphere ofhis scientific investigations is really just his own Lockean ideas. That is, the only form of experience the scientist of man may consult is immediate experience; the only appropriateform ofobservationhe may undertake is introspection. Kemp Smith disagrees. He claims thatin the openingstages ofthe Treatise, Hume takes up a point of view that is "naively realistic."2 Kemp Smith prefers this readingbecause he thinks it explains Hume's general tendency, in the early parts ofbook 1, to slide between talking about objects and talking about ideas; before part 4's "Of scepticism withregard tothe senses," Kemp Smith claims, Hume himselfoccupies the position ofthe "vulgar"(for example, T 192), rather than that ofthe "philosophers." Kemp Smith reminds us that in part 4, after a long account of the position of the vulgar, Hume says that its inherent instability leads philosophers to change their system, and distinguish, (as we shall do for the future) betwixt perceptions and objects. (T 211, emphasis added) Only at this point, Kemp Smith says, does Hume adopt the Lockean theory ofideas. I also oppose the standard view, but unlike Kemp Smith I do not see our central interpretative task here as that of deciding whether Hume began his investigation ofhuman nature as a "naive realist" or as a Lockean theorist. For one thing, when Kemp Smith calls Hume a naive realist, he means that Hume begins by assuming that the Lockean is right about this much: when we see, hear, remember, and so on, we are "immediately" or "directly" aware of something—albeit objects, not ideas. But I do not think that Hume's account of the early phases of his investigation requires us to impute that assumption to him. I also see the choice Kemp Smith offers us as limiting in another way. For it focuses our attention just upon the metaphysical status of the objects ofsense-perception. We might agree with Kemp Smith that on that score Hume does notbegin... (shrink)

Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person--the sort of person on whom one's fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology--how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer--and education--how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an intellectually (...) dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing a suite of neglected virtues called "the virtues of intellectual dependability" that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others' inquiries. After defending the existence and educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns toward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues, vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence. By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both epistemological theorizing and educational practice. (shrink)

The origin of culture remains in the sphere of hypotheses. Although the hypotheses derive from two presumptions: first, how the structure of culture is envisaged, and secondly, how culture is thought to function. Juri Lotman dealt with both aspects of culture, initially the structural and typological and later the dynamic aspects. Thereby, he arrived at the culturalphilosophical hypothesis of the autocatalytic origin of culture. A catalyst is a component of a chemical reaction which itself doesn’t transform during the reaction, but (...) whose presence is needed to guarantee the reaction (or to stimulate it). Thus, autocatalysis is a paradoxical situation in which the genesis of something presumes the pre-existence of the final product. The paradox of the autocatalysis of culture lies in the fact that culture cannot emerge from anything other than from culture itself, from its own germination. In 1988, speaking about the autocatalysis of culture, Lotman refered tothe cultural historicist Nikolai I. Konrad (1891–1970), who undoubtedly borrowed this idea from Jacob Christopher Burckhardt (1818–1897). This undiscovered connection reminds us of the fact, that a model for autocatalysis (or an autopoiesis) was basic to Naturphilosophie of the 19th century. In the 20th century, this was represented by Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863–1945), from whom Lotman in 1982 received the impetus to formulate the concept of semiosphere as well as of the autocatalysis of culture. The autocatalysis model of culture is culturally diachronical, the semiosphere is, however, a synchronical one. In both cases, the natural philosophical cytology of the 19th century was Lotman’s semiotical meta-language. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é articular o conceitode transfiguração, através do confrontoteórico entre as filosofias de Nietzsche eDeleuze, especialmente no tocante a ideia deuma filosofia do experimento. Partindo deuma seara teórica em comum entre ambosos filósofos, vale dizer, o distanciamentode uma compreensibilidade conceitual daexistência, isto é, a tentativa de superarquai squer ant eparos morai s, l ógi cos,metafísicos, etc. que se interponham entreo homem e a vida, nossa hipótese é que anoção de transfiguração se revela como ohorizonte com o qual (...) Nietzsche e Deleuzedeslocam a exigência conceitual a todocusto, em detrimento da dialética e emproveito da experimentação com a vida.This article aims at articulating the conceptof transfiguration through the theoreticalconfrontation between the philosophiesof Ni et zsche and Del euze, especi al l yregarding the idea of an experimentalphilosophy. This is done from a theoreticalcommon point between both philosophers,namely, the detachment of a conceptualunderst andi ng of exi st ence, i . e. , t heattempt to overcome any moral, logical,metaphysi cal shi el ds, etc. mechani smthat stands as an interpreter betweenman and life. Our hypothesis is that thenotion of transfiguration is the horizonwith which Nietzsche and Deleuze shiftthe conceptual requirement at all costs, tothe detriment of the dialectic and in favorof the experimentation with life. (shrink)

Professor Benhabib seeks to rely upon discourse theory to ground a `right to membership' — a right of immigrants to seek and be granted naturalization. The effort is unpersuasive because discourse theory cannot provide an answer to the fundamental question of who should participate in the conversation that would establish a right to membership, nor is it clear that persons freely and equally discussing membership rules would reach the normative conclusions that Benhabib defends. Protection of the `rights of others' might (...) be better secured by arguing from human rights principles that guarantee rights to all residents — citizens and immigrants — than by arguing for a right to membership. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:88 Reviews EPISTEMOLOGY OFMODERNISM WILLIAM R. EVERDELL History/ St. Ann'sSchool Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA [email protected] Ann Banfield. The Phantom Table:Woolf,Fry,Russelland the Epistemology of Modernism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 2000. £35.00; US$49.95. In Virginia Woolf's difficult masterpiece, The Waves(1931),each of several separate interior monologues-"streams of consciousness" in the American critical idiom-is separated from the next by an interpolated "Interlude". The interior monologues are assigned co different characters, bur (...) the Interludes are rendered from no perspectiveat all, verymuch like the "Time Passes"chapter of Woolf's earlier and better known novel, Tothe Lighthouse (1927).The passive voice and the demonstrative and indefinite pronotms are essential, removing from the scene not only the characters' points of view, but the author's as well. Numbered among the consequences of the new twentieth-century technique of interior monologue, the Interludes can be accepted today as one more trick of literary "Modernism", but for Woolf it was new, and the task of preventing any of her Interludes from becoming just another report from the rypical "omniscient narrator" of Victorian fiction was one of the most demanding she ever set herself as a writer. Like her friend the Post-Impressionist critic Roger Fry, she wanted to analyze the world outside the self into its smallest sensible elements, then show human selvesasthey formed by accumulating the experience of these myriad, random, discontinuous components, and finally to recombine these components in their two kinds, selvesand sense-able things, into a meaningful whole-a work of art. Rejecting both the idealism of Bradley and the British philosophical generation of the 1890sand the naive positivist materialism coming out of the 1850s, Bertrand Russell eventually settled on an ontology most philosophers call "realist " in that it rejected the view that the world accessible to the senses was no more than a mental construct and considered it naive to assign the origin of subjectivity to matter. The material world was, Russell thought, actually external -"out there". He did think, however,that all we knew of the external world was what wassensed by the sensesand pictured by the mind. He alsoconcluded (in essayslike "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics"written in 1910-17)d1at both that world and what we knew of it was presented in very small parts, and Reviews 89 analyzable down to them, or, in other words, that both ontology and epistemology were atomized. Each mind, with its senses, occupied, he thought, one of an infinite number of occupied and unoccupied "perspectives", each of which Lmiquely focused che "sensibilia"-whatever was perceived in che external world-like a Leibnizian monad. Machemacicallogic, on which Russell set che highest store, would be able, he thought, to bring together perspectives by providing a minimal secof cruchswhich, though abscracc,were objective in che sense chaccheywere noc private and could be agreed to by all. Something similar though rougher mighc be done for chesensibilia in cheworld "ouc chere" by che science of physics. Did Virginia Woolflearn from Bertrand Russell?To a latcer-dayacademic ic sounds too urrerly improbable, for che simple reason (obvious to academics) chat anyone who has made icto the upper levelsof English literature must have chosen cheseparticular heights to scale because the trail was so blessedlyfreeof chosenasry mathematical burrs and logical reazles,and the air so filledwith che pure chatter of French phenomenologisrs, that no hiker would ever have to struggle with analytical philosophy again. Lessmetaphorically, the separation of departments of literature from those of philosophy has come so close to divorce chat few in U.S. English Departments can make head or cail of che graduate thesis that one of Russell's philosophy students wrote on F.H. Bradley, and fewer still can trace the term "objective correlative" used by thac student (who was in fact T. S. Eliot) back to an early work of Husserl. Meanwhile, ic is taken for granted by those in Philosophy that there are no ideas worth discussing in Woolf, or, indeed, in any other novelise,greacthough she may be, Lmlessone is to descend from ontology and epistemology to the foothills of ethics and politics, or worse, aesthetics. (Among... (shrink)

The perinatal necropsy is an important investigation following fetal or neonatal loss. Legal requirements on registration decree that consent is needed before necropsy can proceed in some of these babies. However, there are ill-defined grey areas which are open to legal and ethical difficulties. This paper discusses the problems that can arise with consent for a necropsy in the perinatal period. Some of these problems are clearly legal or ethical but all can cause distress to parents at a time of (...) grief and bereavement. The issues may not be readily resolved but public debate and ad hominem decisions on each perinatal loss may help to alleviate the problems. (shrink)

Recent debates about the biological and evolutionary conditions for sentience have generated a renewed interest in fine-grained functionalism. According to one such account advanced by Peter Godfrey-Smith, sentience depends on the fine-grained activities characteristic of living organisms. Specifically, the scale, context and stochasticity of these fine-grained activities. One implication of this view is that contemporary artificial intelligence is a poor candidate for sentience. Insofar as current AI lacks the ability to engage in such living activities it will lack sentience, no (...) matter what its coarse-grained functions. In this paper, we review the case for fine-grained functionalism and show that there are contemporary machines that fulfil the fine-grained functional criteria identified by Godfrey-Smith, and thus are candidates for sentience. Molecular machines such as Brownian computers are analogous to metabolic activity in their scale, context and stochasticity, and can serve as the basis of AI. Molecular computation is a promising candidate for artificial sentience according to contemporary philosophical accounts of sentience. (shrink)

This response to a variety of criticisms of _Charles Peirce and Modern Science_ restates and attempts to clarify and explain major themes of the book.

Ronald Dworkin's theory of law forges a close connection between questions about the truth of propositions of law and the question of political obligation: law as integrity is a theory of legal practice that purports to explain, not only how the content of law is determined, but also why the law—in ordinary cases—imposes an obligation of obedience. The theory (as presented) is ultimately incoherent. If we accept Dworkin's theory of the grounds of law we are obliged to reject his claims (...) about its force; alternatively, if we accept his view of the force of law, we must reject his theory about its grounds: he cannot be correct about both force and grounds. Dworkin supposes that, in extraordinary cases, the force of law is cancelled or overridden; but the relevant considerations of justice are wholly internal to our identification of the content of law. Consistently elaborated, integrity denies the offending requirements legal status: lex injusta non est lex. (shrink)

Enough and too much has been written about the Epic Cycle. Upon scanty quotations and a jejune epitome a tedious literature has been built. The older writers, such as Welcker, tried to ‘reconstruct’—as profitable and satisfying a task as inferring a burnt manor-house from its cellars; later scholars have gone out in tracing the tradition of the poems through the learned age of Greece—a scaffolding without ties, by which this or that conclusion is reached according to temperamental disposition to this (...) or that fallacy. I do not intend to enter more than is needful into a controversy where so far as I can see everyone has gone beyond the evidence. If I add to the bulk of the literature, it is in the hope of putting things in their proper places and of presenting the data as they appear to a future editor. (shrink)

Dieser Artikel enthält eine kritische Diskussion der von Peter Stemmer in seinem Buch "Normativität. Eine ontologische Untersuchung" vorgelegten Analyse von Normativität. Zentraler Kritikpunkt ist der Umstand, dass der für Stemmers Analyse zentrale Begriff des Wollens unanalysiert bleibt, sich dieses jedoch, so das hier vorgestellte Argument, entweder in einer Weise analysieren lassen wird, die, als Tendenz gedeutet, weniger zu leisten vermag als Stemmer für seine Analyse benötigt, oder, als intentionaler Zustand gedeutet, selbst bereits Normativität voraussetzt und somit für Stemmers reduktive Analyse (...) von Normativität nicht geeignet ist. Gegen Ende des Aufsatzes wird eine pragmatistische Fundierung von Normativität angedeutet und verschiedene Ressourcen aufgezeigt, deren sich Stemmer bedienen könnte, um seine Position gegen die vorgebrachten Einwände zu verteidigen. (shrink)

In his Lecture on Ethics, Wittgenstein mentions the difficulty a recipient of his philosophy has in ‘seeing both the road he is led and the goal which it leads to’. Oskari Kuusela's b...

The celebrated western humanist tradition has its source in its early philosophical texts. In The Gift of Death, Derrida analyses the history of the emergence of ethical responsibility in the so-called Religions of the Book such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While the humanist project helped itself through its conquest of the human sphere, it has served to upset the ecological balance and jeopardize sustainability. While searching for an inclusive vision for a sustainable, ethical perspective, Dōgen’s philosophy gains relevance in (...) the contemporary context. (shrink)