Although the central target of Donald Davidson's influential essay `On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' is the scheme/content distinction, Davidson also maintains that his argument undermines the thesis of incommensurability as advocated by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. It will be argued here that when Davidson's contentions are carefully disentangled and scrutinized, the elements needed to dismantle the scheme/content distinction are ones that do not subvert incommensurability, and the ones that are held to contravene incommensurability are implausible. Therefore, (...) it is shown that it is possible to be an incommensurabilist without holding on to any objectionable third dogma, and that the disrepute that the thesis of incommensurability has fallen into based on claims of semantic incoherence like those offered by Davidson is undeserved. Many in the philosophy of science heralded the thesis of incommensurability as a radical, intriguing, and powerfully informative conjecture about the history of science. This essay tries to reconnect a large segment of the philosophy of language, influenced to dismiss the thesis based on semantic qualms such as Davidson offers, with that segment of philosophy of science that still considers and utilizes the thesis of incommensurability as a powerful explanatory and elucidative tool. (shrink)

Near the middle of his first discussion with Lysis, Socrates asks an odd question—he asks if Lysis’ mother lets him play with her loom or touch her woolworking tools (208d1-e2). It is one of many odd questions, of course, but it is odd nonetheless. Odd, and also funny: it is the one of just two comments in the book that makes Lysis laugh. This question, I argue, reveals the profound depth of Socrates’ inquiry about Lysis’ views about himself and his (...) loved ones. Indeed, the challenge is so profound that at first the only response is laughter. One aspect is a challenge to certain ideals of masculinity, and so I briefly discuss Athenian conceptions of gender and masculinity, along with some Platonic questioning of these conceptions. Reading the Lysis through the lens of gender reveals not only the continued relevance of such a lens, but also the intensity of Socrates’ work, which calls into question basic social structures and markers of identity, like gender, in its pursuit of a liberatory turn to philosophy. We gain insight into his challenge to Athenian understanding of masculinity by observing the way that Socrates’ argumentation undermines much of it, and we more fully appreciate Socrates’ arguments if we see that they intend to subvert gendered expectations. The setting of the dialogue, the questions Socrates asks, and the responses from Lysis all reinforce that what is at stake in the text is Lysis’ character, including his masculinity. (shrink)

Short Arguments: Some General Rules Arguments begin by marshaling reasons and organizing them in a clear and fair way. Chapter I offers general rules for ...

Taking a refreshingly hands-on approach to introductory ethics, A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox provides students with a set of tools to help them understand and make a constructive difference in real-life moral controversies. Thoroughly optimistic, it invites students to approach ethical issues with a reconstructive intent, making room for more and better options than the traditional "pro" and "con" positions that have grown up around tough problems like abortion and animal rights. Ideal for introductory and applied ethics courses, this unique (...) text does not treat ethics as a purely academic, historical, or theoretical subject, but as a wide-ranging and ongoing set of challenges that calls for multiple and interwoven kinds of intelligence. It covers the skills that are most vital to making real progress in ethics, including paying careful attention to the values at stake on all sides of an issue; looking for creative opportunities within difficult problems; critical-thinking skills such as defining key terms and making sure to judge similar cases alike; and learning how to engage in constructive dialogue. Instructors can readily use the experiential and applied activities inspired by this "toolbox" of practical skills to design an interactive and collaborative ethics course. Students can carry these essential skills directly from this book into such projects as campaigning for environmental awareness and staffing local homeless shelters. In addition to his own discussion, Weston includes gripping and provocative short selections from essayists, activists, and philosophers, and also cites his own students. Extensive "Exercises and Notes" sections end each chapter, and a detailed appendix offers instructors advice on how to use the Toolbox in the classroom. (shrink)

A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fourth Edition, is a concise and accessible introduction to the basic attitudes and skills that make ethics work, like thinking for oneself, creative and integrative problem-solving, and keeping an open mind. This unique volume illuminates the broad kinds of practical intelligence required in moral judgment, complementing the narrower theoretical considerations that often dominate ethics courses. The optimistic tone and brisk pace of the narrative provide an entertaining and intelligent guide to "everyday" morality. The fourth edition (...) features a new chapter on ethical theories; significantly revised and expanded chapters on conflicts of value and creative problem- solving in ethics; and a new concluding chapter on "Making a Difference, " which explains how students can incorporate ethical thinking and practice into their daily lives. (shrink)

F.M. Scherer has not effectively rebutted my subjectivist criticism of the standard microeconomic welfare model; Scherer's historical reference to what Congress (allegedly) believed is irrelevant to the theoretical concerns raised by subjectivism. Nor does my “principal” criticism of antitrust policy rests on “philosophical foundations”; my principal criticism rests on conventional economic analysis and a detailed economic history of the classic antitrust cases. My conclusion that the electrical equipment conspiracy of the late 1950s had no significant effect on market prices is (...) supported by Ralph Sultan's findings; indeed, it is Scherer who brutally ignores the context and misrepresents the general thrust of Sultan's research. Scherer's comments on OPEC confuse the distinction that I made between private and governmental cartels.Finally, the economic welfare model that Scherer embraces so enthusiastically at the start of his review cannot be so suddenly discarded when I show something inconvenient: namely, that the “dominant firms” in the classic antitrust cases did not reduce market output and did not raise market prices. Scherer has not come to grips with my central thesis that antitrust regulation has generally been employed to restrain the competitive market process. (shrink)

This popular selection of Wittgenstein’s key writings has now been updated to include new material relevant to recent debates about the philosopher. Follows the evolution of Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through to the Philosophical Investigations. Excerpts are arranged by topic and introduce readers to all the central concerns of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Now includes a new chapter on ‘Sense, Nonsense and Philosophy’ incorporating material relevant to recent debates about Wittgenstein.

In Minimal Morality, Michael Moehler justifies what he calls the weak principle of universalization as a principle of pure instrumental morality. This article addresses the application of this principle and problems associated with it. Specifically, the article focuses on the principle’s ability to protect the interests of the most vulnerable members of society: agents without primary moral standing, specifically non-human animals; and the weakest members of society, either as a result of their diminished relative bargaining power in certain cases of (...) conflict, or because of their present standing in society, made worse off by historical injustices. To this end, the article considers, respectively, the problems of moral standing, indivisible goods and historical injustice. (shrink)

This book takes a global approach to one of today's most controversial topics in business: Dollarization. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the formation of the Euro in Europe, many countries are debating whether or not a common currency is in their best interest. This intriguing volume brings together the leading participants in the current dollarization debates.

One of the cornerstones of modern medicine is the search for what causes diseases to develop. A conception of multifactorial disease causes has emerged over the years. Theories of disease causation, however, have not quite been developed in accordance with this view. It is the purpose of this paper to provide a fundamental explication of aspects of causation relevant for discussing causes of disease.The first part of the analysis will discuss discrimination between singular and general causality. Singular causality, as in (...) the specific patient, is a relation between a concrete sequence of causally linked events. General causation, e.g. as in disease etiology, means various categories of causal relations between event types. The paper introduces the concept of a reference case serving as a source for causal inference, reaching beyond the concept of general causality. (shrink)

Background: Causal reasoning as a way to make a diagnosis seems convincing. Modern medicine depends on the search for causes of disease and it seems fair to assert that such knowledge is employed in diagnosis. Causal reasoning as it has been presented neglects to some extent the conception of multifactorial disease causes. Goal: The purpose of this paper is to analyze aspects of causation relevant for discussing causal reasoning in a diagnostic context.

Background: The concept of prognosis as a prediction concerning the probable outcome of an attack of disease shows some severe contextual drawbacks in the everyday clinical sense. It is often used to describe possible outcomes of the disease in general, or the progression of a disease course, not the expected course in a particular case. Goal: To render more discriminating uses of the term prognosis, in order to provide the prognosticating physician with a valid tool, comparable to the theoretical basis (...) of diagnostic and therapeutic actions. (shrink)

Introspective evidence is still treated with great suspicion in cognitive science. This work is designed to encourage cognitive scientists to take more account of the subject's unique perspective.

While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach, puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and (...) John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, "shored up" and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. "Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher," Chemero writes in his preface, adding, "I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything." With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought. (shrink)

Discusses the problems of text and context in studying the philosophical writings of Wittgenstein, Ricoeur, Sartre, Jameson, Marx, and Bakhtin.

An exploration of the links within the study of history between experience and identity, history and various theories of subjectivity, extreme events and their representation, institutional structures and the knowledge produced within them.

We comment on the last chapter of Henrich where the author offers a ‘key’ to Hegel’s Logic focusing on the problem of the passage from self-reference to determination in the beginning of the Logic. We argue that what he offers as a ‘key’ is actually a reduction of Hegel to the logic of understanding from the point of view of an autonomous Ego; consequently, he excludes dialectics. Contrarily, we present Hegel’s own solution, eliciting the remark where he shows that the (...) proposition “Being and Nothing are the same” negates itself insofar as it is uttered and reflected on the Other’s understanding. We conjecture that this remark offers a privileged point from which to consider the connection Hegel-Lacan, provided we recognize the Absolute in Hegel as the big Other in Lacan. We suggest that the dialectical identity of identity and difference is actually an operation in the Agora and that the Hegel-Marx-Lacan theory can be properly denominated dialectical materialism. We also offer an answer to Žižek’s question of how a “neutral medium of designation” can emerge within a “life-world practice” or out of a “universe of matter. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Despite recent increasing support for the brain disease model of alcohol and drug addiction, the extent to which the model may clinically impact addiction treatment and client behaviour remains unclear. This qualitative study explored the views of community-based clinicians in Australia and examined: whether Australian community-based clinicians support the BDM of addiction; their attitudes on the impact the model may have on clinical treatment; and their views on how framing addiction as a brain disease may impact addicted clients’ behaviour. Six (...) Australian community-based clinicians participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews that were analysed using thematic analysis. Whilst the BDM was not fully supported by this purposive sample of Australian community-based clinicians, there was acceptance that addiction neuroscience formed a key part of a wider addiction framework. Participants believed the BDM ignored key social, psychological and environmental factors important for successful treatment. The BDM was seen as potentially irrelevant for certain client types, however the model was believed to integrate with particular therapies. Participants believed that for clients viewing their addiction in terms of a brain disease, there were potential positive and negative impacts on client behaviour. Implications for addiction treatment practice and public health policy are discussed. (shrink)

To what extent do we and can we understand others--other peoples, species, times, and places? What is the role of others within ourselves, epitomized in the notion of unconscious forces? Can we come to terms with our internalized others in ways that foster mutual understanding and counteract the tendency to scapegoat, project, victimize, and indulge in prejudicial and narcissistic impulses? How do various fields or disciplines address or avoid such questions? And, in the light of recent developments, have these questions (...) become particularly pressing and not in the least confined to other peoples, times, and places? Making selective and critical use of the thought of such important figures as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Mikhail Bakhtin, the book investigates a series of crucial topics from the current state of deconstruction, trauma studies, and the humanities to newer fields such as animal studies and posthumanist scholarship. A feature of the book is the effort to bring critical historical thought into a provocative engagement with politics and our current political climate. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with an account of the initial distinction between likenesses and appearances, a distinction which may resemble the difference between sophists and philosophers. That distinction first arises immediately after the puzzling appearance of the noble sophist, who seems to occupy an odd space in between sophist and philosopher. In the second section, I look more closely at the noble sophist, and on what that figure might tell us about images and the use of images. I also (...) attempt to use the insights provided by the noble sophist in an investigation of the kind of images that Plato the author produces. This raises the question of the general notion of image as it appears in the Sophist, and especially of the dual nature of all images, which in turn invites reflection on certain features of the examination of being and non-being late in the dialogue. Finally, I return to the deception inherent in images, and I argue that this dialogue does not present the possibility of completely honest images. Nevertheless, I hope to show that some uses of deceptions and images are better than others. (shrink)

The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

This powerful critique of Marx's historical materialism - as a theory of power, as an account of history, and as a political theory -has been revised to take note of the profound intellectual and political changes that have occurred since the first edition was published. Reviews from the first edition 'Giddens draws upon a formidable knowledge of anthropology, archaeology, geography, and philosophy to demonstrate the limitations of Marxism and to formulate his own interpretation of the history of societies ... He (...) does a masterful job of setting his theory within a historical and critical framework of writings on Marx. His clarity of thought and his deft and often humorous handling of the unavoidable jargon of sociology and Marxist political theory makes this book a critical work of the highest quality.' Journal of International Law and Politics 'By contrast with many practictioners in the rather murky area of social theory, Giddens clearly seeks to make himself understood, and he has the useful quality of provoking one to argument. He has let light into some dark places.' The Times Higher Education Supplement 'Although Marx, Durkheim, and Weber continue to fill more index space than any other authors, Critique is Giddens's most explicit and committed statement of his own conceptualization of social theory ... It is his most original and therefore most vulnerable book, at once a cause for celebration and an invitation to critical reappraisal of the author's entire theoretical project.' Environment and Planning. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a variety of agents that appear in Kantian ethics in order to determine which would be necessary to make a robot a genuine moral agent. However, building such an agent would require that we structure into a robot’s behavioral repertoire the possibility for immoral behavior, for only then can the moral law, according to Kant, manifest itself as an ought, a prerequisite for being able to hold an agent morally accountable for its actions. Since building (...) a moral robot requires the possibility of immoral behavior, I go on to argue that we cannot morally want robots to be genuine moral agents, but only beings that simulate moral behavior. Finally, I raise but do not answer the question that if morality requires us to want robots that are not genuine moral agents, why should we want something different in the case of human beings. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a reading of eikasia as the viewing of an image as an image; this condition need not involve any confusion of image and original. The “standard reading” of eikasia, on which experiencing this state involves mistaking images for originals, is unsatisfactory, despite the fact that it offers an attractive account of the relation of the line and the cave. The initial description of eikasia makes the suggestion that Socrates believes that anyone consistently mistakes images for (...) originals implausible. Furthermore, the similarity later described between eikasia and dianoia, the third highest state on the line, supports the claim that eikasia can sometimes involve the successful study of an object through its image. After outlining my view of eikasia and explaining these arguments against the “standard” view, I return to the cave and attempt a pairing of the line and the cave that accords with my account of eikasia. (shrink)

Dr Edwards' stimulating and provocative book advances the thesis that the appropriate axiomatic basis for inductive inference is not that of probability, with its addition axiom, but rather likelihood - the concept introduced by Fisher as a measure of relative support amongst different hypotheses. Starting from the simplest considerations and assuming no more than a modest acquaintance with probability theory, the author sets out to reconstruct nothing less than a consistent theory of statistical inference in science.