Persons who are dangerous and legally responsible, but who have not yet committed any currently recognised criminal offence, fall within the gap left between the domains of criminal justice and civil commitment. Many jurisdictions operate legal regimes that permit the detention of such persons in order to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms. These regimes often either fail to respect the principle of proportionality or contradictorily treat a dangerous offender as both legally responsible and not responsible at the same (...) time. In response to these problems, a number of preventive detention models have been proposed. Retributivist models seek to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms by requiring blame on the dangerous person’s part in order to warrant detention. However, these models are ill-equipped to deal with the problem of coextensiveness; i.e., they struggle to comprehensively reconcile proportionality in punitive sentencing with the period over which dangerous persons remain dangerous and during which one might therefore want them to be incapacitated. In order to achieve comprehensive incapacitation of dangerous persons for the duration of their dangerousness, retributivist models are forced to abandon their fidelity to proportionality in punitive sentencing, thereby losing themselves in the process. Accordingly, if the practice of preventive detention can be justified at all, such justification will not be of a retributivist character. (shrink)

An episiotomy is ‘an intrapartum procedure that involves an incision to enlarge the vaginal orifice,’1 and is primarily justified as a way to prevent higher degrees of perineal trauma or to facilitate a faster birth in cases of suspected fetal distress. Yet the effectiveness of episiotomies is controversial, and many professional bodies recommend against the routine use of episiotomies. In any case, unconsented episiotomies are alarmingly common, and some care providers in obstetric settings often fail to see consent as necessary (...) in context. In their article, ‘The ethics of consent during labour and birth: episiotomies,’ van der Pijl et al reiterate that consent is necessary for episiotomies. They specify, further, that the antenatal period is crucial for exchanging information, establishing trust between the birthing subject and provider, and exploring the birthing subject’s—rather than the care provider’s—values and preferences regarding episiotomies. They recommend an individualised approach, which would enable birthing subjects to choose how and when they want to give consent. I applaud van der Pijl et al on their practicable recommendations regarding consent for episiotomies. This is certainly a step in the right direction where respect for birthing subjects’ bodily autonomy and integrity is concerned. Still, we must be reminded that consent alone is not coextensive with autonomy. The conditions for securing informed consent in healthcare does not guarantee that one’s decision is truly reflective of their values. After all, even valid consent does not rule out ‘normatively significant external influence’.2 Consent acquisition for obstetric procedures present no …. (shrink)

Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...) to both philosophical and politi- cal discussion about war, it is at the forefront of neither. In recent years, philosophical discussion of warfare has bloomed, but the debate has focused on whom we may kill, on the assumption that our aims are justified.1 Political debate, meanwhile, is more concerned with matters of prudence, international law, and public justification, than with reassessing what is worth fighting for. For wars of intervention to halt or prevent massive humanitarian crises, this gap is not so troubling. When warfare is the only means to prevent the mass killing or enslavement of the innocent, the purposes of military force are clear enough (though undoubtedly many other problems remain). The problem is more pressing, how- ever, for the justification of national defence.3 Although common-sense morality and international law view national defence as the paradigm case of justified warfare, grounding this consensus is surprisingly difficult.4 We typically believe that any state is justified in using lethal force to protect its territory against any form of uninvited military incursion by any other state. And yet we lack a good argument to explain why this should be so. In this chapter, I explain why one familiar and otherwise plausible approach to the justification of killing in war cannot adequately ground common-sense views of permissible national defence.5 Reductionists believe that justified warfare reduces to an aggregation of acts that are justified under ordinary principles of interpersonal morality.6 The standard form of reductionism focuses on the principles governing killing in ordinary life, specifically those that justify intentional killing in self- and other-defence, and unintended but foreseen (for short, collateral) killing as a lesser evil. Justified warfare, on this view, is no more than the coextension of multiple acts justified under these two principles. Reductionism is the default philosophical approach to thinking through the ethics of killing in war. It makes perfect sense to ask what principles govern permissible kill- ing in general, before applying them to the particular context of war. If it cannot deliver a plausible set of conclusions about when national defence is permitted, then we must either revise our beliefs about which conclusions count as plausible, or else face the significant challenge of developing a different theoretical model for justifying war- fare—an exceptionalist model, which views war as an exception to the regular moral landscape, to which principles apply which apply to nothing else but war.7 We must show, in other words, that there is something worth fighting for in wars of national defence, which is not engaged when we use force in any other context. The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2.2 sets out the argument against reduc- tionism.8 Section 2.3 considers and rebuts one common response to the argument, which has often been thought sufficient grounds to disregard its conclusion. Section 2.4 then asks whether a modified reductionism would survive unscathed by the argu- ment. Finally, section 2.5 sets out some desiderata on a plausible exceptionalist alterna- tive. Section 2.6 concludes. (shrink)

There is strong sentiment for a policy which would exclude foreigners from access to organs from American cadaver donors. One common argument is that foreigners are free riders; since they are not members of the community whichgives organs, it would be unfair to allow them toreceive such a scarce resource.This essay examines the philosophical basis for the free rider argument, and compares that with the empirical data about organ donation in the U.S. The free rider argument ought not to be (...) used to exclude foreign nationals because it is based on fallacious assumptions about group membership, and how the giving community is defined. Polls show that even among the seventy-five per cent of Americans who support organ donation, only seventeen per cent had taken the small step of filling out donor cards. Therefore, it goes against logic to define the giving community as coextensive with American residency, while excluding foreigners who might well have become donors had they lived in countries which provided that option. (shrink)

It will be useful to consider briefly how the ideas surrounding “form” work in practice. Such ideas rapidly developed to a high stage of sophistication, subtlety, and complexity, but they did not, I believe, stray from the foundations I have tried to indicate for them. Let us consider the example of Wilhelm Worringer, who, like Alois Riegl, found it preferable to discuss ornament rather than images because ornament is a purer expression of form and therefore provides a less encumbered view (...) into form’s spiritual meaning. Concerning interlace ornament of the first millennium in Northern Europe, Worringer wrote that it is “impossible to mistake the restless life contained in this tangle of lines”; it is “the decisive formula for the whole medieval North.” The “need for empathy of this inharmonious people” requires the “uncanny pathos which attaches to the animation of the inorganic”; the “inner disharmony and unclarity of these peoples … could have borne no clearer fruit.”4 Here forms—mostly lines and edges and their relations—are compared to a natural outgrowth, a fruit, and are interpreted in such a way as to permit the characterization of all peoples among whom artifacts with such forms were made and used. The range of formal style becomes coextensive with the range of the deep principles of the worldview of races, nations, and epochs.It is not necessary to follow the ideas of form and expression to quite the hypertrophied consequences Worringer did, although many authors have done so and many more have done so less systematically. The important thing for my purposes is the pattern of inference from form to historical statements and conclusion. 4. Wilhelm Worringer,ion and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock , p. 77. David Summers is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. The author of Michelangelo and the Language of Art and The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics , he is currently writing a book to be titled The Defect of Distance: Toward a University History of Art. (shrink)

The paper aims to develop a resemblance theory of properties that technically improves on past versions. The theory is based on a comparative resemblance predicate. In combination with other resources, it solves the various technical problems besetting resemblance nominalism. The paper’s second main aim is to indicate that previously proposed resemblance theories that solve the technical problems, including the comparative theory, are nominalistically unacceptable and have controversial philosophical commitments.

After thousands of years of work, the mind-body problem endures as one of the most tantalizing issues in metaphysics. For my purposes I formulate the question as: What is the relation between consciousness and matter? The solution to the mind-body problem that I offer is a version of neutral monism, the view that mental and physical events are both to be derived from some stuff that in itself is neither physical nor mental. This paper specifies the conditions under (...) which consciousness and matter occur, rather than implying that thought and extension must be pervasive or that the difference between the mental and the physical is merely one of perspective or of conventional groupings of events, approaches that fail to do justice to our experience. My thesis is that neither consciousness nor matter is derived from the other, but rather both are constructions out of two relations of a single principle to itself, consciousness occurring within I-You, matter being an abstraction from I-it. An advantage of the proposal of the social character of consciousness is that it explains a feature of our world, the nearly identical extension of consciousness and reportability, which many commentators have noted but none explains. It may be thought that this coextension is logically or metaphysically necessary, but I show that this is false. (shrink)

This article discusses the problem of global democracy, and why democratic legitimacy seems so difficult to attain at the global level. I start by arguing that the difficulties we experience when we try to widen the scope of democratic governance beyond the boundaries of individual states have nothing to do with the characteristics of global society, but result from the underlying assumption that a political community has to be bounded and based on consent in order for democratic legitimacy to (...) be possible. I then explore how this view came into being, arguing that the perennial paradoxes of democratic legitimacy are little but results of earlier and successful attempts to make the concept of political community coextensive with that of the nation. Finally, I argue that once we let go of the idea that political communities have to be bounded and based on consent in order to qualify as democratic ones, the paradox of democratic legitimacy will look like a category mistake rather than an inescapable obstacle to global democracy. Keywords : cosmopolitanism, democratic paradox, legitimacy, global governance (Published online: 7 November 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008, pp. 159-174. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i4.1858. (shrink)

The propensity interpretation of fitness draws on the propensity interpretation of probability, but advocates of the former have not attended sufficiently to problems with the latter. The causal power of C to bring about E is not well-represented by the conditional probability Pr. Since the viability fitness of trait T is the conditional probability Pr, the viability fitness of the trait does not represent the degree to which having the trait causally promotes surviving. The same point holds for fertility fitness. (...) This failure of trait fitness to capture causal role can also be seen in the fact that coextensive traits must have the same fitness values even if one of them promotes survival and the other is neutral or deleterious. Although the fitness of a trait does not represent the trait’s causal power to promote survival and reproduction, variation in fitness in a population causally promotes change in trait frequencies; in this sense, fitness variation is a population-level propensity. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that since there is a cognitively impenetrable stage of visual perception, namely early vision, and cognitive penetrability and theory-ladenness are coextensive, the CI of early vision entails that early vision content is theory neutral. This theory-neutral part undermines relativism. In this paper, I consider two objections against the thesis. The one adduces evidence from cases of rapid perceptual learning to undermine my thesis that early vision is CI. The other emphasizes that the early perceptual system, (...) in order to solve various underdetermination problems, relies on certain principles, which may be taken to constitute a sort of a theory about the world that affect early vision, rendering it theory-laden. Both objections purport to show that early vision is CP and theory-laden. Against this thesis, I argue that the evidence on which the two objections are based does not show that early vision is CP and is fully compatible with the view that early vision is CI. (shrink)

Modal rationalism includes the thesis that ideal primary positive conceivability entails primary possibility. Modal monism is the thesis that the space of logically possible worlds is coextensive with the space of metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper I explore the relation between the two theses. My aim is to show that the former thesis implies the latter thesis, and that problems with the latter make the former implausible as a complete picture of the epistemology of modality. My argument explores the (...) relation between logical modality and metaphysical modality. (shrink)

Fodor (1990) argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help to save naturalistic accounts of representation from the disjunction problem. This is because, he claims, the context 'was selected for representing things as F' is transparent to the substitution of predicates coextensive with F. But, I respond, from an evolutionary perspective representational contexts cannot be transparent: only under particular descriptions will a representational state appear as a "solution" to a selection "problem" and so be (...) adaptive. Only when we construe representational states as opaque in this manner are the generalizations of branches of evolutionary theory, like foraging theory, possible. (shrink)

Suppose we believe that a property F is coextensive with moral permissibility. F may be, for example, the property of having the best consequences, if we are Consequentialists, or that of conforming to a universalisable maxim, if we are Kantians, and so on. This may raise the following problem. It is plausible that permissibility is “closed under implication”: any act that is implied by a permissible act must itself be permissible. Yet, in some cases, F might not be closed (...) under implication. If that is so, then F cannot be coextensive with permissibility. Maximalism has been proposed as a solution to this problem. A “maximal” act is one not implied by any other act. Maximalism restricts the claim that F is coextensive with permissibility to maximal acts only. A non-maximal act may be permissible without being F if it is implied by a maximal act that is F. The general aim of this paper is to investigate these issues by considering the formal structure of acts, or the “act-implication” relation. Discussions of Maximalism have tended to assume implicitly that acts have structure of some sort, but there has been little careful attention given to this structure. I aim to show that, by thinking about structure, we can provide a stronger defence of Maximalism. (shrink)

In the spirit of B. C. van Fraassen's view of science called Constructive Empiricism, we propose a scientific criterion to decide whether a concrete object is observable, as well as a coextensive scientific-philosophical definition of observability, and we sketch a rigorous account of modal language occurring in science. We claim that our account of observability solves three problems to which current accounts of observability, notably van Fraassen's own accounts, give rise. We further claim that our account of modal propositions (subjunctive (...) conditionals included), which proceeds wholly within the framework of the semantic view on scientific theories, grounds his claim that such an account is possible without relying on ‘inflationary metaphysics’, notably without postulating an infinitude of different universes besides the universe we inhabit. We thus claim to solve a fourth problem: how to give a precise nominalist account of modal language in science tailor-made for Constructive Empiricism. Introduction: Rough Guides The semantic view and the wave theory of light A scientific guide and a scientific criterion A New Rough Guide and a definition The Context Problem and Psillos' Problem Musgrave's Problem Modality without inflationary metaphysics Exitum. (shrink)

The paper sets out a new strategy for theory reduction by means of functional sub-types. This strategy is intended to get around the multiple realization objection. We use Kim's argument for token identity (ontological reductionism) based on the causal exclusion problem as starting point. We then extend ontological reductionism to epistemological reductionism (theory reduction). We show how one can distinguish within any functional type between functional sub-types. Each of these sub-types is coextensive with one type of realizer. By this (...) means, a conservative theory reduction is in principle possible, despite multiple realization. We link this account with Nagelian reduction, as well as with Kim's functional reduction. (shrink)

Resumo: O presente artigo versa sobre o problema político-filosófico do fascismo. O conceito tem mostrado crescente relevância no cenário público nacional e mundial, figurando cada vez mais no debate leigo e especializado. O termo fascismo, hoje, é amplamente empregado, tanto na qualificação de movimentos políticos de diversos espectros quanto na grande mídia e revistas científicas. O objetivo deste artigo é utilizar o conceito de transindividual na compreensão do fascismo, a partir da teorização, ela mesma transindividual, do fenômeno, realizada por Deleuze (...) e Guattari, através da sua compreensão do desejo. O transindividual caracteriza um movimento filosófico de dupla rejeição em que se nega, simultaneamente, uma abordagem holista e individualista do campo social, procurando pensar o indivíduo e coletivo como coextensivos a um processo genético que produz a ambos, sem primado de um sobre o outro. Tal conceito vem se revelando uma ferramenta analítica de crescente uso e repercussão, no debate acadêmico contemporâneo. Nesse sentido, a utilização do transindividual, enquanto matriz teórica, na compreensão do fenômeno fascista ainda não foi realizada de forma esquemática e, desse modo, recorrendo à compreensão transindividual do fascismo de Deleuze e Guattari, pretende-se contribuir para o alargamento desse horizonte teórico.: This paper is directed towards the political and philosophical problem of fascism. This concept is manifesting increasingly relevance in the national and global public scenario, widely appearing in the specialized and lay debate. The term ‘’fascism”, today, is largely used in the qualification of movements from diverse shades of the political spectrum and in the mainstream media and scientific journals. The goal of this paper is the application of the concept of the transindividual to the fascist phenomena through Deleuze and Guattar theory of the fascist desire, in itself, a transindividual one. The transindividual marks a philosophical movement of a double rejection against an holistic approach to the social dimension as well as and individualist one, aiming to think both dimensions as coextensive to a genetic process that produces both of them, without any priority regarding any dimension in relation to the other. This concept has been revealing itself as an increasingly useful analytical tool in the contemporary academic debate. In this sense, the use of the concept of transindividuality as the theoretical framework in the philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of fascism has not been yet realized in a schematic way. Applying the concept of fascism of Deleuze and Guatttari in a transindividual framework, we intend to contribute to the development of this theoretical approach. (shrink)

This chapter is a discussion of Class and Resemblance Nominalism. According to the traditional versions of these theories, properties are classes of particulars. Thus, the property of being red is the class of red particulars, and the property of being square is the class of square particulars. Several objections have been advanced against these theories, and one of the most powerful of such objections is the so-called Coextension Difficulty, according to which Class and Resemblance Nominalism have to wrongly identify (...) distinct but coextensive properties. After discussing the nature of Class and Resemblance Nominalism, some problems of these theories and how they can be deal with, the superiority of Class and Resemblance Nominalism over other theories of properties and the superiority of Resemblance Nominalism over Class Nominalism, I concentrate on the Coextension Difficulty. With respect to this I argue that Class and Resemblance Nominalism can be developed in such a way that they admit properties without identifying them with classes, and this allows them to avoid the Coextension Difficulty, since such versions of these theories are not forced to wrongly identify distinct but coextensive properties. Thus the Coextension Difficulty is not a lethal problem for Class and Resemblance Nominalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral SenseRobert A. Greene“Instinct is a great matter.”—Sir John FalstaffThis essay traces the evolution of the meaning of the expression instinctus naturae in the discussion of the natural law from Justinian’s Digest through its association with synderesis to Francis Hutcheson’s theory of the moral sense. The introduction of instinctus naturae into Ulpian’s definition of the natural law by Isidore of Seville (...) in the seventh century posed a problem of definition for medieval commentators. Some said that it meant a universal and providential natura naturans; some defined it as the urge to self and species preservation in animals, degenerating in man into sensual and shameful impulses; some advanced the humanistic and paradoxical notion that it referred to a unique exercise of human reason in coming to know the natural law. The contemporaneous revival in the twelfth century of St. Jerome’s puzzling new term “synderesis,” and its gradual definition as the immediate apprehension of the first practical moral principles of the natural law, brought the two terms into proximity and loose association.A half-century later St. Bonaventure made explicit what had remained latent in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas by relocating synderesis in the affective rather than the intellectual part of man’s nature. Accordingly the moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive but instinctive in nature—apprehensions for which no reason could be given, apprehensions somehow rooted in affective human experience. During the bilingual early modern period an increasingly secularized, internalized, and reified instinctus [End Page 173] naturae, together with its abbreviated vernacular cognate, “instinct,” came to serve as a substitute and synonym for the obsolescent synderesis. Edward Herbert’s attention to instinctus naturae in his De Veritate (1624), Sir Matthew Hale’s speculations about the place of rational instinct in the natural law, and Francis Hutcheson’s theory of a moral sense all exemplify this semantic legacy.The first entry in Justinian’s Digest has had a disproportionate influence on later speculation about the natural law. It begins a chapter that gives pride of place to general definitions of justice, law, jus naturale and jus gentium, and it is drawn from the writings of the Roman jurisconsult Domitius Ulpianus (d. 223), whose work constitutes forty percent of the Digest. Ulpian defines the natural law, with insistent repetition, as that which nature has taught to, or is common to, all animals:Jus naturale is that which nature has taught to all animals; for it is not a law specific to mankind but is common to all animals—land animals, sea animals, and the birds as well. Out of this comes the union of man and woman [male and female] which we call marriage, and the procreation of children, and their rearing. So we can see that the other animals, wild beasts included, are rightly understood to be acquainted with this law. Jus gentium, the law of the nations, is that which all human peoples observe. That it is not coextensive with natural law can be grasped easily, since this latter is common to all animals whereas jus gentium is common only to human beings among themselves. 1Justinian’s compilers gave Ulpian’s definition striking prominence at the beginning of the Digest and then in the same short chapter quoted the incompatible and more traditional definitions of his contemporaries Gaius and Paulus. They confined the operation of the natural law to mankind and spoke of reason as its source. 2 The compilers had been charged to eliminate just such conflicts; yet here at the very outset they set a conundrum that perplexed commentators [End Page 174] and invited explanation from Isidore of Seville to Hugo Grotius. Their selection of quotations suggests that as lawyers they regarded such general definitions as “for legal purposes no more than ornament to discussion.” 3 For those of a more speculative bent, however, the dilemmas could not have been more fundamental. How was the natural law to be defined in relation to those appetitive and self-preservative urges that man seemed to share with animals? Or did the term law apply only... (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while (...) inherent inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 137-153 [Access article in PDF] Metaphor and the Making of Sense: The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance William Franke Metaphor has gained a new lease on life through the revival of rhetoric in recent decades. For promoters of "la nouvelle rhétorique," such as Gérard Genette and Roland Barthes, rhetoric came to coincide with a total science of language that is practically coextensive with all social and (...) human knowledge, while in the Anglo-Saxon world, Wayne Booth, in the wake of Kenneth Burke, repristinated rhetoric as, not just a technical discipline, but a moral one, and, in fact, an all-embracing criticism of the humanities. 1 The fortunes of metaphor have revived and flourished in tandem with those of rhetoric as a whole. Over the more than two millennia of a progressive eclipse of rhetoric, during which it shrank from its original primacy as the master art of persuasion in law, literature, and politics and, moreover, as the general framework of culture, to the status of an ancillary art of elocution of exclusively formal import, metaphor was eventually confined to being just one particular instance within the schemes of classifications of tropes. It became an affair of style, an ornament of decorative discourse, as rhetoric came to be identified with mere elocutio and was no longer essentially also inventio--the finding of arguments, in which metaphor's role is actually paramount--and dispositio--the ordering of discourse into its syntactic parts, such as exordium, narration, discussion, peroration. As the originally tripartite art and science of rhetoric was amputated of two of its main divisions in the classical model established on the basis of Aristotle's three-book treatise, 2 metaphor became a merely formal enhancement and lost its roles as substantive and structuring for knowledge and discourse.The decline of interest in philosophical, Aristotelian rhetoric had much to do with metaphor's reduction to a merely technical or decorative device. But with the recent widening practically without limit of the terrain of rhetoric, and particularly with its restoration to its original standing as a philosophical discipline comprehending the substance of argument, metaphor [End Page 137] has once again acquired cognitive status and, moreover, has tended to become the name for figurative language in general and even, emblematically, for the rhetorical or rhetoricity as such. Where the power of rhetoric to reshape cognitive meaning and even to reinvent, or at least reconfigure, reality was once again recognized as irresistible throughout all the realms of discourse, the source and unity of this power seemed to require a name, and more often than not metaphor--on account of the transformative, inventive power associated particularly with it--has been adopted to serve this purpose.Today, under the aegis of metaphor, the power of figurative language, arguably the originating power at the source of all language and even of an articulated world as such, has newly become an object of research and general theoretical speculation. This extension of the concept of metaphor is bound up with a renewed view of figurative language in general as not only a substantive bearer of the content of discourse, but also as ontologically constitutive of the world, as operative at the origins of things and their identities. It has become possible to view all language as being metaphorical, and accordingly metaphorical operations of transfer and redefinition have been recognized as being the very essence of language and of all that comes to articulation through it. Furthermore, as witnessed by burgeoning publications and conferences, metaphor has become a topic onto which practically all the classic philosophical problems of ontology and epistemology are projected and appear in a new, specifically linguistic, light. 3This new ascendency of metaphor is certainly not uninflected or uncontested, even within the camps of the new rhetoricians. Genette, in "La rhétorique restreinte" (1972), resists the "inflation of metaphor" to become the trope of tropes and the figure of figures in a wide range of writers epitomizing modern poetics--particularly Marcel Proust, Roman Jakobson, and Michel Deguy (1969). Genette argues against reduction of... (shrink)

Personal Identity theorists as diverse as Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson have noted that the experiencing subject (the locus of present psychological experience) and the person (a human being with a career/narrative extended across time) are not necessarily coextensive. Accordingly, we can become psychologically alienated from, and fail to experience a sense of identity with, the person we once were or will be. This presents serious problems for Locke's original account of “sameness of consciousness” constituting personal identity, given (...) the distinctly normative (and indeed eschatological) focus of his discussion. To succeed, the Lockean project needs to identify some phenomenal property of experience that can constitute a sense of identity with the self figured in all moments to which consciousness can be extended. I draw upon key themes in Kierkegaard's phenomenology of moral imagination to show that Kierkegaard describes a phenomenal quality of experience that unites the experiencing subject with its past and future, regardless of facts about psychological change across time. Yet Kierkegaard's account is fully normative, recasting affective identification with past/future selves as a moral task rather than something merely psychologically desirable (Schechtman) or utterly contingent (Parfit, Strawson). (shrink)

While most scholars readily recognize that Alfred North Whitehead had deep and penetrating misgivings about the substantial view of individuality, fewer note that these misgivings stem as much from axiological considerations as ontological ones. I contend that, taken in the context of the “classical interpretation” of his metaphysics, Whitehead’s bold affirmation that actuality and value are coextensive introduces a potentially serious problem for the adequacy and applicability of his axiology. For if actuality is coextensive with valuebut actuality is itself (...) limited to subjects of experience, then the objective world can have no intrinsic value. My aim is to demonstrate that, in order to respond to the very serious challenge which the problem of subjectivism represents and save Whitehead’s intendeduniverse of value, we must seek an alternative to the classical interpretation of Whitehead’s metaphysics. I refer to this alternative as the “ecstatic interpretation.”. (shrink)

While most scholars readily recognize that Alfred North Whitehead had deep and penetrating misgivings about the substantial view of individuality, fewer note that these misgivings stem as much from axiological considerations as ontological ones. I contend that, taken in the context of the “classical interpretation” of his metaphysics, Whitehead’s bold affirmation that actuality and value are coextensive introduces a potentially serious problem for the adequacy and applicability of his axiology. For if actuality is coextensive with valuebut actuality is itself (...) limited to subjects of experience, then the objective world can have no intrinsic value. My aim is to demonstrate that, in order to respond to the very serious challenge which the problem of subjectivism represents and save Whitehead’s intendeduniverse of value, we must seek an alternative to the classical interpretation of Whitehead’s metaphysics. I refer to this alternative as the “ecstatic interpretation.”. (shrink)

Fodor argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help to save naturalistic accounts of representation from the disjunction problem. This is because, he claims, the context 'was selected for representing things as F' is transparent to the substitution of predicates coextensive with F. But, I respond, from an evolutionary perspective representational contexts cannot be transparent: only under particular descriptions will a representational state appear as a "solution" to a selection "problem" and so be adaptive. (...) Only when we construe representational states as opaque in this manner are the generalizations of branches of evolutionary theory, like foraging theory, possible. (shrink)

Sections “Introduction: Hume’s Principle, Basic Law V and Cardinal Arithmetic” and “The Julius Caesar Problem in Grundlagen—A Brief Characterization” are peparatory. In Section “Analyticity”, I consider the options that Frege might have had to establish the analyticity of Hume’s Principle, bearing in mind that with its analytic or non-analytic status the intended logical foundation of cardinal arithmetic stands or falls. Section “Thought Identity and Hume’s Principle” is concerned with the two criteria of thought identity that Frege states in 1906 (...) and their application to Hume’s Principle. In Section “The Nature ofion: A Critical Assessment of Grundlagen, §64”, I scrutinize Frege’s characterization of abstraction in Grundlagen, §64 and criticize in this context the currently widespread use of the terms “recarving” and “reconceptualization”. Section “Frege’s Proof of Hume’s Principle” is devoted to the formal details of Frege’s proof of Hume’s Principle. I begin by considering his proof sketch in Grundlagen and subsequently reconstruct in modern notation essential parts of the formal proof in Grundgesetze. In Section “Equinumerosity and Coextensiveness: Hume’s Principle and Basic Law V Again”, I discuss the criteria of identity embodied in Hume’s Principle and in Basic Law V, equinumerosity and coextensiveness. In Section “Julius Caesar and Cardinal Numbers—A Brief Comparison Between Grundlagen and Grundgesetze ”, I comment on the Julius Caesar problem arising from Hume’s Principle in Grundlagen and analyze the reasons for its absence in this form in Grundgesetze. I conclude with reflections on the introduction of the cardinals and the reals by abstraction in the context of Frege’s logicism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Autonomy, Well-Being, Disease, and DisabilityJulian Savulescu (bio)Keywordsautonomy, well-being, mental disorder, psychiatric disease, disability, welfare, body integrity identity disorderVarelius seeks to redefine what constitutes mental disorder or mental illness. (I use these terms interchangeably.) "According to this account, 'a person is mentally disordered when her psychological capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared with that of a typical member of our species of her age-group" (Varelius 2009). This is a (...) stimulating and important paper. Varelius describes fruitfully the relationship between mental illness and autonomy, specifically the ways in which mental disorder can undermine autonomy. This is valuable in understanding the impact of mental illness on the lives of people who suffer from it, which is a serious issue in practical ethics. But is it what constitutes mental disorder or illness? There are logical, conceptual reasons why we should not redefine mental illness in this way.Incomplete Account of Mental DisorderThere are a family of related concepts: disease, injury, disorder, illness, disability. There are old and entrenched disputes about how we should define these concepts. Varelius' paper is a contribution to the definition of mental disorder and illness.The primary classificatory category that defines medical practice is that of health and disease. Disease, broadly construed, involves the presence of pathology. Pathology can result from processes primarily or predominantly internal to the organism, such as genetic disease (although external factors affect their expression), or from processes primarily or predominantly external to the organism, such as injuries.The concepts of disorder and illness relate to the concept of disease. Disorder could be defined in terms of the functional effect of pathology. Illness could be defined in terms of the experiential impact of disease.1 How these terms are precisely defined and related need not concern us at the present. What matters is that the primary category is disease.Psychiatry has evolved in its use of terminology. What used to be called psychiatric diseases are now often called mental disorders. I now claim, for the purposes of illustration of the argument (though it does not require this claim), that the dominant category is disease. Indeed, what are called mental disorders appear in the International Classification of Diseases.Disease can be divided into the mental and physical. I believe that the mental will one day be [End Page 59] shown to be shown to be entirely a subset of the physical. That is, that brain pathology will be a cause, if not the only cause, of mental disease. But others may believe the sets of mental and physical disease are intersecting but not coextensive.What matters is that mental disease is a subcategory of the more general category of disease. It must have the same definitional features as "disease" plus some extra ones specific to the "mental," or mind. (The same points apply if you use "disorder" as the dominant category rather than "disease.")One problem for Varelius is this: how does this autonomy account of "mental disease" relate to an account of "physical disease," and "disease" in general? If mental disease is defined in terms of its impact on the psychological capacities necessary for autonomy, how is "disease" in general, or physical disease, to be defined? One obvious response is to define these related concepts in a similar way:Disease: "a person is diseased when her capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group." Physical disease: "a person is physically disordered when her physical capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group."This interpretation is suggested by the following passage from Varelius:As contrasted with the actual condition of being autonomous, as a capacity of an individual autonomy means that a person has the psychological and bodily abilities that being autonomous... requires.(2009)It would be radical to define disease in general in terms of capacity for autonomy. There is no doubt that disease affects our autonomy, and that is morally significant, but these seem clearly separable concepts. Varelius could respond that he is not defining mental disease but rather the mental component... (shrink)

In Religion & Ethics for a New Age, the problems of traditional Christian dogmas of evil, death, the fall, violence, sexuality, patriarchal theological language and symbols are discussed within a global evolutionary context, as well as that of the existential reality of cultural, moral and religious pluralism. Agape as the central commandment of Christ is adopted as the new universal grounding for true global Christian ethics, sound religion, humane, moral and cultural values. God's supernatural activities of creation and redemption are (...) presented as coextensive with evolutionary history and life in the world as God's unfolding kingdom. (shrink)

The current debate between Thomists of the corruptionist view and the survivalist view revolves around the most appropriate interpretation of Thomas’ texts about the persistence of the person after death. The present article criticizes both views, and offers a new interpretation of Thomas which is capable of resolving the problem. However, the main scope of the paper consists in offering an alternative theory to the hylomorphic view of the person, and introduces a more adequate and coherent theoretical framework to (...) make explicit the ontological status of the human being and their place in the world. The result will be the explication of the holistic-configurational theory of the person from structural- systematic philosophy that shows how the personal configuration persists after bodily death because of its intentional-systematic location in the whole of Being, determined by the prime facts intentionally coextensive with Being. Keywords: Hylomorphic view. Survival of the person. Structural-systematic philosophy. Thomism. (shrink)

In this paper I set out to read Hägerström through his own eyes, adhering to the terminology he uses in his own original work and attempting to make sense of the variance and uniformity alike that one finds in his linguistic usage. The translations we have of Hägerström's works are quite liberal, using the same word in English where the original uses different ones, and, vice versa, using different words in English where the original uses a single one in different (...) contexts. These misleading translations of Hägerström have contributed in some measure to Hägerström's reputation for obscurity. Further, and most importantly, I will take seriously what Hägerström says about his own thought, namely, that it is dependent on that of Kant and independent of the currents of thought contemporary with Hägerström. In Section 1, I will briefly take up the problem of consciousness that Hägerström proceeds from, and will recall something that Bertrand Russell once said, in 1928, in regard to the revolt staged in the early 20th century in Europe against German idealism. In Sections 2 and 4.1, I will instead take up Kant for the purpose of clarifying Hägerström's theory of judgment as treated in Section 3. In Section 4.2, I will illustrate the difference between the notions of nothing, R-reality, and W-reality in Hägerström. In Sections 5 and 6, I will examine the analysis that Hägerström offers of the principle of contradiction, and will summarize the three types of judgment he singled out, including the type he called impossible judgment. In Section 7, I will consider Hägerström views as grounding, in a transcendental way, the presupposition of the primacy of the external spatio-temporal world, a world independent of our representations: I will consider in particular the W-real complexes that are merely represented, as well as the spatio-temporal world as the only W-real complex that is not merely represented. Finally, in Section 8, I will briefly consider some of those who have commented and translated Hägerström, this to conclude that R-reality and W-reality are coextensive but not synonymous. (shrink)

Le Politique est généralement conçu comme un dialogue décousu et manquant d'unité, au mieux comme une succession de méthodes et de voies de recherche différentes (division dichotomique, mythe, paradigme) visant chacune à définir le politique. Le présent article vise au contraire à montrer que l'unité du dialogue est coextensive au développement d'une unique diaíresis, et ce en soulignant, à partir de ce que le texte dit lui-même, que le mythe, la méthode par paradigme et l'analyse des constitutions existantes ne sont (...) que des moyens permettant à la division de tracer le sentier qui mène au politique tel qu'il devrait être. L'ensemble des passages méthodologiques du dialogue permet ainsi d'expliquer comment le Politique explore les possibilités et souligne les limites de la méthode diairétique. Plato's Statesman is usually read as a tedious and carelessly written exercise in dialectic, or, more charitably, as a patchwork of loosely connected applications of different methods of definition of statesmanship (division, myth and paradigm). In this paper, I argue that this much disputed problem of the unity of the dialogue can be solved, provided one reads the whole dialogue as what it claims to be, i.e. the developpment of a single diaíresis. It can be shown that the Eleatic Visitor makes use of the myth, of the analysis of paradigms and of the treatment of non-ideal constitutions as means to following a single path, throughout the whole dialogue, that leads to the definition of statesmanship as it should be. The Statesman emerges as Plato's most profound reflection on the possibilities and the limits of the diairetic method. (shrink)

The paper is meant as a survey of issues in computational complexity from the standpoint of its relevance to social research. Moreover, the threads are hinted at that lead to computer science from mathematical logic and from philosophical questions about the limits and the power both of mathematics and the human mind. Especially, the paper addresses Turing's idea of oracle, considering its impact on computational (i.e., relying on simulations) economy, sociology etc. Oracle is meant as a device capable of finding (...) the values of uncomputable functions. Such an idealized entity is exemplified by the human mind's procedure of recognizing the truth of the Gödelian sentence, of identifying uncomputable numbers through Turing's diagonal procedure, etc. Since such procedures are strictly defined and are as reliable as any calculations, they are worth to be called computation as well. From the computation in the strict sense, that defined as purely algorithmic (mechanical) process, one distinguishes them with the term "hipercomputation". Now the following questions arise. - Are there undecidable problems (ie. not decidable with appropriate algorithms) in social research as are (according to what is reported esp. By S. Wolfram) in natural sciences? The answer in the negative would impose limitations on computer simulations (as entirely relying on algorithms). - If there are, then we have the next question: can such problems be addressed with hipercomputational procedures? - How such hipercomputational procedures would be related to analog computation (coextensive, everlappiing, etc.)? Another set of issues is stated in terms of tractability of decidable problems, that is, the efficiency of algorithms needed for solutions. As inefficient are regarded those which require more resources (time, memory, etc.) than is available in a foreseeable future. In this context, one discusses methods of such an efficient organizing computational processes to overcome the scarcity of resources; thus parallel, distributive, interactive, etc. computing are used as remedies. The paper claims, hinting at F.Hayek's ideas, that in some social systems (e.g., stock exchange, and free market in general) such an efficient organization of their computational activities spontaneously evolves. And this is the main source of its advantages over the central economic planning (as defended by O. Lange). This noticing (in terms of complexity theory) of analogy between Hayek's point and the current discussion of efficiency of algorithms is what may count as an original contribution of the present paper. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s break from Schopenhauer is usually regarded as coextensive with his movement toward ontological naturalism, the view that all there is is limited by the scope of what is naturally observable. Moral norms like good and evil are accordingly ruled out as “things,” but naturalized as human, all-too-human constructions, just as much as are God and the soul, just as much as would Schopenhauer’s non–naturally observable one world Will. While I think that basic picture is correct, I also think that (...) scholars have regarded the problem with insufficient attention to the historical context of that transition, especially when it comes to naturalistic explanations of choice and agency. The move away from a.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ecological Ethics: An IntroductionDavid Keller (bio)Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007, 173pages.Were I in Bath having drinks with Patrick Curry, we would have much to agree about. Explaining his choice of title of his book, Ecological Ethics, he rightly points out that the more common descriptor "environmental ethics" presupposes a dualism between human beings and the nonhuman environment—an assumption which is itself anthropocentric (...) (p. 4). For philosophers interested in studying the human/ nonhuman dynamic, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question. Because the word 'ecology' treats humans, as biota, as integral parts of ecological systems, the phrase "ecological ethics" is less presumptuous and hence more accurate. The word 'ecological' also has the benefit of conveying the message that the subject is notgoing to involve extending moral considerability from humans out into the "environment." Instead, ecological systems as the locus of value provide the starting point for the elaboration of ethics (p. 2). For Curry, as for Leopold (1960) and Callicott (1989), "ecological community" is coextensive with the ethical community.To correlate the ethical community with the biotic community within the rubric of "ecological ethics" is nothing novel. Curry's claim that "there is something ancient about an ecological ethic" (p. 7) got me thinking: [End Page 153]prior to Abrahamic monotheism and Greek rationalism, ancient peoples, particularly nomadic hunter-gatherers, probably considered themselves as integral parts of what encompassed them, moving with herds, in concert with meteorological and seasonal changes, seeing themselves as one amongst other living beings. They probably did not see themselves apart from the "environment" as we have learned to do. Then with the advent of agriculture, linear furrows and controlled inundations must have fostered an addictive sense of security from flood and famine. Later, the innovations of industrial civilization further distanced us from the caprice of nature's wild vicissitudes. Yet that comfort comes at the expense of lost awareness of our responsibilities as bioticcitizens. Therefore, Curry says, following Sylvan (1973), we need a new ecological ethic since traditional Western morality "is no longer up to the job" (ibid.).Curry remarks that ethics, cast in this light, is not something "optional," something to be addressed after one's belly is full, debts settled, and lodging secured. Rather, ethics cuts directly to the core of human action, of all human activity (p. 5)—a claim reminiscent of Socrates' exhortation to Thrasymachus that it is no small matter that they are discussing, nothing of less importance than the right way to live one's life (Plato 2005, p. 603).Over the first sips of ale, I would praise him for giving his book a simple and straightforward structure that makes a challenging subject accessible, especially to students. After laying down the groundwork of basic concepts in moral philosophy (chapter 3)—objectivism versus relativism, the problem of the is/ought gap, religious morality and environmental philosophy (domination, stewardship, and managerialism), and virtue and rule-based ethics (chapter 4)—Curry addresses axiology (chapter 5). Are humans the sole locus of value (anthropocentrism), or are there other entities worthy of some sort of moral consideration who themselves do not carry the burden of moral responsibility (zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism)? Curry answers the latter in the affirmative, arguing that ontological interconnectedness of humans with other living beings within ecological systems discloses that something greater than humanity is the locus of value (p. 46).The most useful part of the book for my students out in Utah would be the middle chapters (6–8) in which Curry casts degrees of nonanthropocentrism [End Page 154]in shades of green. These shades range from light green or "shallow" anthropocentric ethics such Bookchin's Social Ecology (p. 50), Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics (pp. 52–54), and mainstream environmentalism (p. 51), through medium green ethics based on the extension of traditional human-oriented moral philosophy to nonhumans such as Singer's Animal Liberation (pp. 56–59), Regan's Animal Rights (pp. 59–60), and Taylor's Biocentrism (pp. 60–62). Curry proceeds to the dark green ethics of ecocentrism, such as Land Ethics (pp. 65–68), the Gaia Hypothesis (pp. 68–71... (shrink)