Expanding on the results of previous contributions I advance several hypotheses on the interaction of physical and semiotic processes, both in organisms and in human artifacts. I then proceed to employ these ideas to formulate a general account of evolutionary processes in terms of concrete generalization, where, in analogy with conceptual generalization, novel creations retain antecedent features as special or restricted cases. I argue the following theses: 1) the main point of intersection of physical and semiotic causation is (...) the process of regulation; 2) The broadest form of regulation is a course of actions known as modulation ; 3) Modulation is a universal means of conveyance by which a form is lifted from one supporting vehicle and re-embodied into another replica. These considerations suggest viewing biological evolution as a complex generalization of semiotic evolution. Biological reproduction is then regarded as a complex generalization of sign replication. The latter is a relatively simple affair: the embodied form is external and largely independent of its indifferent supporting medium. Biological reproduction, on the contrary, is an extremely complex dynamical process in which the embodied type is duplicated from within the medium, through the subsidiary internal replication of molecular genetic records. These ideas are developed and illustrated through comparisons between the evolution of organisms and that of human artifacts. (shrink)

Within moral psychology, theories focusing on the conceptualization and empirical measurement of people’s morality in terms of general moral values –such as Moral Foundation Theory- (implicitly) assume general moral values to be relevant concepts for the explanation and prediction of behavior in everyday life. However, a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for this idea remains work in progress. In this study we explore this relationship between general moral values and daily life behavior through a conceptual analysis and (...) an empirical study. Our conceptual analysis of the moral value-moral behavior relationship suggests that the effect of a generally endorsed moral value on moral behavior is highly context dependent. It requires the manifestation of several phases of moral decision-making, each influenced by many contextual factors. We expect that this renders the empirical relationship between generic moral values and people’s concrete moral behavior indeterminate. Subsequently, we empirically investigate this relationship in three different studies. We relate two different measures of general moral values -the Moral Foundation Questionnaire and the Morality As Cooperation Questionnaire- to a broad set of self-reported morally relevant daily life behaviors (including adherence to COVID-19 measures and participation in voluntary work). Our empirical results are in line with the expectations derived from our conceptual analysis: the considered general moral values are poor predictors of the selected daily life behaviors. Furthermore, moral values that were tailored to the specific context of the behavior showed to be somewhat stronger predictors. Together with the insights derived from our conceptual analysis, this indicates the relevance of the contextual nature of moral decision-making as a possible explanation for the poor predictive value of general moral values. Our findings suggest that the investigation of morality’s influence on behavior by expressing and measuring it in terms of general moral values may need revision. (shrink)

Résumé L’enjeu de la Science de la logique est le changement historique de paradigme dans la manière de concevoir la rationalité du savoir. Le projet général de la philosophie hégélienne tire son origine et son développement d’une nouvelle question fondamentale qu’on peut exprimer ainsi : quels critères théorétiques (de nature épistémique, systémique, conceptuelle et lexicale) sont requis pour générer une science qui nous permette de développer un savoir rationnel de ce qui est concrètement réel? Dans cet essai, nous discutons la (...) façon dont Hegel met au point ce paradigme avec la Science de la logique, à partir d’une mutation radicale, qu’il partage partiellement avec Kant, dans la manière de concevoir la nature et l’articulation logique de la pensée dans son auto-explication rationnelle. En analysant cette mutation, il faudra considérer comment elle s’accompagne d’une métamorphose aussi radicale de la façon d’entendre le réel. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article propose de revenir sur le programme d’histoire concrète de l’abstraction proposé par Jean-Claude Perrot dans les années 1990, pour montrer quels en sont les apports pour l’histoire des mathématiques. En mettant l’accent sur les dynamiques sociales, culturelles et matérielles dans lesquelles s’élaborent les connaissances, ce programme fournit en effet des outils pour analyser non seulement les modalités de circulation des mathématiques, mais surtout les effets concrets des pratiques symboliques, souvent laissées de côtés dans les travaux historiens sur (...) les sciences. Plus encore, le programme d’histoire concrète de l’abstraction constitue en objet d’histoire le processus qui permet aux traces matérielles des activités savantes passées et aux modalités de raisonnements qu’elles véhiculent de parvenir jusqu’à nous tout en transcendant leurs conditions initiales de production. Il offre ainsi un cadre analytique pour étudier le rapport des mathématiques au temps historique. (shrink)

When we think about Kantian virtue, what often comes to mind is the notion of respect. Respect is due to all persons merely in virtue of their status as rational agents. Indeed, on the Kantian view, specific virtues, such as duties of beneficence, gratitude, or self-perfection, are so many ways of respecting persons as free rational agents. To preserve and promote rational agency, to protect individuals from threats against rational agency, i.e., to respect persons, is at the core of virtue. (...) No doubt, part of the appeal of the Kantian notion of respect is that it offers an intuitive way of talking about the wrongness of manipulation and coercion, and in general, the wrongness of unfairly taking advantage of another. For to respect persons is to take seriously their status as persons, and to forswear, at some level, actions and attitudes that would compromise their dignity. Talking about respect has become shorthand for signaling deontological concerns. More formally, within recent Kantian exegesis, respect is viewed as yielding a more accessible and less contrived account of the Categorical Imperative than the more traditional criterion of universalizability and the contradictions tests applied to it. Within the Kantianinspired political theory of John Rawls, respect is also a core notion, representing a pervasive good, the bases of which, just states have an obligation to distribute to their members. Yet, for all its appeal, respect is an odd feature of Kantian ethics. For it is an emotion in a theory that prides itself in grounding morality in principles of reason alone. In this essay, I draw attention to the importance of respect in Kant's account in order to show just how he makes room for the emotions. Indeed, I shall argue that on Kant's account of full moral agency, we are emotional as well as rational creatures. Although Kant often portrays respect as an abstract emotional attitude mysteriously connected to our rationality, I argue that on a suitable revision, respect can be transformed into a more concrete attitude, cultivated and expressed alongside other emotions requisite for full virtue. (shrink)

The epistemology of modality is gradually coming to play a central role in general discussions about modality. This paper is a contribution in this direction, in particular I draw a comparison between Lewis’s Modal realism and Timothy Williamson’s recent account of modality in terms of counterfactual thinking. In order to have criteria of evaluation, I also formulate four requirements which are supposed to be met by any theory of modality to be epistemologically adequate.

Work of Eagle, Farah, Goldbring, Kirchberg, and Vignati shows that the only separable C*‐algebras that admit quantifier elimination in continuous logic are,,, and the continuous functions on the Cantor set. We show that, among finite dimensional C*‐algebras, quantifier elimination does hold if the language is expanded to include two new predicate symbols: One for minimal projections, and one for pairs of unitarily conjugate elements. Both of these predicates are definable, but not quantifier‐free definable, in the usual language of C*‐algebras. We (...) also show that adding just the predicate for minimal projections is sufficient in the case of full matrix algebras, but that in general both new predicate symbols are required. (shrink)

The epistemology of modality is gradually coming to play a central role in general discussions about modality. This paper is a contribution in this direction, in particular I draw a comparison between Lewis’s Modal realism and Timothy Williamson’s recent account of modality in terms of counterfactual thinking. In order to have criteria of evaluation, I also formulate four requirements which are supposed to be met by any theory of modality to be epistemologically adequate.

We discuss the problem of how a (commutative) generalized observable in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space (communtative effect-valued resolution of the identity) can be considered as an unsharp realization of some standard observable (projection-valued resolution of the identity). In particular, we give a concrete procedure for constructing such a standard observable. Some results about the “uniqueness” of the resulting observable are also examined.

But how can any entity be not self-identical? If it is both itself and another, then it is not an entity but a pair of entities. At best, an entity which is not self-identical is a series of concrete, self-identical, unchanging entities, parallel to what Whitehead calls "personal order." But even then the series itself would be self-identical qua a series, although its constituents exhibit successive differences. Therefore, to speak of entities which are not self-identical is either not precise (...) or contradictory. It is not precise if two or more entities are referred to as one entity, even if this one entity is then said to be not self-identical. It is contradictory if a self-identical series or collection of self-identical entities is called a non-self-identical entity. Therefore, for the same reason for which a concrete entity cannot change, no entity can change. (shrink)

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book (...) as a whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser's ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book (...) as a whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

The basic components of James’s stream of consciousness are considered concretely and in a way that tends to be relatively neutral from a theoretical perspective. My ultimate goal is a general description of the states of consciousness, but I try here to be more “observational” than “theoretical” about them. Giving attention to James’s reports of his personal firsthand evidence, I proceed as though I were conversing with this most phenomenological and radically empirical of psychological authors. I disagree with James (...) on some points but, also, I find many of his claims acceptable and base my own view on a thesis fundamental to his perspective: A stream of consciousness consists of a succession, one at a time, of unitary states and all of the other mental occurrences that are conscious are features of such states. This is an effort to see more clearly together with James, not an exercise of correcting errors in how he treated of our topic. (shrink)

I continue here to consider concretely the states of consciousness that are held to be the fundamental durational components of James’s famous stream — my ideal purpose being to arrive eventually at a general description applicable to every one of them. I closely attend therefore to James’s account of the sense of personal identity, not for its own sake but for what it further reveals regarding the specific states of consciousness that James called individually “the present, judging Thought.” These (...) states, which are the inner awarenesses, remembrances, and appropriations of other states of consciousness in the same stream, are supposed to provide us with a sense of our own diachronic continuity. According to James, they are the only “I” there is. I bring out among other things that, notwithstanding James’s rejection of an entitative Ego responsible for apprehending and appropriating the states of consciousness and other components of our empirical “me,” James in effect assigned this job to the total brain process. Embodying all the information required, it is this physical process that is proposed to produce each Thought full-blown. (shrink)

While I strongly agree with Patrick Grim that abstract relationships are real, and that it is possible to get them right, the danger that we will get them wrong is just as real. The use of visual representation of abstract phenomena, precisely because of our predilection to see patterns in everything and because we don't have to think so hard about visible representations generally, may lead us to see things that aren't there.

In this essay, I argue that Sartre's notion of pre-reflective consciousness can be summoned to offer a general challenge to contemporary functionalist accounts of mind, broadly construed. In virtue of the challenge Sartre offers these contemporary functionalist accounts and the richness of his phenomenological analysis, I conclude that his voice needs to be included in ongoing debates over the nature of consciousness. First, I look at some of the basic claims motivating functionalist accounts of mind. Next, I look at (...) Sartre's notion of pre-reflective consciousness and discuss how this notion challenges functionalist accounts of mentality. I conclude by suggesting that Sartre's rendering of pre-reflective consciousness remains overly cognitivist. I show how this notion can be deepened to include the sensory-motor capacities of the situated body—resulting in a pre-reflective bodily self-awareness—and how this deepened formulation offers a further challenge to functionalist accounts of mind. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Account of Subjectivity: General Remarks The Phenomenology as the Theory of Concrete Subjectivity Conclusion References Further Reading.

Many philosophers since Hume have accepted that imagining/conceiving a scenario is our prime guide to knowing its possibility. Stephen Yablo provided a more systematic criterion: one is justified in judging that p is possible if one can imagine a world which one takes to verify p. I defend a version of Yablo’s criterion against van Inwagen’s moderate modal scepticism. Van Inwagen’s key argument is that we cannot satisfy Yablo’s criterion because we are not in a position to spell out far-fetched (...) possible scenarios in relevant detail. Van Inwagen’s argument can be applied to the use of conceivability for everyday possibility claims, leaving us with the spectre of pervasive modal scepticism. In order to answer the sceptical threat, I combine van Inwagen’s main example with general considerations about the nature of metaphysical modality to motivate a version of Yablo’s criterion and show that it does not lead to scepticism. One structural condition of p being metaphysically possible is that it coheres with a complete reality. This condition gives rise to Yablo’s criterion. However, for the criterion to be of any avail, we have to disregard details we are not in a position to specify. To account for our practice of doing so, I use Yablo’s distinction between imagining a world as determinate and imagining it determinately. I present a condition when we may simply disregard details as determinate. The condition results from integrating analogical reasoning into the conceivability test. (shrink)

This is the second paper of an essay in two parts. The first paper (Part I) is a critical discussion of Mark Risjord's conception of nursing knowledge where I argued against the conception of nursing knowledge as a kind of nursing science. The aim of the present paper (Part II) is to explicate and substantiate the thesis of nursing as a kind of concrete philosophy. My strategy is to elaborate upon certain themes from Wittgenstein's Tractatus in order to canvass (...) a general scheme of philosophy based on a distinction between reality and the world. This distinction will be employed in the appropriation of certain significant features of nursing and nursing knowledge. By elaborating on the contrast between the abstract and the concrete, I will suggest that nursing may be seen as a kind of concrete philosophy, being primarily concerned with reality (and secondarily with the world). This thesis, I will argue, implies that philosophy is the kind of theory that is essential to nursing (which is not so much a theory than a certain kind of activity). (shrink)

Noting that Benhabib’s ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this paper introduces and interrogates Benhabib’s ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib’s critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the ‘concrete’ and ‘generalized’ other and ‘interactive universalism’ can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the (...) extent to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib’s argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritise the perspective of ‘postconventional’ Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterise ‘conventional’ moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organising the validity of moral claims. (shrink)

Previously, I (Boesch 2017) described a notion called “representational licensing”—the set of activities of scientific practice by which scientists establish the intended representational use of a vehicle. In this essay, I expand and develop this concept of representational licensing. I begin by showing how the concept is of value for both pragmatic and substantive approaches to scientific representation. Then, through the examination of a case study of the Mississippi River Basin Model, I point out and explain some of the activities (...) of representational licensing that help to establish the representational nature of this model. Throughout the exploration of the case study, I pause to identify some important lessons which apply more generally about the nature of representational licensing in science. (shrink)

This paper takes up a recent challenge to mechanistic approaches to computational implementation, the view that computational implementation is best explicated within a mechanistic framework. The challenge, what has been labelled “the abstraction problem”, claims that one of MAC’s central pillars – medium independence – is deeply confused when applied to the question of computational implementation. The concern is that while it makes sense to say that computational processes are abstract (i.e. medium-independent), it makes considerably less sense to say that (...) they are also concrete processes of a mechanism. After outlining the problem and its effect on MAC, I examine a recent response from Kuokkanen and Rusanen [2018. “Making Too Many Enemies: Hutto and Myin’s Attack on Computationalism.” Philosophical Explorations 21 (2): 282–294. doi:10.1080/13869795.2018.1477980]. I argue that Kuokkanen and Rusanen’s response comes up short insofar as it makes problematic trade-offs among various desiderata we have for a theory of implementation. This leads to a general dilemma for MAC: either give up being an objective theory of implementation or concede the abstraction problem and so reintroduce triviality concerns. In response, I argue that conceiving of computations as abstracta rather than illata provides a way to avoid the proposed dilemma and articulate a notion of medium independence that addresses the abstraction problem. (shrink)

Experimental modeling is the construction of theoretical models hand in hand with experimental activity. As explained in Section 1, experimental modeling starts with claims about phenomena that use abstract concepts, concepts whose conditions of realization are not yet specified; and it ends with a concrete model of the phenomenon, a model that can be tested against data. This paper argues that this process from abstract concepts to concrete models involves judgments of relevance, which are irreducibly normative. In Section (...) 2, we show, on the basis of several case studies, how these judgments contribute to the determination of the conditions of realization of the abstract concepts and, at the same time, of the quantities that characterize the phenomenon under study. Then, in Section 3, we compare this view on modeling with other approaches that also have acknowledged the role of relevance judgments in science. To conclude, in Section 4, we discuss the possibility of a plurality of relevance judgments and introduce a distinction between locally and generally relevant factors. (shrink)

Résumé Comment une histoire matérielle de l’abstraction peut-elle servir l’histoire intellectuelle ou bien l’histoire des sciences, cela à l’encontre de l’histoire des idées et des généalogies rétrospectives? L’objet est ici l’œuvre de connaissance telle qu’elle est ancrée dans son cadre historique. Cette histoire intellectuelle déborde les coupes disciplinaires. L’article en offre plusieurs exemples qui partent de la recherche de différenciations explicables entre des pratiques intellectuelles d’abstraction. Une séquence s’ouvre alors avec l’émergence d’une conception, puis la formation de théories et finalement (...) la consolidation d’un corpus de choses tenues pour évidentes. Toutes les activités cognitives qui précédent le savoir constitué sont ici visées. (shrink)

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding abstract artifacts and how such entities (e.g., fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and mythological planets like Vulcan), if they indeed exist, could possibly be our creations. One interesting aspect of some of these debates concerns the extent to which creative intentions play a role in the creation of artifacts generally, both abstract and concrete. I here address the creation of concrete artifacts in particular. I ultimately defend a Brock-inspired, heterodox (...) view on which creative intentions are not at all necessary for the creation of concrete artifacts. A concrete artifact is just a hunk of matter having a certain configuration owing to human activity and, given that configuration, is disposed to participate in other human activities. (shrink)

How do we prove true but unprovable propositions? Gödel produced a statement whose undecidability derives from its ad hoc construction. Concrete or mathematical incompleteness results are interesting unprovable statements of formal arithmetic. We point out where exactly the unprovability lies in the ordinary ‘mathematical’ proofs of two interesting formally unprovable propositions, the Kruskal-Friedman theorem on trees and Girard's normalization theorem in type theory. Their validity is based on robust cognitive performances, which ground mathematics in our relation to space and (...) time, such as symmetries and order, or on the generality of Herbrand's notion of ‘prototype proof’. (shrink)

Some fifteen years ago, research on generalized quantifiers was con sidered to be a branch of mathematical logic, mainly carried out by mathematicians. Since then an increasing number of linguists and philosophers have become interested in exploring the relevance of general quantifiers for natural language as shown by the bibliography compiled for this volume. To a large extent, the new research has been inspired by Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper's path-breaking article "Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language" from 1981. A (...) concrete sign of this development was the workshop on this topic at Lund University, May 9-11, 1985, which was organized by Robin Cooper, Elisabet Engdahl, and the present editor. All except two of the papers in this volume derive from that workshop. Jon Barwise's paper in the volume is different from the one he presented in connection with the workshop. Mats Rooth's contribution has been added because of its close relationship with the rest of the papers. The articles have been revised for publication here and the authors have commented on each other's contributions in order to integrate the collection. The organizers of the workshop gratefully acknowledge support from the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Philosophy and the Faculty of Humanities at Lund University, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (through the Wallenberg Foundation), the Swedish Institute, and the Letterstedt Foundation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 521-537 [Access article in PDF] Two Routes "to Concreteness" in the Work of the Bakhtin Circle Craig Brandist In 1918 the young Georg Lukács published an obituary of the last major Baden School neo-Kantian Emil Lask in which the latter's varied work was commended for being "underlain by an essential common drive [Drang]: the drive to concreteness." 1 This "drive" was (...) especially problematic, however, in the work of thinkers overtly committed to neo-Kantianism, a doctrine that was in its own time a byword for abstruseness and academic abstraction. Just how concrete could a neo-Kantian idealism become without abandoning its core insistence that the world is "produced" by indwelling categories of mind? Lask pursued this problem with a thoroughness unmatched by any other German neo-Kantian, and in doing so he became an important influence on, among others, Lukács, Max Weber, and Martin Heidegger. This article discusses the prevalence of the same "drive" in the varied work of those Russian champions of neo-Kantianism, the Bakhtin Circle, where "concreteness" is invoked so frequently that it almost begins to take on the character of a mantra. The case of the Bakhtin Circle is especially illustrative because the "drive to concreteness," which all members of the Circle shared, resulted in a significant difference of opinion about the extent to which the central theses of neo-Kantianism can be salvaged. Like Lask, Bakhtin was particularly keen to maintain the core of neo-Kantian ideas, while Voloshinov and, following behind him, Medvedev, were much less averse to breaking with the central project of German idealism itself. In each case the Brentanian notion of intentionality, the doctrine that consciousness is always consciousness of something, plays a central role. Consciousness exists in acts directed towards objects, existent or otherwise, that are given to consciousness. Brentano and his followers were invariably anti-Kantian, and they were extremely hostile to the central tenet of neo-Kantian idealism, that objects of consciousness are "produced" from categories dwelling in a transcendental [End Page 521] "consciousness in general" (Bewusstsein überhaupt). While it is far from certain that Brentanian and Kantian principles are incompatible at every level, there is no doubt that any attempt to integrate the notion of intentionality into neo-Kantianism was going to threaten the basis of neo-Kantianism as such. 2 As Gabriel Motzkin notes, Lask's attempt to carry such a project through to its logical conclusion ultimately led to "the destruction of the neo-Kantian empire from within." 3 The Bakhtinian project led in precisely this direction, and this article examines the way in which the work of the Circle shows distinct and ultimately incompatible responses to the crisis of the "empire." Revising neo-Kantianism: Ernst Cassirer and Emil Lask The abstract, or what Bakhtin terms the "theoretist," character of neo-Kantianism derived from two fundamental and interrelated features. The first was a principled opposition to all distinctions between cognition and perception, and the second was an identification of subjectivity with the system of objectifying functions that have their true being in cultural documents. According to neo-Kantian principles, nothing is "given" and everything is posited in an act of subjective spontaneity: objects are constituted from transcendental categories dwelling in "pure consciousness." Summing up the philosophical project of Hermann Cohen, the leader of the Marburg School, Ernst Cassirer noted that "any appeal to a merely given should fall aside; in place of every supposed foundation in things there should enter the pure foundations of thinking, of willing, of artistic and religious consciousness." 4Though seeking to broaden his own enquiry beyond the "trichotomy of the Kantian Critiques," Cassirer, the last major Marburg neo-Kantian, remained wedded to the neo-Kantian project of deriving the transcendental preconditions of the "formations" in which the "objective spirit... consists and exists" and dealt only with a universal subject devoid of practical limitations. 5 Cassirer drew close to phenomenology in the 1920s, when he embarked on his great project The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, presenting... (shrink)

In Reinhart Koselleck's history of concepts, the general orientation that concepts are to be understood in their proper contexts is intertwined with the assumption that they are manifestations of particular political conflicts. The essay shows that the dense compound of context and conflict in Koselleck's thought springs from Carl Schmitt's political theory and also forms an important point of continuity between Koselleck's early work and his later methodological writings. The formalized assumption of conflict, somewhat problematically, binds Koselleckian conceptual history (...) to a particular conception of politics, one that sees politics ultimately as struggle and conflict. Once the historical-theoretical contingency of this conception is recognized, it becomes both possible and necessary to reassess the role of conflict in the methodology of conceptual history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Elizabeth Hanson-Smith AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: THE CONCRETE REFERENT The chief problem facing critics who would consider the Confessions as both a literary work and a philosophical treatise remains the connection between the first nine books, the autobiography, and the last four, the metaphysical speculations on time, eternity, epistemology, and theology. A persistent desire to justify the work as an aesthetic whole has led critics on a search for thematic (...) and structural unity; they have been more successful in the former endeavor than in the latter. The interpretation of the work's plot as a peregrinatio animae, a pilgrimage of the soul, is now generally accepted as definitive; but attempts to find structural unity within that broad outline have not progressed beyond Marrou's characterization of the work as a "musical composition."1 His analogy to music has not been anchored to any concrete structural features of the Confessions and does not illuminate the connections between its content and its form. I shall attempt to prove that a unified structural model for the development of the soul in the Confessions does indeed exist and is outlined in Augustine's earlier discursive work, the De quantitate animae.2 The seven degrees or steps (gradus) of the soul's ascent to God, as sketched in the De quantitate, are deliberately fleshed out and translated into a mimetic, narrative version in the Confessions. Placing the two works side by side gives us a unique opportunity to examine a typically medieval literary form, the educative journey, in its relationship to its philosophical premises. Such a study reveals the inner formal unity of the literary work and, further, provides us with significant evidence for a re-examination of Augustine's Neo-Platonism, his supposed dualism, and his influence on later works, both literary and philosophical. In the Confessions we see one of the earliest Christian blendings of several models: first, the educative journey, the archetypal pattern familiar from the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and even The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Augustine's version, like later medieval cosmologies, also 176 Elizabeth Hanson-Smith1 77 includes a vision of the cosmic order and its relationship to human order, elements of significance in pagan philosophical works such as the Timaeus and the Dream of Scipio. But Augustine's journey also depends upon the Judeo-Christian conception of history as a series of figurae or types of the Messiah: the protagonist of the Christian educative journey joins thefigurae of the Biblical past. Christ's incarnation as Mansoul and his life on earth are the pattern of universal history from Fall to Apocalypse; Christ's life becomes a figurative pattern for the actions of Everyman.3 The Confessions is one of the earliest Christian works to apply this pattern in a narrative context. Augustine was also preoccupied with the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation and the seventh of rest. He views the exegesis of Genesis as an explanation of all subsequent life; the Ages of Man recapitulate the days of creation, as do the sacraments and the seven steps in the ascent of the soul. Thus, to the figurative pattern of Christ's "pilgrimage" from creating Logos to Incarnate God and finally to judge at the Second Coming, Augustine applies the schematic seven-fold ascent found in the De quantitate: the soul passes through the ascending steps of animation, sense, art, religion, tranquillity, initiation, and contemplation—each of which is figured by or patterned on a stage in Christ's life, as represented by the sacraments, and each of which, further, reflects a segment of universal history. The seven steps are not simply the movement of the individual soul, but the progress of Mansoul on its journey to Apocalypse. The stylistic differences between the two works—one an exposition written as Socratic dialogue, the other a metaphorical personal narrative —will no doubt give rise to differing interpretations; but one may, I think, object to certain details I suggest while still agreeing that the De quantitate provides the structuring model. Let me first define the major areas of difference between the two works. In the De quantitate, each of the levels or steps of the soul takes on a discrete, separate... (shrink)

One of the problems we face in many-valued logic is the difficulty of capturing the intuitive meaning of the connectives introduced through truth tables. At the same time, however, some logics have nice ways to capture the intended meaning of connectives easily, such as four-valued logic studied by Belnap and Dunn. Inspired by Dunn’s discovery, we first describe a mechanical procedure, in expansions of Belnap-Dunn logic, to obtain truth conditions in terms of the behavior of the Truth and the False, (...) which gives us intuitive readings of connectives, out of truth tables. Then, we revisit the notion of functional completeness, which is one of the key notions in many-valued logic, in view of Dunn’s idea. More concretely, we introduce a generalized notion of functional completeness which naturally arises in the spirit of Dunn’s idea, and prove some fundamental results corresponding to the classical results proved by Post and Słupecki. (shrink)

There are no signs of waning interest in William James's classic work, The Principles of Psychology as we enter the second century after its original publication in 1890. I think the time is right for undertaking the task of reconstructing his psychology, that is, his concrete or phenomenal findings, in light of his radically empiricist philosophical insights. The immediate problem for such a reappropriation is that James sharply distinguished between scientifically neutral descriptions of reality, such as are found in (...) Principles, and metaphysical or epistemological reconstructions of such findings, such as he undertakes in his philosophy of radical empiricism. In this essay I will show that James's profound ambivalence about whether we find or create experienced objects must be explicitly raised and resolved before the concrete methodology and findings of Principles can be fully integrated into his radically empirical hermeneutics of praxis and thus constitute his concrete analysis of experience. (shrink)

The paper tries to provide an alternative to Hempel’s approach to scientific laws and scientific explanation as given in his D-N model. It starts with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universal scientific laws and analyzes the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. By way of solution, it analyzes the scientific laws and explanations in classical mechanics and then reconstructs the corresponding models of explanation, as well as the types of (...) scientific laws appearing in it. Finally, it compares this reconstruction with the approaches of J. Woodward and C. Hitchcock, C. Liu and with the views of M. Thalos on analytic mechanics. (shrink)

The article identifies a problem in socio-cultural-historical activity theory (SCHAT) with ignoring how hope and power constitute the theory itself, and suggests that this is why the tradition faces a bad choice between functionalist or utopianist reductions of its own social relevance. Currently, remedies for this kind of (perhaps shammed) innocence can be found in Foucauldian and Latourian approaches to knowledge. However, since these appear to presuppose the (often feigned) cynicism of a purely negative standpoint that fits all too smoothly (...) into the neoliberal management it describes, this presents us with an impossible choice or oscillation at another level. To get beyond it, we need the frankly self-reflected standpoint of ideology critique and the articulation of ‘concrete utopia’, i.e. real possibilities for social transformation. The approach is then realized and exemplified as part of an emergent practice research in the field of drug treatment. The field is broadly described as moving toward certain kinds of recognition of users’ standards, but also as filled with paradoxes that allow us to intervene with theory. One of these (sets of) paradoxes concerns the relations between state and civil (bourgeois) society that are played out in drug treatment. Contrary to the doxa of New Public Management, the (welfare) state’s normative power has not dissolved, only hides from itself. An immanent critique of practices and ideas in the field leads to the suggestion that its forms of recognition imply both submission of users, and the creation of positive standards and collectives. To intervene in this set of issues, we must expand the SCHAT reading of its own Hegelian-Marxist legacy, against the dominant liberal and scientistic trend, to engage with theories of recognition. A contemporary, participatory concept of recognition is sketched, which seeks to sublate (include and supersede) submission into the building of the generalizing ethics of a collective. (shrink)

Russia did not participate in the bourgeois revolution, the revolution occurred in Russia after the Tsar absolute doctrine, dictatorship, terrorism, superstition and personal police state. Stalinist Marxism beyond recognition, damaged Marx's own image. Impoverishment of the proletariat of Marx and Engels theory, crisis theory has been declared invalid, the Marxist dialectics is still valid is that the theory of contradiction. Contradictions of capitalism can be accurately understood as the general alienation, self-alienation. Inherited estate will determine the natural rights of (...) free face of communism. Straight orthopedic surgery is the most urgent task of socialism, and humane socialism contains the highest human rights as straight. Marxism is not is not a utopia, but a concrete utopia. Russia did not join in the bourgeois revolution, and there appeared absolutely Tsarism, autarchy, terror, individual superstition and police country after its revolution. Stalinism made the Marxism distorted beyond recognition and destroyed the figures of Marx himself. The theory of Proletarian poverty and the theory of crisis of Marx and Engles' were declared invalid, while its dialectic, that is Contradiction, is still valid. The contradiction of Capital can be understood precisely as Total-alienation and Self-alienation. Inheriting natural rights will decide the freedom face of Communism. Orthopaedic surgery of upright way is the most urgent mission of Socialism, and human Socialism contains the upright way as the highest human rights. Marxism is not non-Utopia, but concrete Utopia. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has been adopted in a wide range of domains. This shows the imperative need to contribute to making citizens insightful actors in debates and decisions involving the adoption of AI mechanisms. Currently, existing approaches to the teaching of basic AI concepts through programming treat machine intelligence as an external element/module. After being trained, that external module is coupled to the main application. Combining block-based programming and WiSARD weightless artificial neural networks, this article presents the conceptualization and design of (...) a new methodology, AI from concrete to abstract, to endow general people with a minimum understanding of what AI means. The main strategy adopted was to include AI training and classification primitives as blocks that compose an otherwise conventional computer program. This way, the programmer can use these blocks as he/she uses other programming constructs. In order to achieve this purpose, we also propose BlockWiSARD, a block-based programming environment designed to promote the demystification of artificial intelligence via practical activities related to the development of learning machines, as well as through the observation of their learning process. As a beneficial side effect of BlockWiSARD, the difference between a program capable of learning from data and a conventional computer program becomes more evident. In addition, the simplicity of the WiSARD weightless artificial neural network model enables easy visualization and understanding of training and classification tasks internal realization. (shrink)

Category theory has become central to certain aspects of theoretical physics. Bain has recently argued that this has significance for ontic structural realism. We argue against this claim. In so doing, we uncover two pervasive forms of category-theoretic generalization. We call these ‘generalization by duality’ and ‘generalization by categorifying physical processes’. We describe in detail how these arise, and explain their significance using detailed examples. We show that their significance is two-fold: the articulation of high-level physical concepts, and the generation (...) of new models. 1 Introduction2 Categories and Structuralism 2.1 Categories: abstract and concrete 2.2 Structuralism: simple and ontic3 Bain’s Two Strategies 3.1 A first strategy for defending Objectless 3.2 A second strategy for defending Objectless4 Two Forms of Categorical Generalization 4.1 Generalization by duality 4.2 Generalization by categorification 4.3 The role of category theory in physics5 Conclusion. (shrink)

The work of general practitioners is infused by norms from several movements, of which evidence based medicine, patient-centredness, and virtue ethics are some of the most influential. Their precepts are not clearly reconcilable, and structural factors may limit their application. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework that explains how GPs respond, across different fields of interaction in their daily work, to the pressure exerted by divergent norms. Data was generated from unstructured interviews with and observations of sixteen (...) Swedish GPs and family medicine residents between 2015 and 2017. Straussian Grounded Theory was used for analysis. We found that GPs’ maxims of action can be characterised in terms of dichotomous responses to demands from four distinct sets of norms, or “voices”: the situation, the self, the system, and the profession. From the interactions between these voices emerge sixteen clusters of maxims of action. Based on the common features of the maxims in each cluster, we have developed a conceptual framework that appears to be rich enough to capture the meaning of the ethical decisions that GPs make in their daily work, yet has a high enough level of abstraction to be helpful when discussing the factors that influence those decisions. Our four-dimensional model of GPs’ responses to norms is a first step toward a middle-range theory of quality from GPs’ perspective. It brings out the complexity of their practice, reveals tensions that easily remain invisible in more concrete accounts of their actions, and aids the transferability of substantive theories on GPs’ ethical decision making. By explaining the nature of the ethical conflicts that they experience, we provide some clues as to why efforts to improve quality by imposing additional norms on GPs may meet with varying degrees of success. (shrink)

For Professor Wahl, the va-et-vient of speculative concepts reveals a restless dialectic whereby the emphasis of the theorist passes periodically from one contrary to another. Thus such notions as subject, object, the one, the many, have each in turn a recurring moment of dominion. But this movement, although it animates the development of ideas, cannot reach a stable equilibrium; and the notion, that may perhaps be attributed to Hegel, of a rational dialectic that has achieved a final resolution, is for (...) Wahl, as for Kierkegaard, a false ideal. This does not mean, however, that we are thereby finally condemned to a relativism or historicism. We can escape the vacillating one-sidedness of a "rational" dialectic. Indeed, the dialectic process seems to invite us to transcend it, or we might say, the very purpose of argument is to transcend itself since vision and not a discursive strategy is the goal of the philosopher. (shrink)