According to the Generality Constraint, mental states with conceptual content must be capable of recombining in certain systematic ways. Drawing on empirical evidence from cognitive science, I argue that so-called analogue magnitude states violate this recombinability condition and thus have nonconceptual content. I further argue that this result has two significant consequences: it demonstrates that nonconceptual content seeps beyond perception and infiltrates cognition; and it shows that whether mental states have nonconceptual content is largely an empirical matter determined by the (...) structure of the neural representations underlying them. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...

Building on Christopher Peacocke’s account of analog perceptual contentand my own account of analog perceptual vehicles, I defend three claims: that theperception of magnitudes often has analog contents; that the perception of magni-tudes often has analog vehicles; and that the first claim is true in virtue of the second—that is, the analog vehicles help to ground the analog contents.

This article examines ancient depictions of the death of Troilus in art and literature and challenges the widespread belief that the Iliad implies an alternative version of the myth in which Troilus dies in battle. In particular, it argues that the death-in-battle interpretation is both insufficiently supported by the internal evidence and incompatible with the external evidence. Given the evident popularity of the story of Achilles’ ambush of Troilus in the Archaic period, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that (...) the poet of the Iliad knew the story of Troilus’ death by ambush. That the poem's only reference to Troilus does not contradict this story, and possibly even alludes to it, should persuade critics of the strong likelihood that the popular story of Troilus’ ambush at the fountain was also the one in the poet's mind. (shrink)

Cassirer's conception of culture & theory of symbolism anticipated much of later cultural theory. The essays in this volume explore aspects of his thinking & demonstrate the influence that it had on later scholarship.

A comprehensive collection of essays by the philosopher Lewis White Beck.

Neurotechnological cognitive enhancement has become an area of intense scientific, policy, and ethical interest. However, while work has increasingly focused on ethical views of the general public, less studied are those with personal connections to cognitive impairment. Using a mixed-methods design, we surveyed attitudes regarding implantable neurotechnological cognitive enhancement in individuals who self-identified as having increased likelihood of developing dementia (n = 25; ‘Our Study’), compared to a nationally representative sample of Americans (n = 4726; ‘Pew Study’). Participants in Our (...) Study were additionally shown four videos showcasing hypothetical neurotechnological devices designed to enhance different cognitive abilities and were interviewed for more in-depth responses. Both groups expressed comparable degrees of worry and acknowledgement of potential ethical ramifications (all _ps_ > _0.05_). Compared to the Pew Study, participants in Our Study expressed slightly higher desire (_p_. (shrink)

A collection of Lewis White Beck's most important essays on Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

Early-modern natural history has frequently been interpreted as a handmaid of natural philosophy. Mary Poovey, for example, has argued that seventeenth-century nuggets of information only became ‘m...

In Hans Urs von Balthasar's 1947 Wahrheit, later republished as Theo-Logic I, he attempted to retrieve the notion that "truth is not just a property of knowledge but a transcendental quality of being as such". Villanova's D. C. Schindler enlists this retrieval in order to overcome "a metaphysics of presence," while also providing readers with an indispensable guide for navigating philosophical aspects of Balthasar's Werke. Although Schindler's text deals with notoriously dense subject matter, an undercurrent of pedagogical sense controls his (...) style and grants readers rewarding assimilation of a logic affirming both identity and difference within the concept of truth. (shrink)

Using graphics, colored diagrams, and illustrations, Everyday Philosophy Made Easy serves as a calm and patient tutor to help you remember, or learn, the basic theories of philosophy and how they are applied in everyday situations.

My aim in this paper is to argue that the recent philosophical defenses of revealed preference theory do not withstand scrutiny. Towards this aim, I will first outline revealed preference theory. I will then briefly present the two most common arguments that the received view offers against it. Afterwards, I will outline three argumentative strategies for rehabilitating revealed preference theory, and successively rebut each of them.

Demonstrating the limitations of the one-at-a-time approach, crowd initiatives reveal the surprisingly powerful role of analytic and design choices in shaping scientific results. At the same time, cross-cultural variability in effects is far below the levels initially expected. This highlights the value of “medium” science, leveraging diverse stimulus sets and extensive robustness checks to achieve integrative tests of competing theories.

By organizing crowds of scientists to independently tackle the same research questions, we can collectively overcome the generalizability crisis. Strategies to draw inferences from a heterogeneous set of research approaches include aggregation, for instance, meta-analyzing the effect sizes obtained by different investigators, and parsing, attempting to identify theoretically meaningful moderators that explain the variability in results.

In the western tradition utopia is often associated with Sir Thomas More’s description of an ideal city. This association has resulted in a number of consequences. For instance, until recently, the pre-More utopian texts have been to a large extent neglected. Also, overshadowed by modern European adventure fictions, non-western utopian writings have received relatively little attention. This article briefly reviews various Persian utopian traditions,1 followed by a more detailed examination of one of them, the Alexandrian genre. It will show that (...) some of the accounts presented by More were anticipated by Persian utopian authors. The article also shows that the Alexandrian utopia, like many of its European .. (shrink)

Intellectual encounters between Europe and the Middle East have a long and rich history. During the last two centuries these encounters have accelerated, creating valuable opportunities to study the evolution of political concepts and dissemination of political ideas. This article examines one example of such encounters, showing how a liberal Persian intellectual of the late nineteenth century has borrowed and manipulated concepts from a French Romanticist of the late seventeenth century. Guided by theoretical insights from Quentin Skinner and Fred Dallmayr, (...) this article demonstrates the importance of context to the development of political thought, and refutes the conventional suggestion that Middle Eastern liberals have been the passive recipients of Western ideas. (shrink)

The first name mentioned in Rumi's1 masterpiece, the Masnavi is Plato: Love is the cure for our arrogance and wickedness; it is our Plato and Galen. Given that virtually all books written by medieval Muslims start with "in the name of God" and the praising of the Prophet Muhammad, Rumi's deviation from that tradition is in itself intriguing. Further, knowing Rumi's deep and unwavering devotion to Shams Tabrizi, why is he not mentioned before Plato, particularly in a book aiming at (...) educating future Sufi Sheikhs? Finally, Rumi showed extraordinary affection toward his favorite student Hosam alDin Chalabi, to whom the Masnavi is dedicated. Why is Hosam al-Din not mentioned... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 657-674 [Access article in PDF] European Thought in Nineteenth-Century Iran: David Hume and Others Cyrus Masroori European ideas have played a crucial part in the shaping of the modern Iranian intellectual climate, since Iranian intellectuals have been, one way or another, engaged with these ideas for at least a hundred and fifty years. This engagement has also influenced Iranian society (...) in various ways, as the conceptual foundations of the two Iranian revolutions of the twentieth century present the best evidence. Considering this impact, the study of the reception of European ideas in nineteenth-century Iran becomes important. This article explores neglected questions concerning the reception of ideas: did practical considerations of the Iranian intellectuals play a significant part in the reception of these ideas? And if they did, what was their impact? The examination presented here helps us to further our understanding of the reception and dissemination of political ideas in different cultures and to appreciate the variety of interpretations which they can receive.The article is organized in three parts. The first part provides a brief description of the historical context in which the nineteenth-century Iranian intellectuals were situated. The second part reviews several examples of the interaction between the practical concerns of Iranian intellectuals and their selection, interpretation, and utilization of European ideas. This part intends to provide evidence for the overall suggestion that practical concerns were the determining factor in the pattern of the engagement of Iranian intellectuals with European ideas. The third part of the article concentrates on the same factor in some of the writings of a leading Iranian intellectual of the time, Mirza Fath'ali Akhundzadeh, including his purported "Letter from David Hume to the Muslim Clergy of India," written around 1860. [End Page 657] Historical Background Throughout the nineteenth century Iran suffered from a significant crisis which affected various aspects of life, different social strata, and the ruling Qajar regime. The crisis had three interrelated causes: the expansionist policies of Iran's powerful neighbors, Russia and British India; an economic decline and fiscal difficulties which were in part due to the institutional arrangements, and; the Qajars' inherently weak legitimacy. Between 1800 and 1830, Iranians were involved with disastrous wars against Russians, which clearly demonstrated the weakness of the Iranian state in protecting its territories and population against its northern neighbor.Defeats in these wars pointed to the need for reform in Iran. The state initiated limited institutional reforms, first by the Crown Prince Abbas Mirza (1810s and 1820s) and later by Prime Ministers Mirza Abulqasim Qa'im Maqam (1835) and Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir (1848-51). These reform initiatives, however, proved to be unsuccessful, and the continued weakness of the state was further indicated by defeats by British forces (1856-57).One of the main obstacles to reform in Iran was the opposition by many of the courtiers and the majority of the Shi'i clergymen (ulama). The latter's opposition, particularly to any reform based on European ideas, was important because the ulama enjoyed significant influence over the people. Although on occasions the Shah and some of his ministers supported certain reforms based on European institutional models, the anti-reform coalition of the ulama and conservative courtiers was almost always successful in stopping such attempts. Meanwhile, it must be remembered that even when the Shah supported reform, he remained an autocrat with very little tolerance for any ideas which questioned his absolute political authority. Thus, although debate regarding modernization was at times tolerated by the state, demands for democratization were repressed by both the state and the ulama. 1Against the above background, the nineteenth century Iranian intellectuals who adhered to the principles of liberalism can be divided into three groups: institutional liberals, who believed that Iran could overcome its "underdevelopment" by importing European political and economic institutions without cultural changes or the liberal education of the people as a prerequisite; Islamic liberals who believed that demonstrating the compatibility between Islam and liberal principles such as the rule of... (shrink)

Wittgenstein is accused by Dummett of radical conventionalism, the view that the necessity of any statement is a matter of express linguistic convention, i.e., a decision. This conventionalism is alleged to follow, in Wittgenstein's middle period, from his 'concept modification thesis', that a proof significantly changes the sense of the proposition it aims to prove. I argue for the assimilation of this thesis to Wittgenstein's 'no-conjecture thesis' concerning mathematical statements. Both flow from a strong verificationist view of mathematics held by (...) Wittgenstein in his middle period, and this also explains his views on the law of excluded middle and consistency. Strong verificationism is central to making sense of Wittgenstein's middle-period philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

THE GREEK ISLAND of Spetsais, which I like to think of as my island, is a small, wooded rock that rises gently out of the Argolic Gulf. ...

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck (...) reverberate widely throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

Parsa-Parsi et al bring attention to the World Medical Association (WMA) and transparency to its International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME) revisions.1 We value their report and the revised ICoME but explain here that the ICoME cannot reflect consensus among all WMA members, or the wider medical profession, given structural and epistemic injustices that restrain low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) physicians from participating in activities such as WMA revisions. Such injustices overlook experiences and contributions of those from LMICs and marginalised (...) groups, hindering their access to and influence within medicine.2 They also undermine access to information about, and from, the WMA. Recruiting new members from, and better engaging members in, LMICs would strengthen the WMA and its influence across the medical profession, and better elevate environmental sustainability as a biomedical and bioethical concern. This would be beneficial because there is controversy among physicians, bioethicists and other stakeholders about the relevance of environmental sustainability to medicine.3 4 That its addition to the ICoME was ‘uncontentious’ hints at structural and epistemic injustices in the revision process and homogeneity of those most involved in the revisions. Based on our observations as medical educators, it appears that few medical students and physicians at our institution, and few across the Caribbean and …. (shrink)

In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points (...) that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms. (shrink)