Despite his commitment to freedom, Leibniz’ philosophy is also founded on pre-established harmony. Understanding the life of the individual as a spiritual automaton led Leibniz to refer to the puzzle of the way out of determinism as the Labyrinth of Freedom. Leibniz claimed that infinite complexity is the reason why it is impossible to prove a contingent truth. But by means of Leibniz’ calculus, it actually can be shown in a finite number of steps how to calculate a summation of (...) infinite parts. It appears that the analogy Leibniz drew between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of contingent truths did more harm than good. A solution consistent with Leibniz’ perception of infinity is proposed. Alongside the existence of the aforementioned analogy, it is based on a disanalogy between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of infinitely complex truths. This is a disanalogy that Leibniz had already used to solve the Labyrinth of Continuum which he declared more than once could, like the Labyrinth of Freedom, be solved by means of the nature of infinity. The solution of both labyrinths is based on the fictitiousness of the infinitesimal. (shrink)

Im November 1672 schloss Leibniz, dass ein Kontinuum nicht aus Punkten besteht. Der Beweis, der als Diagonal-Paradox Bekanntheit erlangte, wurde von Leibniz vorgebracht, nachdem er die Existenz einer unendlichen Zahl verneint hatte. Vor kurzem haben mehrere Kommentatoren darzustellen versucht, dass der Leibniz'sche Beweis, unter dem Aspekt von Cantors Mengenlehre und seiner Lehre von den Kardinalzahlen gesehen, nicht stichhaltig sei. In diesem Artikel unternehme ich den Versuch, die philosophischen Annahmen, denen Leibniz' Gebrauch des Diagonal-Paradox unterliegt, offenzulegen, um zu zeigen, dass eine (...) solche Kritik unmöglich ist. Die Kritik gründet sich auf die Forderung, zwischen zwei Wegen, Größen miteinander zu vergleichen, zu unterscheiden; jedoch hatte Leibniz solch eine Unterscheidung schon im Sinn, die er 1672 aber vermeiden wollte. Gegen Ende 1670 dachte Leibniz, dass ein Weg existiere, ein Kontinuum aus Punkten durch eine Unterscheidung zwischen der Ausdehnung eines Körpers und seiner Größe zusammenzusetzen. Diese Unterscheidung erlaubte es Leibniz ebenfalls, verschiedene Größen gleichzusetzen und somit dem Diagonal-Paradox auszuweichen. Im November 1672 versuchte Leibniz jedoch, diese Unterscheidung zwischen Ausdehnung und Größe zu vermeiden, weil er davon überzeugt war, dass eine unendliche Zahl nicht möglich ist, was ihn dazu brachte, den Punkt als einen Bestandteil des Kontinuums zu verneinen. (shrink)

Anthony Collins is known mostly as an eighteenth-century freethinker who contributed to ideas of rational religion and religious toleration, as a close friend of John Locke, and as a necessitarian and materialist who held a significant correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Yet, his political philosophy has rarely received serious attention, and he remains a neglected figure in the history of political thought. This article attempts to recover Collins as a philosopher who developed a complex political theory, by focusing on his conceptions (...) of liberty and authority. It shows that he conceptualised liberty, and liberty of thought in particular, both as non-interference and non-domination, namely, an absence of censorship as well as an absence of continuous tyranny over the minds of humankind. Then, it shows that Collins also developed a thorough idea of civil authority, according to which even religious liberties may depend in some cases on the discretion of the civil sovereign. Finally, this article suggests that Collins’s multi-layered theory continued to develop after his lifetime, and that he therefore had a prominent place in eighteenth-century debates of liberty and authority. (shrink)

Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of groups. First, the existence of mutually supporting, rather than antagonistic, interactants is sufficient to constitute a “social group.” Second, conflict does not necessarily mark group boundaries but can also exist within an ingroup. Third, psychological representations of social groups do not only trace, but also perpetuate the existence of groups.

In this paper, dealing with Platonic and Stoic dialectic in Philo, I wish to make a proposal that may offer some solution to the problem of the surprising absence of a proper use of the dialectic of the late Platonic dialogues in Philo’s works. Philonic scholars have not, to the best of my knowledge, raised this question; but Philo’s very rare allusions to Plato’s later dialogues were noted in David T. Runia’s comprehensive study on Philo and Plato’s Timaeus.

Semantic Network Analysis in Social Sciences introduces the fundamentals of semantic network analysis and its applications in the social sciences. Readers learn how to easily transform any given text into a visual network of words co-occurring together, a process that allows mapping the main themes appearing in the text and revealing its main narratives and biases. Semantic network analysis is particularly useful today with the increasing volumes of text-based information available. It is one of the developing, cutting-edge methods to organize, (...) identify patterns and structures, and understand the meanings of our information society. The first chapters in this book offer step-by-step guidelines for conducting semantic network analysis, including choosing and preparing the text, selecting desired words, constructing the networks, and interpreting their meanings. Free software tools and code are also presented. The rest of the book displays state-of-the-art studies from around the world that apply this method to explore news, political speeches, social media content, and even to organize interview transcripts and literature reviews. Aimed at scholars with no previous knowledge in the field, this book can be used as a main or a supplementary textbook for general courses on research methods or network analysis courses, as well as a starting point to conduct your own content analysis of large texts. (shrink)

A Hobbesian utopia might sound paradoxical. Hobbes never prescribed a utopia per se, and he is well-known for his practical and pragmatic approach to human nature and to politics. Yet, this article identifies several utopian elements in Hobbes, starting with the ways in which his contemporaries thought of his work as utopian. Following Galileo and others, Hobbes might have been part of a utopian moment, or at least believed that he was, especially due to his novel and historic philosophy. Behind (...) his dystopian description of the state of nature there is a utopian vision of a civilized, peaceful, and industrious society, the result of true moral philosophy. Finally, the differences between Hobbes and Plato notwithstanding, there might be one overlooked similarity: if Plato designed a republic where Socrates would not have been persecuted, Hobbes might have designed a commonwealth that would produce and allow future Galileos to work without hindrance. (shrink)

Robert Wallace (1697–1771) was a leading minister of the Church of Scotland, but he remains a largely overlooked figure in the literature. Nevertheless, his participation in philosophical and theological debates offers a glimpse of the complex positions of the Scottish clergy – and of Scottish moderation on its own terms. Wallace’s moderation was evident, for example, in his opposition both to radical deism and orthodox dogmatism. Yet what makes Wallace’s case particularly interesting is that he described himself as a ‘moderate (...) freethinker’ in a letter to David Hume, while distinguishing elsewhere the ‘moderate’ and ‘sober’ freethinkers from the dangerously sceptical ones. Exploring his consistent statements on this issue in various writings throughout his career, this article investigates the self-identified moderation of Wallace – in opposition, for example, to his rival freethinker William Dudgeon – and thus the clergy’s attempt to use this category in the shaping of their vision of the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

The problem of moral sunk costs pervades decision-making with respect to war. In the terms of just war theory, it may seem that incurring a large moral cost results in permissiveness: if a just goal may be reached at a small cost beyond that which was deemed proportionate at the outset of war, how can it be reasonable to require cessation? On this view, moral costs already expended could have major implications for the ethics of conflict termination. Discussion of sunk (...) costs in moral theorizing about war has settled into four camps: Quota, Prospect, Addition, and Discount. In this paper, I offer a mathematical model that articulates each of these views. The purpose of the mathematisation is threefold. First, to unify the sunk costs problem. Second, to show that these views differ in the nature of their justifications: some are justified qualitatively and others quantitatively. Third, to clarify the differential force of qualitative and quantitative critiques of these four views. (shrink)

In response to foreign interference in elections, warlike language is understandable. As a hostile violation of sovereignty, election meddling fits one technical description of an invasion. However, just war theory, the most influential source of objective guidance for the ethical prosecution of wars, and the philosophical heart of international law concerning war, offers a sobering rejoinder. The theory suggests that, while election meddling is in fact a belligerent act, no actual use of military force could ever be ethically justified as (...) a response. (shrink)

Hobbes left a complicated legacy for the English Whigs. They thought that his Leviathan was all too powerful, but they found other elements in his thought more appealing – mostly his anticlericalism. Still, the precise relationship between Hobbes and the Whigs has remained underexplored, while some still argue that Hobbes was simply too much of an absolutist for the Whigs to rely on his political ideas. This article attempts to show that Hobbes was, in fact, recruited by proto- and early (...) Whigs for their causes. It shows how Hobbesian ideas were used in the toleration debates of the 1660s and 1670s, and even in debates on human reason and liberty of conscience. Then it demonstrates how similar Hobbesian principles, and even phrases, were used subsequently in the formative years of Whiggism from the 1680s to the 1720s, by thinkers who were worried, as Hobbes was, about the political aspirations of the Church. By collecting a series of prominent thinkers who are associated with Whiggism and who engaged with Hobbes in various ways – including Buckingham, Marvell, Cavendish, Warren, Blount, Tindal, Trenchard and Gordon – this article shows that Hobbes was employed systematically in the service of Whig causes, such as limited toleration, civil religion and an opposition to religious persecution. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 166 - 187 The connection that Hobbes makes between reason, method, and science renders reason a faculty that is not only natural but also acquired and even somewhat exclusive. This idea might pose a serious problem to Hobbes’s political theory, as it relies heavily on the successful use of reason. This problem is demonstrated in Hobbes’s account of the laws of nature, for which some equality in human reason is clearly needed, but Hobbes (...) is not explicit about the relationship between that and the more advanced form of reason that eventually leads to science. This article suggests that Hobbes’s account of reason is developmental. The seed of natural reason is common to everyone, and is sufficient for the establishment of the commonwealth. Thereafter, peace and leisure provide the necessary conditions for developing the rational skill, that is, fulfilling the human potential for rationality. Consequently, under the right circumstances, knowledge and science are expected to progress dramatically for the benefit of society, an open-ended vision which Hobbes nevertheless leaves implicit. Following Hobbes’s account of reason and philosophy closely can therefore show that he might have had great hopes for humankind, and that in this sense he was a key member of an English Enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper examines Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical development from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being as a self-critique and revised understanding of Martin Heidegger. It focuses on later Levinas’s analysis of language in terms of the difference between Saying and Said. For Levinas, the Said represents the betrayal of ethical Saying into ontological essence. This echoes Heidegger’s notion of the forgetfulness of Being in beings. However, Levinas critiques Heidegger’s own philosophy as remaining within the Said. The paper explores three strategies (...) of “unsaying” that Levinas discerns in Western philosophy to disrupt ontological Said: ontology itself, skepticism, and philosophical conversation. It argues that Levinas ultimately seeks an alternative “prophetic” mode of language beyond philosophy that enacts difference, which the paper relates to Talmud. The paper claims that the later Levinas no longer simply opposes Greek to Jewish thought, but rather seeks to deploy a specifically Jewish form of language to interrupt Western metaphysics from within. (shrink)

The preparation of teachers in higher education is increasingly valued in institutions around the world. On the other hand, training models are not standardized and valorization varies. Considering that the initial or professional development of teachers passes, at least in part, by the development of a reflective practice supported on basis of scientific literature, we propose to the on think on one hand about a model of reflective practice, that of Kelchtermans, through four dimensions (instrumental, moral, political, and emotional), and (...) on the other hand about training of teachers in higher education from the perspective of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This article, which is meant to be an open discussion on the development of reflective practice in Higher education Training, is based on a review of the scientific literature on the topic, but also in large part on our teaching practice. (shrink)

This paper will revitalize the notion of force in Sartre’s phenomenology by reinterpreting thrown-projection as propulsion. From there, Sartre’s analysis of agency will be explored as regards the constitutive moments pertaining to the dynamics of striving. We will see that such striving relates to Deleuze’s ideas on how bodily forces take consciousness into possession. In the final steps of the analysis, it will turn out that freedom is dependent on a rupture that emerges from self-determination of consciousness, which is itself (...) not of the order of freedom. (shrink)

This book presents Jewish thought as a new perspective for perceiving and examining Heidegger's philosophy in relation to the Western intellectual tradition, offering new and constructive directions for the current Black Notebooks debate and featuring work by the leading authors of that debate.

The question as to what makes something “fake” is not an ordinary one. It bears traces of the very beginning of philosophy, where Plato faced the need to discern between the true and the false clai...

Different kinds of fakery and imposture can be differentiated by means of the imaginary regimes within which a performative simulation unfolds. Engaging with Sartre’s analysis of the imaginary, we will identify three such regimes, calling them the objective, the reflective, and the phantasmatic. Each of these regimes involves its own kind of image and accordingly a specific type of simulation. It is proper to the objective image to attain dissimulation of the self by replacing the real with fiction. In the (...) reflective regime, the real is not substituted by the imaginary, but rather contaminated by it. Finally, whereas the objective and the reflective regimes operate within the sphere of intentional simulation, the phantasmatic image carries us beyond Sartre’s findings, as it shapes the very structure of pre-reflective disclosedness which provides the background for our projects. (shrink)

Whenever we think of impostors, we tend to think of liars. Yet impostures cannot be phenomenologically reduced to lies. Every lie presupposes a distinction between true and false, and it operates through a negation of reality, presenting falsity as truth and vice versa. An imposture, on the other hand, seeks to erase the distinction between true and false altogether. An impostor constructs a fiction that aims at substituting reality. In this process, an entire network of lies is put to work (...) in order to attain the ontological status of the real. This results in a dynamic that deprives truths of their authority, while making untruths highly potent in terms of their capacity to produce effects. (shrink)

Figurative drawing is a skill that takes time to learn, and it evolves during different childhood phases that begin with scribbling and end with representational drawing. Between these phases, it is difficult to assess when and how children demonstrate intentions and representativeness in their drawings. The marks produced are increasingly goal-oriented and efficient as the child’s skills progress from scribbles to figurative drawings. Pre-figurative activities provide an opportunity to focus on drawing processes. We applied fourteen metrics to two different datasets (...) (_N_ = 65 and _N_ = 344) to better understand the intentional and representational processes behind drawing, and combined these metrics using principal component analysis (PCA) in different biologically significant dimensions. Three dimensions were identified: efficiency based on spatial metrics, diversity with color metrics, and temporal sequentiality. The metrics at play in each dimension are similar for both datasets, and PCA explains 77% of the variance in both datasets. Gender had no effect, but age influenced all three dimensions differently. These analyses for instance differentiate scribbles by children from those drawn by adults. The three dimensions highlighted by this study provide a better understanding of the emergence of intentions and representativeness in drawings. We discussed the perspectives of such findings in comparative psychology and evolutionary anthropology. (shrink)

There is great interest in understanding whether and how mood influences affective processing. Results in the literature have been mixed: some studies show mood-congruent processing but others do not. One limitation of previous work is that decision components for affective processing and responses biases are not dissociated. The present study explored the roles of affective processing and response biases using a drift-diffusion model of simple choice. In two experiments, participants decided if words were emotionally positive or negative while listening to (...) music that induced positive or negative mood. The behavioural results showed weak, inconsistent mood-congruency effects. In contrast, the DDM showed consistent effects that were selectively driven by an a-priori bias in response expectation, suggesting that music-induced mood influences expectations about the emotionality of upcoming stimuli, but not the emotionality of the stimuli themselves. Implications for future studies of emotional classification and mood are subsequently discussed. (shrink)

This essay concerns the idea of nature in Judaism. It is a part of my ongoing reflection on the relations between our ecological concerns and the various cosmological, anthropological, and ontological conceptions in our different intellectual traditions, such as Jewish traditions of text and thought. I examine how contemporary philosophy has interpreted the meaning of nature in Judaism, in contrast with Greek civilization, focusing on the works of Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. There are three different and competing (...) constellations of the Greco-Jewish contrast, as defined by what is criticized and what is affirmed: one is pro-Greek and anti-Jewish; another is pro-Jewish and anti-Greek; and another, the most complex, is anti-Greco-Jewish and pro- some other alternative. This essay does not simply attribute each of the three constellations to Heidegger, Jonas, or Levinas; rather, it shows how a careful hermeneutics can reveal more than one constellation in each thinker, depending on the text or reading. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is dedicated to Elliot Wolfson’s new book on Heidegger and Kabbalah. Wolfson’s project is read here as a philosophical reflection and scholarly intervention on the “and,” that is, on pluralism in thought. Wolfson juxtaposes Heideggerian and kabbalistic corpora as expressing the same conception of non-totalitarian, plural thought, and criticizes both Heidegger and Kabbalah for betraying this pluralism in their ethnocentric tendencies. As a scholarly “ethical corrective,” Wolfson indicates in both corpora a countermeasure: A Gnostic disengagement of thought (...) from politics, in favor of poetics. The essay critiques this corrective by pointing at the different constellations of Gnosis and politics in Heidegger and Kabbalah. (shrink)

This paper consists in a reflection on the conceptual nerve center of Franz Rosenzweig’s thought and heritage that is the category of redemption as an epistemological category. The reflection is articulated through a comparative study of the redemptive epistemologies of three modern Jewish thinkers: Franz Rosenzweig, Rabbi Yoseph Dov Soloveitchik and HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook. The comparison arises from a basic feature that this paper identifies as common to all three modern visions of epistemic Jewish redemption: they all feature (...) Hegelian interpretations of the traditional Jewish category of teshuva. (shrink)

Four experiments and 2 corpus-based studies demonstrate that negation is a determinant factor affecting novel nonliteral utterance-interpretation by default. For a nonliteral utterance-interpretation to be favored by default, utterances should be potentially ambiguous between literal and nonliteral interpretations. They should therefore be (a) unfamiliar, (b) free of semantic anomaly or any kind of internal incongruity, and (c) unbiased by contextual information. Experiments 1–3 demonstrate that negative utterances, meeting these 3 conditions, were interpreted metaphorically (This is not a safe) or sarcastically (...) (Ambitious she is not) when presented in isolation and were therefore processed faster in contexts strongly biasing them toward their nonliteral than toward their (equally biased) literal interpretation. Experiment 4 reduces the possibility that it is structural markedness on its own that induces nonliteralness. Two corpus-based studies provide corroborating evidence, supporting the view of negation as an operator generating nonliteral interpretations by default. (shrink)

The world famous Eltroxin saga of 2009–2011, which ignited heated public debates in Europe, Canada, and Australia, reveals the problematic nature of standalone autonomy protection cases. Eltroxin is a life-sustaining thyroid hormone replacement medicine used by millions worldwide; it was reformulated in 2008, and around 10% of patients were badly affected. Poor communication and lack of professional information triggered public hysteria as a global wave of complaints about harmful side effects, including hair loss, weight gain, extreme fatigue, headaches, diarrhoea, and (...) heightened heart rates, flooded the media. Israeli Eltroxin users (around 250 thousand people) were similarly unaware. Following many media reports and ministerial regulations, a high-profile consumer class action was launched against Perrigo, the distributor. Ten years of court proceedings culminated in a compensation settlement of approximately US$ 14 million. This relatively low sum covered the injuries of those patients who were physically affected; compensation for standalone autonomy injuries to all patients (who were denied information about changes to their life-sustaining medicine) was refused. The monetary settlement and court decision were hugely disappointing to the class plaintiffs, and a negative signal was sent to the proponents of consumers' and patients' personal autonomy. However, the class action still marked a positive change in pharmaceutical protocols for relations between health authorities, commercial pharmacy entities, and patients/consumers as seen by the proactive communication around a subsequent Eltroxin reformulation in 2020 in Israel, Europe, and South Africa (Aspen Pharmacare, 2020).1 This paper highlights the vast potential value of consumer class action proceedings, and pharmaceutical consumer (patient) class actions in particular, for public welfare and private autonomy. The paper will explain leading Israeli case law related to consumer autonomy protection in tort law and will argue that this law still holds the unique protection of autonomy as a basic human right and accordingly recognises harm to autonomy as a viable form of damage. Additionally, it illustrates why and how consumer protection class actions are an important tool for protection of human rights in general and of patients' rights in particular. (shrink)

Many researchers, including Clarke and Beck, describe the human numerical system as unitary. We offer an alternative view – the coexistence of several systems; namely, multiple systems existing in parallel, ready to be activated depending on the task/need. Based on this alternative view, we present an account for the representation of rational numbers.

The Rebellion of Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya in 145/762: Ṭālibīs and Early ʿAbbāsīs in Conflict. By Amikam Elad. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 118. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xi + 527. $245, €176.