In Christian Europe of the High Middle Ages, saints played a central role in the everyday life of the ailing. Alongside healing attempts which involved magic and/or scientifically-based medicine, the invocation of specific patron saints for protection against evils or for the curing of ailments was a widespread practise. A large choice of patron saints was "available" for a wide range of diseases, especially those nowadays classified as neurologic or psychiatric. For the falling sickness alone, e.g., there is evidence of (...) some twenty patron saints reputed to have a particular involvement. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a comparable devotion to patrons for apoplectics. This "negative result" is confirmed by a thorough examination of medieval sources. St. Wolfgang and St. Andreas Avellino are the only two proven stroke patrons. Both, however, were only known within their respective locations. The absence of a specific supportive Christian figure for stroke victims deserves particular analysis: The high fatality rate of apoplexy and the lack of commercial interest on the part of the Christian places of pilgrimage may serve as possible explanations. (shrink)

We obtain rich measures of the risk preferences of a sample of Vietnamese farmers, and revisit the link between risk preferences and economic well-being. Far from being particularly risk averse, our farmers are on average risk neutral and, thus, more risk tolerant than typical Western subject populations. This generalises recent findings indicating that students in poorer countries are more risk tolerant than students in richer countries to a general population sample. Risk aversion is, furthermore, negatively correlated with income within our (...) sample, but does not correlate with wealth. This also casts doubt on high levels of risk aversion causing failure to adopt new technologies, which we discuss. (shrink)

Cultural comparisons enjoy increasing popularity in economics. Since cultural comparison must abandon random allocation to treatments, it is unclear whether differences found between countries can be attributed to country characteristics or are merely driven by differences in subject pools. In experiments in two Chinese cities and at two campuses in Ethiopia, we show that within-country differences are negligible. Differences between the two countries, on the other hand, are large.

Die Kunstwissenschaft zeichnet sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten dadurch aus, dass sie analog zur Entwicklung in der Kunst keine übergreifende Stilbildung mehr betreibt. In der vorliegenden Publikation nähern sich nun international anerkannte Kunstwissenschaftler, Philosophen und Medienwissenschaftler dem Begriff »Bild« – sowohl durch klassische Bildanalysen und ästhetische Fragestellungen als auch durch Versuche, einen neuen wissenschaftlichen Begriff für Kunst zu finden. Die Autoren, darunter Felix Ensslin, Frieder Nake, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Ute Meta Bauer, Katharina Sykora und Beat Wyss, erörtern, wie wir Bilder lesen (...) und welchen Stellenwert diese in unserem Denken heute einnehmen. Beispielhaft zeigen 30 Kunstwerke, etwa von John Baldessari, Gianfranco Baruchello, Holger Friese, Matthias Hoch, Christian Jankowski, Stephan Jung, Markus Schinwald oder Peter Weibel, die ganze Vielfalt der heutigen Bildproduktion in der Kunst. (shrink)

RésuméFerdinand de Saussure postule une science générale des signes qu’il ap-pelle sémiologie. La langue n’en serait qu’un cas particulier caractériée par l’arbitrariété totale de ses unités. Cette caractéristique reviendrait aussi à l’écriture qui n’est cependant pas un systéme sémiologique primaire, mais un système secondaire dont la fonction est de représenter un système pri-maire. Il existe en outre des systèmes tertiaires comme, par example, l’alphabet Morse, l’écriture Braille, les systèmes de chiffrage, etc. Les modes de manifestation peuvent être soit acoustique soit (...) visuel. Tandis que la langue et l’écriture sont totalement arbitraires, les autres systèmes sémiologiques peuvent être motivés jusqu’à un certain de-gré. À côté des sémiologies utilitaires il existe aussi des sémiologies esthé-tiques comme, par example, les légendes. La sémiologie elle-même n’est qu’un cas particulier de la sémiotique qui tient aussi compte des signes naturels. Les frontières entre langue, sémiologie et et sémiotique sont souvent flottantes et imprécises. (shrink)

Ferdinand Christian Baur, one of the great innovators in the study of the New Testament, argued that each of its books reflects the interests and tendencies of its author in a particular religio-historical milieu. A critique of the writings must precede any judgments about the historical validity of individual stories about Jesus in the Gospels. Thus Baur could move beyond the impasse created by Strauss's Life of Jesus. Baur demonstrated that the Gospel of John is not a historical document (...) comparable to the Synoptic Gospels and cannot be used to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus, and that the Synoptic Gospels must be read critically and selectively. He applied the same principles to the Epistles, arguing that only four are genuinely Pauline.Baur's Lectures on New Testament Theology, delivered in Tübingen during the 1850s, summarize thirty years of his research. The lectures begin with an Introduction on the concept, history, and organization of New Testament theology. Part One is devoted to the teaching of Jesus, which Baur finds most reliably in Matthew. Part Two contains the teaching of the Apostles in three chronological periods. The first period presents the theological frameworks of the Apostle Paul and the Book of Revelation; the second period, the frameworks of Hebrews, the Deutero-Pauline Epistles, James and Peter, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts; and the third period, those of the Pastoral Epistles and the Gospel of John. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (2001) 593-610 [Access article in PDF] The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World Edward Peters I. The letter to Ferdinand and Isabella that Christopher Columbus intended to serve as the preface to the Libro de las profecías began with a remarkable observation about his own career and the particular temperament it had shaped in him: From a very young (...) age I began to navigate the seas, and I have continued to do so until today. This art inclines those who follow it to desire to know the secrets of this world. 1Although Columbus was certainly not unlearned, there is an artlessness and directness about his remark that suggest that whatever Columbus may have meant by "the secrets of the world" and the desire of navigators to know them, he was probably not speaking reconditely or mystically. 2 [End Page 593]Nor was Columbus the only early sixteenth-century practical man who spoke this way. The letters of Hernán Cortés, hardly a philosopher or a navigator, pointed out to correspondents that it was "a universal condition of man to want to know," and that he was first of all desirous of knowledge "of the secrets of these parts"; that "many new secrets" had been learned from the discoveries; of a volcano, "I wished to know the secret of this, which seemed something of a miracle." 3If practical folk could speak thus at the turn of the sixteenth century, it is not surprising that in the course of that century their rulers should appropriate the language of secrets, including the secrets of distant places, and the desire to know them and in doing so to transform their realms into information-gathering states, using detailed questionaires to assemble and organize new data just as they assembled cabinets of curiosities, libraries, zoos, observatories, and botanical gardens. As J. H. Elliott put it: But curiosity also had its due place within a wider Christian framework. At the end of the century, José de Acosta, in his great Natural and Moral History of the Indies, likened men to ants in their refusal to let themselves be deterred, once they had set out on their quest for facts. "And the high and eternal wisdom of the Creator uses this natural curiosity of men to communicate the light of His holy gospel to peoples who still live in the darkness of their errors." This assumption, that all knowledge was subordinated to a higher purpose and fitted into a providential design, was crucial for the assimilation of the New World of America by sixteenth-century Christendom. 4Elliott's characterization of an honorific Christian intellectual curiosity represented a very small part of a very complex semantic universe that centered on the Latin term curiositas and its vernacular cognates, not all of whose meanings were neutral or honorific. Just three years before Acosta wrote there had, after all, appeared the first printed history of Doctor Faustus, another sixteenth-century practical man who was also interested in the secrets of the world. 5 And not [End Page 594] too many years after Acosta wrote, another practical being, Milton's Lucifer, also went forth boldly to seek new worlds. 6 Only in a restricted sense could the desire to know the secrets of the world be understood in the way that Columbus, Cortés, Philip II, and Acosta celebrated it. In many cases it had to be extricated from a semantic universe in which it had long been identified with less honorable motives and more dangerous or ephemeral objects.The most influential exploration of part of that semantic universe appeared in Hans Blumenberg's long essay entitled, "The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity," first published as part of a larger work in 1966, later slightly revised and separately reprinted, and translated into English in 1983. 7 Blumenberg's particular understanding of the history of philosophy, however, and his narrow focus on the natural sciences as the arena of "theoretical" curiosity limited both his conceptualization and his argument. In... (shrink)

Poststructuralism--as a name for a mode of thinking, a style of philosophizing, a kind of writing--has exercised a profound influence upon contemporary Western thought and the institution of the university. As a French and predominantly Parisian affair, poststructuralism is inseparable from the intellectual milieu of postwar France, a world dominated by Alexandre Kojève's and Jean Hyppolite's interpretations of Hegel, Jacques Lacan's reading of Freud, Gaston Bachelard's epistemology, George Canguilhem's studies of science, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. It is also inseparable from (...) the structuralist tradition of linguistics based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson, and the structuralist interpretations of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, and the early Michel Foucault. Poststructuralism, considered in terms of contemporary cultural history, can be understood as belonging to the broad movement of European formalism, with explicit historical links to both Formalist and Futurist linguistics and poetics, and with aspects of the European avant-garde, especially André Breton's surrealism. Each essay in this unique collection by and for educators is devoted to the work and educational significance of one of ten major poststructuralist philosophers. (shrink)

This volume a translation of a mid-nineteenth century work on the history of Christian dogma by Ferdinand Christian Baur, who brilliantly applied Hegelian categories to his historical studies in New Testament, church history, and history of Christian dogma. "Dogma" for him is the rational articulation of the Christian "idea" or principle-the idea that God and humanity are united in Christ and reconciled through the faith of the spiritual community. Baur offers a unique perspective on the whole of Christian intellectual (...) history, and readers will find that his detailed analyses provide a wealth of information on individual thinkers and doctrines that is still relevant today. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have attempted to save the concept of ?hegemony? from its economistic and essentialist Marxist roots by incorporating the linguistic influences of post?structuralist theory. Their major Marxist detractors criticise their trajectory as a ?descent into discourse? ? a decay from well?grounded, material reality into the idealistic and problematic realm of language and discourse. Both sides of the debate seem to agree on one thing: the line from Marxism to post?Marxism is the line from the economy to (...) language, from ?reality? to discourse. This article focuses on Gramsci?s writings on language to argue against both sides of this debate. It illustrates how language is central to Gramsci?s historical materialism and that he does not oppose it to materiality. It argues that Gramsci adopted the very term hegemony substantially from his university studies in linguistics ? the debates from which Ferdinand de Saussure also developed structuralism. For Gramsci, such linguistic issues were directly related to the ?questione della lingua? and Italian unification. Moreover, language lies at the centre of Gramsci?s understanding of the relationship between coercion and consent. This not only troubles Laclau & Mouffe?s reading of Gramsci, but it illuminates a more productive conception of hegemony that can address recent debates around post?structuralism and the use of ?hegemony? to analyse globalisation and an increasingly technological and electronic world. (shrink)

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

This volume of original essays addresses a range of issues concerning the responsibility individuals have for their actions and for their characters. Among the central questions considered are the following: What scope is there for regarding a person as responsible for his or her character given genetic and environmental factors? Does an account of responsibility provide a legitimate basis for the retributive emotions? Are we ever justified in feeling guilty for occurences over which we have no control? Does responsibility for (...) the consequences of our acts require that they were intended or simply expected? How have a number of influential previous philosophers, including Aristotle, Maimonides, and Spinoza, approached these questions? (shrink)

A number of paradigms have been proposed to understand the sources of meaningful work, but a non-Western approach has attracted little attention. Because some authors have argued that meaningful work has positive valence that has eudaimonic rather than hedonic content, a virtue-ethics approach to meaningful work has been used. Virtue ethicists acknowledge that our work and places of employment have a profound influence in shaping our character and living a fulfilled life. This study aims to make a theoretical contribution toward (...) an understanding of meaningful work from a virtue-ethics framework that is culturally meaningful and ethically relevant to Filipino realities and their distinct national heritage. It develops a conceptual model for a Filipino view of meaningful work that could guide both researchers and practitioners in business ethics by explaining what makes work meaningful, justifying why this is important, and presenting some examples of concrete measures that management can utilize to promote meaningful work in the Philippine workplace. By integrating Filipino virtues in conceptualizing meaningful work, I believe that a theoretical advancement is made toward a pluralistic and multicultural understanding of the concept, especially through the lens of virtue-ethics. (shrink)

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

Realist evaluation has gained prominence in the field of evaluation in recent years. Its theory-driven approach to explaining how and why programmes work or not makes it attractive to many novices, early career researchers, and organizations implementing various programmes globally and relevant to policymakers and programme implementers. While realist evaluation seeks to be pragmatic, adopting principles and methods that can be used to help focus an evaluation, its deep ontological and epistemological foundations make its application in real-life situations challenging. In (...) this paper, we seek to unpack the key tenets scaffolding the practical application of realist evaluation. Although Pawson and Tilley foreground realist evaluation in applied scientific realism, we argue that an amalgam of scientific and critical realist principles underpins realist evaluation. We unpack these principles and illustrate how they fit into each other to provide a cogent theoretical foundation for realist evaluation. (shrink)

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? (...) Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

1. La doctrine préalable.--2. Les trois aspects de la géométrie.--3. L'édification axiomatique.--4. La synthèse dialectique.--5. Les géométries noneuclidiennes.--6. Le problème de l'espace.

Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

Systematische Annäherung an das Problem einer philosophischen Letztbegründung ethischer Normen -- Konzeption und Funktion der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft in der Normbegründungsstrategie Karl-Otto Apels.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity by Simon FerdinandDavid TooheyMapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity BY SIMON FERDINAND Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019Mapping Beyond Measure is a geographical and theoretical critique of map art and the tradition of modern mapmaking. The book focuses in depth on a few related examples of map art and departs from (...) critical theory and post-Marxist readings of space. Simon Ferdinand emphasizes fine art and art-film as appropriate counterweights to the authoritarian calculation in modern cartography and, unexpectedly, map art’s critique of mapmaking.Mapping Beyond Measure follows the well-trodden path of critiquing a medium, mapping, and map art as irredeemably authoritarian.1 Situated in this approach, Ferdinand argues that map art reproduces modernist cartography’s assumptions even while critiquing mapping. Aiming to subvert this shortcoming, Ferdinand explores Peter Greenway’s semi-abstract map art films that do not prioritize science over artists. Greenway’s films, especially A Walk Through H, are shown as being as close to an idea of mapping beyond calculation as possible. Indeed, for Ferdinand, Greenway’s map art films are an improvement on “postmodern” theorists.Mapping Beyond Measure explores a small, though logically (and practically) related group of map artists. The first three chapters explore differing approaches to map art, from Soviet painting that unintentionally [End Page 126] heralds globalization and map art’s latent desires to dominate the world, to more contemporary map art about looming societal collapse through the death of nature and mass casualties from aerial bombardment of cities. The following two chapters focus on how mapping creates nation-states. These chapters elucidate the tragic inability of map artists to escape globalization and calculation, the latter exasperated by G.I.S. techniques. These map artists serve as an ensemble that spotlights what, to Ferdinand, are inevitable difficulties that ethical practitioners of map art face in escaping the pitfalls of calculation in mainstream mapping.In chapter 6 Ferdinand explains how Greenway’s film A Walk Through H gets as close as possible to challenging map art through semi-abstract, two-dimensional additions to maps and using movie cameras to create an illusion of movement. Thus, the hierarchy of scientists over artists is partially dismantled. Indeed, Ferdinand lauds Greenway for creating alternatives to established political theorists. Interestingly, Ferdinand replaces ontology with the concept of “chorein” suggesting a more fluid conception of mapping that is not available in theories of space or cartographic practices of calculation. Nonetheless, compared to one of the articles referenced, Ferdinand downplays the destructive nature of chorein as a militaristic, colonial use of maritime space to emphasize its creative potential.2Ferdinand’s examples are primarily Eurocentric, even, surprisingly, in the exception: his focus on Japanese map artist Satomi Matoba. Here Ferdinand departs from Eurocentric examples only to focus on Japan—the most privileged nation-state in Asia. Even in this focus on Japan, which also includes Hawai‘i, Ferdinand does not depart from a frame familiar to Europe: World War II. Indeed, the discussion of Pearl Harbor (a U.S. military base) focuses on U.S. foreign policy, not on Hawai‘i. This thematic choice is relevant to other map artists in Ferdinand’s book. Ferdinand’s critique of calculability is based mainly on the consequences of Nazism, as theorized by Stuart Elden. However, Ferdinand’s theoretical interventions on uneven development in maps and map art would have been more substantial with the addition of detailed, localized, narrative accounts of violence suffered by non-white populations in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and various European cities. Instead, we get an anonymous logic of maps that uses the idea of the past and potential [End Page 127] future destruction of cities to assume that everyone suffered to the same extent in World War II.While I am reluctant to criticize a book for not offering a solution to what it critiques, to a certain extent, the solution offered by Ferdinand contradicts his normative critique of calculability. In exploring Alison Hildreth’s map art, Ferdinand praises nuanced, temporally layered artistic explorations of ecological destruction and extinction. Likewise, A Walk Through H, is... (shrink)

1 contient:Les préambules ; Les observations ; Les olympiques ; Les règles pour la direction de l'esprit ; Le traité de l'homme ; Le discours de la méthode ; Le traité de la mécanique... 2 contient: Les méditations ; Les objections et les réponses ; Réponse aux instances de Gassendi ; Lettre au P. Dinet ; La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle ; Des extraits de la correspondance.3 contient:Les principes de la philosophie ; Les notae in programma (...) ; Les passions de l'âme... (shrink)

This article retraces the main instances at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s project of a « transcendental geology », a project announced in a working note of 1960. This project is linked to the complex intertwining of history and nature, which Merleau-Ponty thematizes as the two non-objectifiable dimensions that pose a challenge to reflexive thought. History and nature, both in their particular subjective manifestations as personal life or one’s own body, as well as in their broader sense as the history of (...) peoples or nature as a domain of the unbuilt, are characterized as unavoidable, as quasi-objects that are the soil of existence. It is in this direction that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the “ultra-things” of Henri Wallon, those entities that the child can neither conceive nor imagine, seems to be heading. I propose that ultra-things are linked to inhabiting: they are the uninhabitable and the dimensions that cannot be renounced. This relationship with inhabiting restores the relational aspect of the problem of the unreflective in Merleau-Ponty and highlights the timeliness and urgency of the program of a transcendental geology as an ecology of thought and as an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

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The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, _Course in General Linguistics_ (1916) traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic (...) linguistics that followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of _Course in General Linguistics_ to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made _Course in General Linguistics_ legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

In this short but meaty book, Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have been given to central problems in philosophy. As Unger hypothesizes, many of these problems are unanswerable, including the problems of knowledge and scepticism, the problems of free will, and problems of causation and explanation. In each case, he argues, we arrive at one answer only relative to an assumption about the meaning of key terms, terms like "know" and like "cause," even while we arrive at (...) an opposite answer relative to quite different assumptions, but equally arbitrary assumptions, about what the key terms mean. (shrink)

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)