1891. The recovered manuscript of Aristotle's Constitutional History of Athens, now for the first time given to the world from the unique text in the British...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Ethical questions have traditionally been approached through conceptual analysis. Inspired by the rapid advance of modern brain imaging techniques, however, some ethical questions appear in a new light. For example, hotly debated trolley dilemmas have recently been studied by psychologists and neuroscientists alike, arguing that their findings can support or debunk moral intuitions that underlie those dilemmas. Resulting from the wedding of philosophy and neuroscience, neuroethics has emerged as a novel interdisciplinary field that aims at drawing conclusive relationships between neuroscientific (...) observations and normative ethics. A major goal of neuroethics is to derive normative ethical conclusions from the investigation of neural and psychological mechanisms underlying ethical theories, as well as moral judgments and intuitions. The focus of this article is to shed light on the structure and functioning of neuroethical arguments of this sort, and to reveal particular methodological challenges that lie concealed therein. We discuss the methodological problem of how one can—or, as the case may be, cannot—validly infer normative conclusions from neuroscientific observations. Moreover, we raise the issue of how preexisting normative ethical convictions threaten to invalidate the interpretation of neuroscientific data, and thus arrive at question-begging conclusions. Nonetheless, this is not to deny that current neuroethics rightly presumes that moral considerations about actual human lives demand empirically substantiated answers. Therefore, in conclusion, we offer some preliminary reflections on how the discussed methodological challenges can be met. (shrink)

In philosophy, the criteria for personhood (PH) at a specific point in time (synchronic), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity (PI) over time (diachronic) are traditionally separated. Hence, the transition between both timescales of a person's life remains largely unclear. Personal habits reflect a decision-making (DM) process that binds together synchronic and diachronic timescales. Despite the fact that the actualization of habits takes place synchronically, they presuppose, for the possibility of their generation, time in a diachronic sense. (...) The acquisition of habits therefore rests upon PI over time; that is, the temporal extension of personal decisions is the necessary condition for the possible development of habits. Conceptually, habits can thus be seen as a bridge between synchronic and diachronic timescales of a person's life. In order to investigate the empirical mediation of this temporal linkage, we draw upon the neuronal mechanisms underlying DM; in particular on the distinction between internally and externally guided DM. Externally guided DM relies on external criteria at a specific point in time (synchronic); on a neural level, this has been associated with lateral frontal and parietal brain regions. In contrast, internally guided DM is based on the person's own preferences that involve a more longitudinal and thus diachronic timescale, which has been associated with the brain's intrinsic activity. Habits can be considered to reflect a balance between internally and externally guided DM, which implicates a particular temporal balance between diachronic and synchronic elements, thus linking two different timescales. Based on such evidence, we suggest a habit-based neurophilosophical approach of PH and PI by focusing on the empirically-based linkage between the synchronic and diachronic elements of habits. By doing so, we propose to link together what philosophically has been described and analyzed separately as PH and PI. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a disturbance of the self, of which the attribution of agency is a major component. In this article, we review current theories of the Sense of Agency, their relevance to schizophrenia, and propose a novel framework for future research. We explore some of the models of agency, in which both bottom-up and top-down processes are implicated in the genesis of agency. We further this line of inquiry by suggesting that ongoing neurological activity (the brain’s resting state) in self-referential (...) regions of the brain can provide a deeper level of influence beyond what the current models capture. Based on neuroimaging studies, we suggest that aberrant activity in regions such as the default mode network of individuals with schizophrenia can lead to a misattribution of internally/externally generated stimuli. This can result in symptoms such as thought insertion and delusions of control. Consequently, neuroimaging can contribute to a more comprehensive conceptualization and measurement of agency and potential treatment implications. (shrink)

A collection of essays in French or English on the reception of Cartesian philosphy.

The dominant position of science in our culture has ended. In our postmodern world, belief that science will provide the answer to our problems and that progress is inevitable has been shaken, if not toppled. Optimism has been replaced by realism, creating a milieu for the development of intelligent Christian belief. Participating in the Trinity Institute's conference on ÒThe Church in a Postmodern Age, these six prominent scholars explore the breakdown of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment, the sorry state (...) of biblical literacy in our culture, Christian faith in a pluralistic world, the relevance of the Bible today, and the role of the church in our age. Contributors include Robert N. Bellah, Diogenes Allen, George A. Lindbeck, James B. Miller, Sandra M. Schneiders, and Rowan D. Williams. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de montrer la proximité importante de deux auteurs, a priori très différents, au sujet de la question de la santé et de la maladie : Georges Canguilhem et Oliver Sacks. Ils se sont tous deux efforcés de critiquer une conception naturaliste et objectiviste de la santé et de la maladie, le premier en forgeant et en travaillant le concept de norme vitale, le deuxième en décrivant des patients atteints de troubles neurologiques. Ils se rejoignent pour (...) soutenir que la maladie n’est pas une réalité antinaturelle ou aberrante, mais une façon de vivre, une forme d’équilibre physiologique. Toutefois, leurs façons de concevoir la santé vont s’avérer très différentes, pour ne pas dire antinomiques. Canguilhem se reconnaît très influencé par Nieztsche : la santé, c’est la grande santé, la capacité à surmonter les maladies et les épreuves. Il s’ensuit un dualisme entre les héros de la grande santé et la vie plus faible et plus fragile de tous les autres, un dualisme que Sacks remet radicalement en cause lorsqu’il montre que la maladie est aussi une expérience qui nous ouvre à des possibilités nouvelles. Le dialogue qui peut s’ouvrir entre ces deux penseurs permet de problématiser des enjeux essentiels de la question de la santé et de la maladie. (shrink)

Résumé Le 3 octobre 2011, les zombies ont marché sur Wall Street. Cette parade carnavalesque, inspirée par les films de George A. Romero, agite les fantômes des laissés pour compte du capitalisme global. Mais le mythe du zombie est aussi le symbole d’une force politique informe, qui résiste à toute organisation, et sur laquelle se réfléchissent les désirs morts-vivants d’une société.

Max Weber and Georg Simmel are considered as ideal-typical founders of sociology. Whereas Simmel pleaded for a large conception of sociology, which would include the epistemological and metaphysical issues as well, Max Weber explicitly excluded philosophical questions from the domain of sociology. A philosophical reading of Max Weber's sociology, which uncovers his philosophy in the margins of his sociological texts, shows, however, that his sociology is predicated on a disenchanted Weltanschauung, a decisionistic ideology and a nominalist epistemology. Key Words: critical (...) theory • decisionism • disenchantment • epistemology • foundations • nominalism • philosophy • realism • Simmel • sociology • value-freedom • Weber. (shrink)

This is a review of Teresa Obolevitch's Faith and Science in Russian Religious Thought, which provides an intellectual history of the collaboration between fides and ratio in the course of the development of Russian thought, from its Byzantine origins to the twenty-first century. Obolevitch examines various approaches to combining faith and science in such eighteenth-century thinkers as Mikhail Lomonosov and Gregory Skovoroda, the nineteenth-century thinkers Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov, Dimitrii Golubinsky, Sergei Glagolev, the Schellingian Peter Chaadaev, the Slavophiles Alexei Khomyakov and Ivan (...) Kireevsky, the writers Fedor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev, the twentieth-century philosophers Nikolai Lossky, Pavel Florensky, Semen Frank, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Shestov, Sergius Bulgakov, Alexei Losev, the Russian Cosmists Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Vladimir Vernadsky, and the Orthodox priest Georges Florovsky. The book ends with considerations on the Neo-Patristic synthesis of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the present review, I situate the book in the context of the author's works, I summarize it, editorializing occasionally, and I discuss the thesis of the book in the wider context of world religions. (shrink)

A volume integrating various parts of Fred Sommer's theory on logic and the philosophy of language and also extending it in a variety of ways, such as semantics and modal logic.

Fredric Jameson is the most challenging American Marxist hermeneutical thinker on the present scene. His ingenious interpretations (prior to accessible translations) of major figures of the Frankfurt School, Russian formalism, French structuralism and poststructuralism as well as of Georg Lukàcs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Max Weber and Louis Marin are significant contributions to the intellectual history of twentieth century Marxist and European thought. Jameson's treatments of the development of the novel, the Surrealist movement, of Continental writers such as Honoré de (...) Balzac, Marcel Proust, Alessandro Manzoni, and Robbe Grillet, and of American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Kenneth Burke and Ursula LeGuin, constitute powerful political readings. Furthermore, his adamantly anti-philosophical form of Marxist hermeneutics puts forward an American Aufhebung of poststructuralism which merits close scrutiny. (shrink)

First published in 1903, this volume revolutionized philosophy and forever altered the direction of ethical studies. A philosopher’s philosopher, G. E. Moore was the idol of the Bloomsbury group, and Lytton Strachey declared that Principia Ethica marked the rebirth of the Age of Reason. This work clarifies some of moral philosophy’s most common confusions and redefines the science’s terminology. Six chapters explore: the subject matter of ethics, naturalistic ethics, hedonism, metaphysical ethics, ethics in relation to conduct, and the ideal. Moore's (...) simplicity of style and precise use of everyday language exercised an enormous influence on the development of analytic philosophy, and they contribute to the continuing resonance of his compelling arguments. (shrink)

Every soul has an unconscious knowledge of the ultimate truth of things, a premise long taught by all great spiritual teachers, East and West, regularly experienced by those who follow the spiritual path. In the quest to help reestablish that universal connection, editor J. Douglas Kenyon has culled from the pages of Atlantis rising magazine this compilation of concise and well-illustrated articles by world-class researchers and theoreticians."--Back cover.