Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

This article argues that, under likely empirical conditions, sufficientarianism leads not to an easily achievable duty to maintain a social minimum but to the onerous duty of maintaining a social maximum at the sufficiency level. This happens because sufficientarians ask us to give no weight at all to small benefits for people above the sufficiency level if the alternative is to relieve the suffering of people below it. If we apply this judgment in a world where there are rare diseases (...) and hard-to-prevent accidents that cause people to fall below the sufficiency threshold, all of our discretionary spending will have to be devoted to bringing harder and harder cases up to sufficiency. Nothing will be left for anyone to consume above the sufficiency level. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. The Hobbesian hypothesis, which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it, is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. It is an essential premise in most contractarian justifications of government sovereignty. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from them provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject it entirely. Therefore, contractarian theory has not (...) done what it claims to do: it has not justified state sovereignty to each person subject to it by demonstrating that they benefit from that authority. To be justified in contractarian terms, states have to do something to improve the living standards of disadvantaged people under their rule. (shrink)

This book is an anthology of some of the most influential research on basic income in the period of roughly 1960-2010.

Although John Locke’s theory of appropriation is undoubtedly influential, no one seems to agree about exactly what he was trying to say. It is unlikely that someone will write the interpretation that effectively ends the controversy. Instead of trying to find the one definitive interpretation of Locke’s property theory, this article attempts to identify the range of reasonable interpretations and extensions of Lockean property theory that exist in the contemporary literature with an emphasis on his argument for unilateral appropriation. It (...) goes through Locke’s argument point-by-point discussing the controversy over what he said and over what he perhaps should have said to make the most valuable and coherent argument. The result is an outline of Lockean theories of property: a menu of options by which one might use appropriation to justify property rights. Supporters only need to pick the version they find most plausible, but opponents should be aware of the entire menu. Anyone claiming to refute appropriation-based property rights must address not only one but all potentially valid versions of it. (shrink)

Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal. -/- Includes six decades of the most influential literature on Basic Income Includes unpublished and hard-to-find articles The first major compendium on one of the most innovative political reform proposals of our age Explores multidisciplinary views of Basic Income, with philosophical, economic, political, and sociological views (...) Features contributions from key and well-known philosophers and economists, including Atkinson, Simon, Friedman, Fromm, Gorz, Offe, Rawls, Pettit, Van Parijs, and more Presents the best theoretical and empirical arguments for and against Basic Income -/- . (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer revisits Wittgenstein’s parenthetical allusion in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ to the Grimms’ fairytale “The Golden Lads”, confirming that it does not work well as an illustration of the notion of “internal identity” that figures in Wittgenstein’s picture theory. He then proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship of identity apparent in “The Golden Lads”.

This paper argues that a guaranteed income is not only consistent with the principle of reciprocity but is required for reciprocity. This conclusion follows from a three-part argument. First, if a guaranteed income is in place, all individuals have the same opportunity to live without working. Therefore, those who choose not to work do not take advantage of a privilege that is unavailable to everyone else. Second, in the absence of an unconditional income, society is, in effect, applying the principle, (...) “(S)he who does not work, will not eat.” If the application of this principle is to be consistent with reciprocity, it must be applied to everyone. Most modern industrial societies exempt many citizens from that choice. For example, the owners of external assets do not face the work-or-starve choice and do take advantage of a privilege that is not available to others. An unconditional guaranteed income is one way to eliminate that violation of reciprocity. Third, this paper addresses the criticism that the guaranteed income exploits middle-class workers by demonstrating that a basic income will have a positive effect on wages, which will at least partially counteract the effect of the taxes needed to pay for it. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds (...) to these essays. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 493 an improvement over what is available. In this way the English reader unable to go to the Spanish originals could benefit greatly. ANTON DONOSO University of Detroit Das Verhdltnis von Philosophie und Theologie im Denken Martin Heideggers. By Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. Symposium, no. 47. (Freiburg/Miinchen: Karl Alber, 1974. Pp. 340) Sie'fert deals competently not only with Heidegger's own views on the relation between philosophy and theology (...) but with the response they found among philosophers and theologians. From the beginning Heidegger has insisted on the difference in experience at the root of philosophy and theology. This remains true even after the "turn" when Heidegger has much to say about God or gods. At the time when Sein und Zeit appeared Heidegger gave a lecture entitled Phenomenology and Theology, which was published only in 1970.1 He claimed that theology as positive science is not independent from philosophy. What does this mean? A few quotations from the lecture may clarify his viewpoint and show how theological concepts are related to the ontological understanding of secular human existence. "The factual matter [das Vorliegende] (Positum) for theology is its being Christian.... Christian we call faith.... Christ, the crucified God, is for the 'Christian' faith the being that is manifest primarily in faith.... -2 Thus Heidegger holds that "theology itself is primarily founded on faith. ''3 Furthermore, faith as regeneration of the soul transcends the non-Christian existence.4 This means that the believer finds himself in an existential situation in which he cannot avoid taking into consideration the pretheological existence. Therefore, Heidegger says that "in the Christian event as regeneration.., the prebelieving that is disbelieving of Dasein is surpassed. Surpassed does not mean disposed of but lifted on to the new creation and kept and preserved by it. ''~ Thus Heidegger maintains that the concept of "sin as the counterphenomenon to faith as regeneration.., can only be made clear in its meaning by the concept of guilt as an existential of Dasein. ''6 Both the publication of Sein und Zeit and the lecture Phenomenology and Theology belong to the period when Heidegger was a professor at Marburg University and in close contact with R. Bultmann. The historical-temporal structure of Dasein together with the hermeneutic circle, as these terms were developed in Sein und Zeit, became the pivotal issues of Bultmann's theology. Bultmann justifies his reliance on Heidegger (according to a quotation by Siefert, p. 146), claiming that theology as a positive science deals with a specific being (Seiendes) and presupposes a sense of Being that it takes from philosophy. The much-discussed result of Heidegger's influence on Bultmann is his demythologizing of Scripture. Biblical myths, Bultmann argues, are based on a cosmology that, because it belongs to a prescientific age, can no longer be taken for granted by modern man. 7He further agrees with Heidegger that faith is the quality that identifies a Christian. Only "the man of faith" will "hear" the message contained in the Bible. Moreover, faith as regeneration has a temporal character insofar as it liberates the person from his sinful past and directs him to the "new" man in the future. Because of Bultmann's emphasis on faith some critics have reproached him for neglecting Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann. 2Ibid., p. 18. Translations in this review are my own. Ibid., p. 27. 4Ibid., p. 29. Ibid. 6Ibid., p. 30. 7See Kerygma and Myth, ed. H. W. Bartsch (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 3. 494 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY divine grace. In her critique Siefert joins these critics in arguing that Bultmann gains his theological concepts not through being open to the substance of existential structures of Dasein as a matter of principle but on the ground of faith (p. 153). G. Noller, a theologian educated at Tiabingen University, rejects Bultmann's theology and starts with Heidegger's concept of Being. Siefert argues that Noller "misinterprets Heidegger in that he defines God as a being (Seiendes) and falls back into a metaphysical position (p. 157). In Sein und Existenz, says Siefert, Noller states that "God is the destiny (Schickung) of Being, but Being qua nothing may negate God and usher in... (shrink)

The introduction (pp. 7-29) discusses Nazi denigration of "Jewish philosophy, " from Spinoza to Bergson and Husserl, and the elevation of "German" philosophers, particularly Eckhart and Nietzsche, to the role of forerunners of Nazism. The chapters on the work of the four Jewish philosophers mention briefly their murder by the Nazis (in the case of Benjamin, his death while fleeing the Nazis).

A new 2023 translation into American English of Marx's influential 1845 "Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume IV in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. The Holy Family is Marx's first foray (...) into building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844. Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress. (shrink)

We explore the nature of forgetting in a corpus of 125,000 students learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone® foreign-language instruction software across 48 lessons. Students are tested on a lesson after its initial study and are then retested after a variable time lag. We observe forgetting consistent with power function decay at a rate that varies across lessons but not across students. We find that lessons which are better learned initially are forgotten more slowly, a correlation which likely reflects a (...) latent cause such as the quality or difficulty of the lesson. We obtain improved predictive accuracy of the forgetting model by augmenting it with features that encode characteristics of a student's initial study of the lesson and the activities the student engaged in between the initial and delayed tests. The augmented model can predict 23.9% of the variance in an individual's score on the delayed test. We analyze which features best explain individual performance. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer argues against the view that an aesthetic experience must be a uniquely special kind of experience by means of an analogy with sexual experiences. Nonetheless, he leaves open the possibility that some aesthetic experiences might still be of a special kind.

Karl Pfeifer distinguishes between humor used extraneously in the delivery of philosophical content and humor intrinsic to the content itself: “Enlivening the delivery isn’t the same as enlivening the content of the delivery.” Using examples from topics in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy he illustrates how humor can be used to make certain ideas more engaging and memorable for students. He also gives an example of what to avoid.

Durante los años 1853 y 1854 surgió una ola de huelgas en varios distritos industriales de Inglaterra, especialmente en los sectores textiles de Lancashire y Manchester. Este ciclo de luchas, que pugnaba principalmente por un aumento de los salarios, fue visto por Ernest Jones y el movimiento Cartista como una oportunidad para organizar una asociación obrera a escala nacional. Karl Marx, que compartía la visión de los cartistas, analizó el movimiento desde el New York Tribune, brindando apoyo a la (...) iniciativa a la que dio lugar: el Parlamento Obrero. A continuación, se ofrece la traducción de cuatro textos periodísticos que Marx publicó en apoyo a la institución obrera –la mayoría inéditos en español–, seguidos de «Las luchas por la organización obrera en la época victoriana (1853-1854)», un estudio crítico sobre el ciclo de huelgas y las expectativas de organización obrera durante aquellos años, donde se defiende que este fallido intento de organización constituye un precedente de la sección británica de la Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores. La traducción y edición de los textos de Marx, y el estudio crítico que los acompaña, han sido realizados por Mario Espinoza Pino (Universidad de Granada). (shrink)

Senza una filosofia della storia, la storia non è altro che un incomprensibile susseguirsi di eventi che non trasmette le autentiche motivazioni umane ad agire. Capire il fine ultimo della storia significa porsi in un'ottica assoluta, metafisica, abbandonando la concezione del corpo sociale come semplice lotta per la sopravvivenza. In questo senso la filosofia è sorella della teologia come dimostrano, secondo Karl Lowith, le tappe fondamentali del pensiero europeo. Dalla Bibbia a sant'Agostino, da Voltaire a Marx, da Vico a (...) Hegel, l'interpretazione filosofica della storia rimane ancorata a un'originaria matrice religiosa. Anche quando alla fede e all'idea di provvidenza sostituisce quella di progresso. (shrink)

The article discusses the conditions under which can we say that people enter the economic system voluntarily. “The Need for an Exit Option” briefly explains the philosophical argument that voluntary interaction requires an exit option—a reasonable alternative to participation in the projects of others. “The Treatment of Effective Forced Labor in Economic and Political Theory” considers the treatment of effectively forced interaction in economic and political theory. “Human Need” discusses theories of human need to determine the capabilities a person requires (...) to have an acceptable exit option. “Capability in Cash, Kind, or Raw Resources” considers what form access to that level of capability should take—in cash, kind, or raw resources, concluding that a basic income guarantee is the most effective method to ensure an exit option in a modern, industrial economy. (shrink)

In einer qualitativen Interviewstudie zur Situation und zu Veränderungen in deutschen Krankenhäusern berichteten GeschäftsführerInnen und ÄrztInnen übereinstimmend von hohem und zunehmendem Druck, mittels der medizinisch-pflegerischen Leistungen Gewinne machen zu müssen. Während die GeschäftsführerInnen dabei jedoch bei patientenbezogenen ärztlichen Entscheidungen keine ethischen Konflikte sahen, berichteten ÄrztInnen von erheblichen Verletzungen des ärztlichen Ethos. Während die GeschäftsführerInnen erklärten, sie würden von den ÄrztInnen „ethisch korrektes Entscheiden“ erwarten, berichteten ÄrztInnen, dass die Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Arbeit die Unabhängigkeit ärztlicher Entscheidungen untergrüben, indem betriebswirtschaftliche Interessen die Medizin (...) korrumpierten. Entscheidungen zur stationären Aufnahme, zur Wahl der Behandlungsprozesse und zur Entlassung der PatientInnen seien in zunehmendem Maße an wirtschaftlichen Interessen des Hauses und damit nicht allein an den medizinischen Bedarfen der PatientInnen orientiert. GeschäftsführerInnen bewerteten die Unabhängigkeit ärztlicher Entscheidungen hoch, während ÄrztInnen diese als deutlich eingeschränkt bezeichneten. Die Ergebnisse verweisen auf ungelöste Konflikte zwischen Medizinethik und „Ökonomie“. Organisationsethik ist zur Vermittlung auf der Ebene der Krankenhäuser und des Gesundheitswesens insgesamt gefordert. Sie muss sich darüber hinaus mit der Wissensproduktion im Feld der Versorgungs- und Qualitätsforschung kritisch auseinandersetzen. (shrink)