Preface Introduction Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith: Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy Part One: Adam Smith: Heritage and Contemporaries 1: Nicholas Phillipson: Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections 2: Leonidas Montes: Newtonianism and Adam Smith 3: Dennis C. Rasmussen: Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment 4: Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith and Early Modern Thought Part Two: Adam Smith on Language, Art and Culture 5: Catherine Labio: Adam Smith's Aesthetics 6: James Chandler: Adam Smith as Critic 7: (...) Michael C. Amrozowicz: Adam Smith: History and Poetics 8: C. Jan Swearingen: Adam Smith on Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety Part Three: Adam Smith and Moral Philosophy 9: Christel Fricke: Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience 10: Duncan Kelly: Adam Smith and the Limits of Sympathy 11: Ryan Patrick Hanley: Adam Smith and Virtue 12: Eugene Heath: Adam Smith and Self-Interest Part Four: Adam Smith and Economics 13: Tony Aspromourgos: Adam Smith on Labour and Capital 14: Nerio Naldi: Adam Smith on Value and Prices 15: Hugh Rockoff: Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level 16: Maria Pia Paganelli: Commercial Relations: from Adam Smith to Field Experiments Part Five: Adam Smith on History and Politics 17: Spiros Tegos: Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption 18: David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart: Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform 19: Fabrizio Simon: Adam Smith and the Law 20: Edwin van de Haar: Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations Part Six: Adam Smith on Social Relations 21: Richard Boyd: Adam Smith, Civility, and Civil Society 22: Gavin Kennedy: Adam Smith on Religion 23: Samuel Fleischacker: Adam Smith and Equality 24: Maureen Harkin: Adam Smith and Women Part Seven; Adam Smith: Legacy and Influence 25: Spencer J. Pack: Adam Smith and Marx 26: Craig Smith: Adam Smith and the New Right 27: Tom Campbell: Adam Smith: Methods, Morals and Markets 28: Amartya Sen: The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith. (shrink)

The most arresting aspect of the Scottish Enlightenment is its conception of commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation. Christopher Berry explains why Enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the contemporary debates and tensions between Enlightenment thinkers that this idea raised. The book analyses the full range of literature on the subject, from key works like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', David Hume's 'Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects' (...) and Adam Ferguson's 'Essay on the History of Civil Society' to lesser-known works such as Robert Wallace's 'Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind'. (shrink)

In management research, theory testing confronts a paradox described by Meehl in which designing studies with greater methodological rigor puts theories at less risk of falsification. This paradox exists because most management theories make predictions that are merely directional, such as stating that two variables will be positively or negatively related. As methodological rigor increases, the probability that an estimated effect will differ from zero likewise increases, and the likelihood of finding support for a directional prediction boils down to a (...) coin toss. This paradox can be resolved by developing theories with greater precision, such that their propositions predict something more meaningful than deviations from zero. This article evaluates the precision of theories in management research, offers guidelines for making theories more precise, and discusses ways to overcome barriers to the pursuit of theoretical precision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and NietzscheJessica N. BerryMichel de Montaigne occupies a unique place in Nietzsche's history of ideas. He is one of a very few figures for whom Nietzsche expresses deep admiration and about whom he has virtually nothing critical to say. This is a rare enough mark of distinction; but contrary to what it might lead us to expect, the relationship between Montaigne and Nietzsche has (...) seldom been carefully examined. There has yet to be a book-length study devoted solely to Montaigne and Nietzsche,1 and article-length treatments of the relationship between their works and thought have been surprisingly scarce. What discussions there have been tend to locate the connections between Nietzsche and Montaigne mainly in matters of either literary or personal style,2 but studies that examine Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche with an eye toward philosophical rather than literary or stylistic issues have been almost non-existent.3 This dearth of treatments can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that, while Montaigne is rightly recognized for the literary merits of his work and for its subsequent influence on later prose stylists (and not only in French), his work on the whole has seldom been appreciated as having any philosophical value in its own right. Small wonder, then, that the connection between Montaigne and Nietzsche has [End Page 497] appeared more significant to commentators on Montaigne who are interested in tracing his influence on later thinkers than to scholars of Nietzsche—even those Nietzsche scholars who take an acute interest in his intellectual heritage. What I will argue here is that Montaigne makes a more concrete and philosophically more substantive contribution to Nietzsche's thought than has generally been appreciated; specifically, by giving impetus to the naturalism that develops in Human, All Too Human as an antidote to Schopenhauer's pessimistic metaphysics of will.In this essay, I present a two-fold thesis about Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche's early work. First, I will argue that the "naturalistic turn" in Human, All Too Human reflects Nietzsche's engagement with Montaigne during a crucial moment in the development of his thought. Second, I will demonstrate that the naturalism Nietzsche adopts from Montaigne has roots in the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism that Montaigne carries forward into the Renaissance. In the end, a better understanding of the skeptical ancestry of Nietzsche's naturalism should help us make better sense of Human, All Too Human and its immediate successors in Nietzsche's oeuvre, which cultivate what otherwise seems to be an uneasy partnership between naturalism and skepticism.I. It is by now widely accepted that Nietzsche's estimation of the value of the techniques and methods of the natural sciences undergoes radical revision in the period culminating in the first volume of Human, All Too Human (HAH),4 a book sometimes described as inaugurating a "positivist" phase in Nietzsche's work. From the first of its nine major sections, "Of First and Last Things," HAH narrates a struggle between science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. It is important to note the breadth of the extension of the term "science" (Wissenschaft), which includes not only what we think of as the "hard" or physical sciences (physics, chemistry, and the like) but also areas of inquiry we now consider "behavioral sciences" such as psychology and sociology—and, Nietzsche would say, philology as well. "Philosophy," by contrast is specified more narrowly. As Nietzsche uses the term throughout HAH, "philosophy" is usually shorthand for "metaphysical philosophy" and singles out for criticism the discourse of metaphysics that has dominated the philosophical landscape at least since Plato.In the sense in which Nietzsche worries about it "metaphysical philosophy" promotes speculation about such supra-sensible entities as Platonic forms, Descartes's "immaterial substances," and Kantian things-in-themselves. That its contributions include, for instance, theories about the existence and immortality of the soul accounts for Nietzsche's grouping "metaphysical philosophy" [End Page 498] together with religion and art as "arts of narcosis."5 Consciously or not they endeavor to comfort us by assuaging our fear of death, our existential anxieties about the purposelessness of... (shrink)

Advocates of “Mendelism” early on stressed the usefulness of Mendelian principles for breeders. Ever since, that usefulness—and the favourable opinion of Mendelism it supposedly engendered among breeders—has featured in explanations of the rapid rise of Mendelian genetics. An important counter-tradition of commentary, however, has emphasized the ways in which early Mendelian theory in fact fell short of breeders’ needs. Attention to intellectual property, narrowly and broadly construed, makes possible an approach that takes both the tradition and the counter-tradition seriously, by (...) enabling a more complete description of the theory-reality shortfall and a better understanding of how changing practices, on and off the Mendelians’ experimental farms, functioned to render that shortfall unproblematic. In the case of plant breeding in Britain, a perennial source of lost profits and disputes over ownership was the appearance of individual plants departing from their varietal types—so-called “rogues.” Mendelian plant varieties acquired a reputation for being rogue-free, and so for demonstrating the correctness of Mendelian principles , at a time when Mendelians were gradually taking control of the means for distributing their varieties. Mendelian breeders protected their products physically from rogue-inducing contamination in such a way that when rogues did appear, the default explanation—that contamination had somehow occurred—ensured that there was no threat to Mendelian principles. (shrink)

Next SectionAn attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the solution of the Sleeping Beauty Problem in the framework of the Many-Worlds Interpretation led to a new controversy regarding the Quantum Sleeping Beauty Problem. We apply the concept of a measure of existence of a world and reach the solution known as ‘thirder’ solution which differs from Peter Lewis’s ‘halfer’ assertion. We argue that this method provides a simple and powerful tool for analysing rational decision theory problems.

The way a rational agent changes her belief in certain propositions/hypotheses in the light of new evidence lies at the heart of Bayesian inference. The basic natural assumption, as summarized in van Fraassen's Reflection Principle, would be that in the absence of new evidence the belief should not change. Yet, there are examples that are claimed to violate this assumption. The apparent paradox presented by such examples, if not settled, would demonstrate the inconsistency and/or incompleteness of the Bayesian approach, and (...) without eliminating this inconsistency, the approach cannot be regarded as scientific. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is just such an example. The existing attempts to solve the problem fall into three categories. The first two share the view that new evidence is absent, but differ about the conclusion of whether Sleeping Beauty should change her belief or not, and why. The third category is characterized by the view that, after all, new evidence is involved. My solution is radically different and does not fall into either of these categories. I deflate the paradox by arguing that the two different degrees of belief presented in the Sleeping Beauty Problem are in fact beliefs in two different propositions, i.e., there is no need to explain the change of belief. The Sleeping Beauty Problem The Problem Deflated 2.1 From contradiction to consistency 2.2 The inanimate version 2.3 Back to SB Summary CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Various philosophers have wanted to move from a (P.F.) “Strawsonian” understanding of the “practices of moral responsibility” to a non-skeptical result. I focus on a strategy moving from a “response-dependent” theory of responsibility. I aim to show that a key analogy associated with this strategy fails to support a compatibilist result. It seems clear that nothing could show that nothing we have been laughing at has really been funny. If “the funny” is similar to “the blameworthy”, then perhaps it would (...) follow that nothing could show that no one we have ever blamed has really been blameworthy. The comparison is interesting, but inconclusive: even if we grant that these properties are normatively similar, the latter has substantive empirical presuppositions, whereas the former does not. One important upshot: even if the standards operative in our practices cannot be mistaken, it could nevertheless be that no one has ever met these standards Ruling out this possibility seemingly requires re-engaging in all of the so-called "metaphysical" debates Strawsonians are keen to avoid. (shrink)

The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never before been systematically explored in a book-length work - an inattention that belies the interpretive weight scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. Jessica N. Berry fills this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition illuminates Nietzsche's own (...) reflections on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. This entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views promises to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics-since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought. "The book addresses a number of central issues in Nietzsche's philosophy, including perspectivism and his conception of truth. The idea that his views in these areas owe much to the ancient Pyrrhonists casts them in an important new light, and is well supported by the texts. A lot of people from a lot of different areas in philosophy will have good reason to take notice." - Richard Bett, Johns Hopkins University. (shrink)

This modern, advanced textbook reviews modal logic, a field which caught the attention of computer scientists in the late 1970's.

Moral latitude is only ever a matter of coincidence on the most popular decision procedure in the literature on moral uncertainty. In all possible choice situations other than those in which two or more options happen to be tied for maximal expected choiceworthiness, Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness implies that only one possible option is uniquely appropriate. A better theory of appropriateness would be more sensitive to the decision maker’s credence in theories that endorse agent-centred prerogatives. In this paper, we will develop (...) and defend a modified version of this view that allows for agent-centred prerogatives and supererogation as part of its verdicts about appropriateness. (shrink)

"'There is only one thing that is certain, namely that we can have nothing certain; and therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain,' Samuel Butler once said, expressing in that mindbloggler all the elements required to form a classical paradox. Throughout the ages wise men and jesters alike have been intrigued by such mental twists and riddles which defy common sense and yet appear to be true." -- Dust jacket.

In the philosophy of science there has traditionally been a tendency to regard physics as the incarnation of science per se. Accordingly, the status of other disciplines is evaluated then with respect to their ability to produce laws resembling those of physics. This view has yielded a considerable bias in the discussion of historical laws. Philosophers as well as historians have tended to discuss such laws mostly with reference to the situation in physics; this often led to either one of (...) two conclusions, namely that history is epistemologically completely separated from natural science, because it does not have universal laws, or that the ultimate goal of the study of history must be the formulation of such universal laws. I would maintain that neither conclusion is necessary. To substantiate this position, aspects of laws in nature are discussed. One aspect being often neglected is the fact that there are many cases of statistical laws in nature; there is no close link between laws and determinism. Moreover, there are natural systems which have a history, i.e. systems which are, like human history, shaped by irreversible, singular events. One important case is biological evolution and accordingly I discuss the relation between evolutionary theory and historiography. However, since we are part of the living world, one could also ask whether the laws of evolution are of direct relevance for understanding our history, in addition to the methodological similarities between the two fields. This issue of history as evolution is being investigated in detail in the final section of the paper. (shrink)

Inductively defined structures are ubiquitous in mathematics; their specification is unambiguous and their properties are powerful. All fields of mathematical logic feature these structures prominently: the formula of a language, the set of theorems, the natural numbers, the primitive recursive functions, the constructive number classes and segments of the cumulative hierarchy of sets. -/- This dissertation gives a mathematical characterization of a species of inductively defined structures, called accessible domains, which include all of the above examples except the set of (...) theorems. The concept of an accessible domain comes from Wilfried Sieg's analysis of proof-theoretic practices, starting with his dissertation. In particular, he noticed the special epistemological character of elements of an accessible domain: they can always be uniquely identified with their build-up. Generally, the unique build-up of elements justifies the principles of induction and recursion. -/- I use category theory to give an abstract characterization of accessible domains. I claim that accessible domains are all instances of initial algebras for endofunctors. Grounded in the historical roots of Sieg's discussions, this dissertation shows how the properties of initial algebras for endofunctors and accessible domains coincide in a satisfying and natural way. -/- Filling out this characterization, I show how important examples of accessible domains fit into this broad characterization. I first characterize some accessible domains by relatively simple functors (e.g. finite, polynomial, those that preserve certain colimits) where we can see how iterating the functor can produce the accessible domain. Then I describe accessible domains that result from more involved specifications (e.g. ordinals and segments of the cumulative hierarchies associated with CZF, IZF, and ZF) by relying heavily on algebraic set theory. I end with a discussion of some of the methodological features of category theory in particular that helped characterize accessible domains. (shrink)

In Science as a Profession and Vocation, Max Weber presents a clear task to scientists: he claims that they have the responsibility to present uncomfortable knowledge to politicians, students and o...

There are many touch points between the work of Jacques Derrida and René Girard. To me, as a student of literature, these two writers particularly stand out as great readers or great exegetes.1 The way they handle and combine texts, the way they dare to break with reading conventions, has proved to be really fruitful.Some time ago I watched a documentary about Derrida, made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, published in 2002, carrying the simple title Derrida.2 I found (...) that this experimental documentary at the same time reflected Derrida’s many reservations, not to say his skepticism, as to the possibility of making portraits—and—proved to be far more revealing, even intimate, than a conventional documentary... (shrink)

Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and that it can provide (...) guidance for dealing with such issues. Ricoeur’s analysis, furthermore, provides the foundation for a more critical political ethics than Walzer can offer. (shrink)

We present an argument in support of the legal prohibition of infant male circumcision (IMC) in developed Western countries. We submit that all IMC, irrespective of whether the motivation behind it be secular or religious, violates children’s rights to self-determination (autonomy) and bodily integrity and is therefore morally illegitimate. And while IMC’s being morally wrong does not entail that it ought to be criminalised, we contend that it should be legally proscribed so as to protect children against harm and to (...) uphold their rights. We consider and reject an argument that an exemption from the legal ban should be granted to religious parents who perceive themselves to be under a moral obligation to subject their male infants to IMC. We argue that since IMC sets back children’s basic interests and violates their rights, there is no room, and no case, for the conferring of a religious exemption. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas has argued that the passion of hope is the movement of the sensitive appetite and the first of the irascible passion. The first part of the article aims to explore the cause and the mechanism of the passion of hope, and tries to clarify the relationship between the passion of hope and the perception. In human beings, it is possible that the passion of hope is caused by false judgement of the perception, which will lead to the result (...) of false hope. In Aquinas’s argument, the problem of false hope could be solved through the moral virtue and the prudence. In the second part of this article, the aim is to analyse how the virtue of magnanimity, humility and the prudence work impact on the passion of hope and perfect it.Contribution: This research concentrates on the topic of the passion of hope of Thomas Aquinas, and provides a new perspective on the understanding of the relationship between the passion and the virtue. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle's famous discussion of the sea-battle tomorrow in On Interpretation 9, philosophers have been fascinated by a rich set of interconnecte.

Karl Popper famously opposed Marxism in general and its philosophical core – the Marxist dialectic – in particular. As a progressive thinker, Popper saw in dialectic a source of dogmatism damaging to philosophy and political theory. Popper had summarized his views on dialectic in an article that was first delivered in 1937 and subsequently republished as a chapter of his book (2002, pp. 419-451), where he accuses Marxist dialecticians of not tolerating criticism. Ironically, Popper’s view that all Marxist dialecticians dogmatically (...) dismiss any criticism of dialectic by claiming that their opponents do not understand dialectic makes his position no less dogmatic. Indeed, any attempt to criticise Popper’s views on dialectics would be seen only as an additional example of responses by “dogmatic dialecticians”, making his theory essentially immune. This completely prevents dialecticians from being able to criticise Popper’s views. This is exactly the opposite of what the great philosopher wanted. Therefore, for the sake of “anti-dogmatic science” it is desirable and even necessary to defend dialectic. In this work I address several central points about Popper’s criticism of Marxist (materialist) dialectic. In particular, I (a) analyse Popper’s definition of dialectic as the dialectic triad (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) and contrast it with a notion of dialectic as a much more complex concept which occurs in dialectical materialism today, where the triad represents only one of the aspects; (b) compare dialectic with the trial and error method; (c) discuss the place of dialectic amongst valid scientific methods: Does dialectic accept logical contradictions; (e) discuss lessons dialecticians should learn from Popper’s criticism. I will test my arguments as to their constructiveness and will demonstrate explicitly the nature of my disagreement with Popper - thereby trying to avoid the “dogmatic dialecticians” response as much as possible. (shrink)

_"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, ___American Conservative__ Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it _is _an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its (...) legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure. (shrink)

"A thematic exposition focused on the "whole man," especially in his practical, aesthetic, ethical, and religious dimensions, moving from consideration of the stream of consciousness and consciousness as selective according to interests, through the ethical and religious aspects of man's aspiration and experience, to the humanistic bases of James' pragmatism and radical empiricism ... Dooley's account is remarkably clear and streamlined, stressing the consistency rather than the tensions in James' thought. Thus, while James' own texts provide at once the most (...) authoritative and the most attractive approach to his thought for readers at all levels, Dooley's book seems most likely to be helpful as supplementary reading for teachers and students in introductory courses.". (shrink)

Public discourse and theoretical literature currently show controversy on the value of political compromise: some oppose it, others welcome it, and on both sides, arguments differ. The different positions in these debates on compromise build on particular understandings of what politics is all about (four understandings are distinguished: Pragmatist, Principled, Agonist and Deliberative). These understandings oppose one another and are even mutually exclusive. An encompassing position that combines elements from these different approaches is needed to bring us beyond this situation (...) of controversy and take the debate on compromise a step further. In this paper, I show that Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of politics and of the role of compromising therein offers such a perspective. His work combines elements of the different positions, provides an understanding of compromise and implies lessons for compromising. (shrink)