Some influential interpreters of Dharmakīrti have suggested understanding his thought in terms of a ‘sliding scale of analysis.’ Here it is argued that this emphasis on Dharmakīrti's alternating philosophical perspectives, though helpful in important respects, obscures the close connection between the two views in play. Indeed, with respect to these perspectives as Dharmakīrti develops them, the epistemology is the same either way. Insofar as that is right, John Dunne's characterization of Dharmakīrti's Yogācāra as ‘epistemic idealism ’ may not, after all, (...) distinguish this perspective from Sautrāntika; indeed, epistemic idealism can be understood as just the view these positions share. Thus, what distinguishes the ‘Yogācāra’ section of Dharmakīrti's texts is simply his making explicit that epistemological commitments the Sautrāntika does hold are already compatible with idealism. Sautrāntika and Yogācāra thus differ only when one turns to the metaphysical arguments that additionally show that only such mental things as sense data could be real. (shrink)

In this book, Arnold Davidson elaborates a method for considering the history of concepts and the nature of scientific knowledge, a method he calls "historical epistemology." He applies this to the history of sexuality, with consequences for our understanding of desire, abnormality, and sexuality.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 55-86, June 2022.

This paper presents a novel position in the philosophy of logic: I argue that _validity_ is a thick concept. Hence, I propose to consider _validity_ in analogy to other thick concepts, such as _honesty_, _selfishness_ or _justice_. This proposal is motivated by the debate on the normativity of logic: while logic textbooks seem simply descriptive in their presentation of logical truths, many have argued that logic has consequences for how we ought to reason, for what we ought to believe, or (...) for what we ought to infer. How can logic be normative, if it appears to be descriptive? According to the proposal of this paper, the normativity of logic can be explained because a thick concept is in play: _validity_. Thus, I argue that the debate on how to best characterize validity and the debate on logic’s normativity are more connected than we think, because _validity_ is a thick concept. (shrink)

Imagine that you and a duplicate of yourself are lying unconscious, next to each other, about to undergo a complete step-by-step exchange of bits of your bodies. It certainly seems that at no stage in this exchange of bits will you have thereby switched places with your duplicate. Yet it also seems that the end-result, with all the bits exchanged, will be essentially that of the two of you having switched places. Where will you awaken? I claim that one and (...) the same person possesses both bodies, occupies both places and will experience both awakenings, just as a person whose brain has been bisected must at once experience both of the unconnected fields of awareness, even though each of these will falsely appear to him as the entirety of his experience. I also claim that the more usual apparent boundaries of persons are as illusory as those in brain bisection; personal identity remains unchanged through any variation or multiplication of body or mind. In all conscious life there is only one person - I - whose existence depends merely on the presence of a quality that is inherent in all experience - its quality of being mine, the simple immediacy of it for whatever is having experience. One powerful argument for this is statistical: on the ordinary view of personhood it is an incredible coincidence for you (though not for others) that out of 200,000,000 sperm cells the very one required on each occasion for your future existence was first to the egg in each of the begettings of yourself and all your ancestors. The only view that does not make your existence incredible, and that is not therefore (from your perspective) an incredible view, is that any conscious being would necessarily have been you anyway. It is a consequence that self-interest should extend to all conscious organisms. (shrink)

This book defends an original and pluralist theory of when and why discrimination wrongs people, in particular, through unfair subordination, through the violation of their right to a particular deliberative freedom, or through the denial to them of access to a basic good.

I argue that T.M. Scanlon's contractualist account of morality has difficulty accommodating our intuitions about the moral relevance of the number of people affected by an action. I first consider the "Complaint Model" of reasonable rejection, which restricts the grounds for an individual's rejection of a principle to its effects upon herself. I argue that it can accommodate our intuitions about numbers only if we assume that, whenever we do not know who will be affected, each individual may appeal only (...) to the _expected effects on her. This assumption, I suggest, leads to counterintuitive results in cases where, although we do not know who will be affected, we do know that _someone will be. I then consider two proposals to supplement the complaint model with a direct appeal to aggregation. I argue that both are open to serious objections. (shrink)

"These sixteen essays by Arnold Isenberg "bring wide-ranging connoiseurship, intricate analysis, and epigrammatic literacy to bear on a number of glib and fuzzy oppositions between form and content, description and interpretation, ...

From social media to search engines to Wikipedia, the internet is thoroughly embedded in how we produce, locate, and share knowledge around the world. Who Should We Be Online? provides an account of online knowledge that takes seriously the role of sexist, racist, transphobic, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppression. Frost-Arnold argues against analyzing internet users as a collection of identical generic people with smartphones. The novel epistemology developed in this book recognizes that we are differently embodied beings interacting (...) within systems of dominance. Our social identities and global inequalities shape who we are, who we can be online, and what we know. Tackling problems of online content moderation, fake news, and hoaxes, Frost-Arnold shows that oppressive online structures and practices help fuel ignorance. But she also reveals how the internet provides opportunities for marginalized people and activists to share knowledge online. Drawing on feminist accounts of objectivity, veritistic social epistemology, epistemologies of ignorance, virtue epistemology, and the epistemic injustice literature, this book argues for a social epistemology that values truth and objectivity, while recognizing that inequalities shape our collective ability to attain these goals. Timely and interdisciplinary, Who Should We Be Online? weaves together internet studies scholarship from across the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Presenting case studies of moderators, imposters, tricksters, fakers, and lurkers, this book both explains the problems with our current internet ecosystem and imagines liberatory online futures. (shrink)

Public health agencies regularly survey randomly selected anonymous students to track drug use, sexual activities, and other risk behaviors. Students are unidentifiable, but a recent project that i...

In cases of self-gaslighting, the subject worries that other people will be skeptical of one of her beliefs—for instance, the belief that she has been sexually harassed. Prompted by this worry, she...

Without access to Michel Foucault’s courses, it was extremely difficult to understand his reorientation from an analysis of the strategies and tactics of power immanent in the modern discourse on sexuality (1976) to an analysis of the ancient forms and modalities of relation to oneself by which one constituted oneself as a moral subject of sexual conduct (1984). In short, Foucault’s passage from the political to the ethical dimension of sexuality seemed sudden and inexplicable. Moreover, it was clear from his (...) published essays and interviews that this displacement of focus had consequences far beyond the specific domain of the history of sexuality. Security, Territory, Population (Foucault, 2007) contains a conceptual hinge, a key concept, that allows us to link together the political and ethical axes of Foucault’s thought. Indeed, it is Foucault’s analysis of the notions of conduct and counter-conduct in his lecture of 1 March 1978 that seems to me to constitute one of the richest and most brilliant moments in the entire course. It is astonishing, and of profound significance, that the autonomous sphere of conduct has been more or less invisible in the history of modern (as opposed to ancient) moral and political philosophy. This article argues that a new attention should be given to this notion, both in Foucault’s work and more generally. (shrink)

Background Encounters of moral distress have long-term consequences on healthcare workers’ physical and mental health, leading to job dissatisfaction, reduced patient care, and high levels of burnout, exhaustion, and intentions to quit. Yet, research on approaches to ameliorate moral distress across the health workforce is limited. Research Objective The aim of our study was to qualitatively explore multi-professional perspectives of healthcare social workers, chaplains, and patient liaisons on ways to reduce moral distress and heighten well-being at a southern U.S. academic (...) medical center. Participants & Research Context Purposive sampling and chain-referral methods assisted with recruitment through hospital listservs, staff meetings, and newsletters. Interested participants contacted the principal investigator and all interviews were conducted in-person. Consent was attained prior to interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Research Design Directed content analysis was used to deductively organize codes and to develop themes in conjunction with the National Academy of Medicine’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. Rigor was attained through peer-debriefing, data triangulation methods, and frequent research team meetings. Ethical Considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the university and medical center institutional review boards. Findings Themes demonstrate that rather than offering interventions in the aftermath of moral distress, multilevel daily practices ought to be considered that pre-emptively identify and reduce morally distressing encounters through (1) the care team, (2) management and leadership, and (3) the health care industry. Strategies include interdisciplinary decision-making, trusting managerial relationships, and organizational policies and practices that explicitly invest in mental health promotion and diverse leadership opportunities. Conclusion Moral distress interventions ought to target short-term stress reactions while also addressing the long-term impacts of moral residue. Health systems must financially commit to an ethical workplace culture that explicitly values mental health and well-being. (shrink)

The idea that simplicity matters in science is as old as science itself, with the much cited example of Ockham's Razor, 'entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem': entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A problem with Ockham's razor is that nearly everybody seems to accept it, but few are able to define its exact meaning and to make it operational in a non-arbitrary way. Using a multidisciplinary perspective including philosophers, mathematicians, econometricians and economists, this 2002 monograph examines simplicity (...) by asking six questions: what is meant by simplicity? How is simplicity measured? Is there an optimum trade-off between simplicity and goodness-of-fit? What is the relation between simplicity and empirical modelling? What is the relation between simplicity and prediction? What is the connection between simplicity and convenience? The book concludes with reflections on simplicity by Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

" In Imagination and the Meaningful Brain, psychoanalyst Arnold Modell claims that subjective human experience must be included in any scientific...

Most people will agree that if my brain were made to have within it precisely the same pattern of activity that is in it now but through artificial means, as in its being fed all its stimulation through electrodes as it sits in a vat, an experience would result for me that would be subjectively indistinguishable from that I am now having. In ‘The Story of a Brain’ I ask whether the same subjective experience would be maintained in variations like (...) these: The hemispheres are in different vats but interacting with each other through radio transmission. Smaller chunks - and eventually the individual neurons - are interacting in this way. The hemispheres or the smaller chunks undergo internally the same pattern of activity but without interacting with each other. (shrink)

Dieses Buch ist ein Klassiker der philosophischen Anthropologie und Arnold Gehlens wichtigstes Buch. Es fasst Gehlens Modell vom Menschen als eines auf Handlung und kulturelle Kompensation angewiesenen und sich damit eigentatig von der ihn bedrohenden Umwelt entlastenden "Mangelwesens" gultig zusammen. Auch wurde in "Der Mensch" 1950 erstmals Gehlens Institutionenlehre skizziert, die er aus der Revision seiner ursprunglichen Theorie "oberster Fuhrungssysteme" entwickelte. Gehlens Hauptwerk war "ohne Zweifel der fortgeschrittenste Versuch, die Philosophische Anthropologie an die Erkenntnisse empirischer Disziplinen zu binden". Diese (...) Ausgabe bringt die textkritische Edition der Kritischen Gesamtausgabe mit dem Text der 4. Auflage von 1950, der die letzte tiefgreifende Umarbeitung darstellt, die Gehlen an dem erstmals 1940 erschienenen Text vornahm. (shrink)

With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim of this book is to place the aesthetic character of Schopenhauer's standpoint (...) at the heart of the way we read his philosophy and the way we answer the question: why read Schopenhauer - and how? Approaching his philosophy as an enactment of the sublime with a longer history in the ancient philosophical tradition, Vasalou provides a fresh way of assessing Schopenhauer's relevance in critical terms. This book will be valuable for students and scholars with an interest in post-Kantian philosophy and ancient ethics. (shrink)

In this essay I enter into a recently published debate between Stephen Schiffer and Jerry Fodor concerning whether adequate sense can be made of the ceteris paribus conditions in special science laws, much of their focus being on the case of putative psychological laws. Schiffer argues that adequate sense cannot be made of ceteris paribus clauses, while Fodor attempts to overcome Schiffer's arguments, in defense of special science laws. More recently, Peter Mott has attempted to show that Fodor's response to (...) Schiffer fails, and furthermore that further study shows that the logical framework in which Schiffer and Fodor address their issue is susceptible to inconsistency.In this essay I argue that adequate sense can be made of ceteris paribus conditions. Against Mott, I argue that recent work in the model theory of non-monotonic logic indicates how his problem involving logical inconsistencies can be overcome. Against Schiffer, I argue that the claims that he makes against ceteris paribus clauses would lead to a fatal skepticism concerning indefinitely many of the claims we make about the world (and indeed that his claims would be destructive of the view of the special sciences that Schiffer himself presents in his paper), and that the semantical considerations from non-monotonic logic that I present provide a suitable framework for dealing with his complaints. Thus I come out on the whole on Fodor's side of this debate, although for my own reasons, as I argue against much of Fodor's own argumentation. (shrink)

Very often, when a belief or a method of reasoning strikes us as morally wrong, it also seems to wrong someone in particular. For instance, if an acquaintance j.

For the past 40 years, the 14-day rule has governed and, by defining a clear boundary, enabled embryo research and the clinical benefits derived from this. It has been both a piece of legislation and a rule of good practice globally. However, methods now allow embryos to be cultured for more than 14 days, something difficult to imagine when the rule was established, and knowledge gained in the intervening years provides robust scientific rationale for why it is now essential to (...) conduct research on later stage human embryos. In this paper, I argue that the current limit for embryo research in vitro should be extended to 28 days to permit research that will illuminate our beginnings as well as provide new therapeutic possibilities to reduce miscarriage and developmental abnormalities. It will also permit validation of potentially useful alternatives. Through consideration of current ethical arguments, I also conclude that there are no coherent or persuasive reasons to deny researchers, and through them humanity, the knowledge and the innovation that this will generate. (shrink)

A thoughtful meditation on the role of meaning and purpose in the development of technology.

Arnold Come draws on Kierkegaard's major works, journals, and papers to reveal the humanist dimensions of his thought, highlighting the importance of the self as the central theme of all his writings.

When taken too far, certain well-intentioned ethical guidelines can become transformed into artificial boundaries that serve as destructive prohibitions and thereby undermine clinical effectiveness. Rigid roles and strict codified rules of conduct between therapist and client can obstruct a clinician's artistry. Those anxious conformists who go entirely by the book, and who live in constant fear of malpractice suits, are unlikely to prove significantly helpful to a broad array of clients. It is my contention that one of the worst professional/ethical (...) violations is to permit current risk-management principles to take precedence over humane interventions. (shrink)

Aesthetics: Music and ideas. Formalism. Perception, meaning, and the subject matter of art. The technical factor in art. The aesthetic function of language. The problem of belief. On defining metaphor.--Criticism: Cordelia absent. A poem by Frost and some principles of criticism. Critical communication. "Pretentious" as an aesthetic predicate. Superlatives. Some problems of interpretation.--Ethics and moral psychology: Natural pride and natural shame. Deontology and the ethics of lying. Ethical and aesthetic criticism.--Appendices.--A. Analytical philosophy and the study of art.--B. Notebooks and letters.

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to offer some comments on the study of Mu‘tazilite kalām, framed around the study of a particular episode in the Mu‘tazilite dispute about man – a question with a deceptively Aristotelian cadence that is not too difficult to dispel. Within this episode, my focus is on one of the major arguments used by the late Baṣrans to hold up their side of the dispute, and on the relationship between the mental and the physical which (...) emerges from it. The most interesting – and most surprising – aspect of this relationship is that the mental and the physical do not seem to be treated as distinct terms, thus creating the space for questions about how the two relate. The first person perspective seems to be identified with the physical body. My interest then is in the response of the reader to this surprising presentation – or rather, in a certain kind of reader response, and thus a certain kind of interpretive mode, whose value and viability it is part of my aim to help clarify. (shrink)

_Synthesizes the most important recent work on wonder and brings a number of disciplines into conversation. _.

I critically examine Nietzsche’s argument in The Will to Power that all the detailed events of the world are repeating infinite times (on account of the merely finite possible arrangements of forces that constitute the world and the inevitability with which any arrangement of force must bring about its successors). Nietzsche celebrated this recurrence because of the power of belief in it to bring about a revaluation of values focused wholly on the value of one’s endlessly repeating life. Belief in (...) recurrence would bring joy to those who had achieved excellence in this life and crush those who had not. I point out, however, that this significance of recurrence must be spoiled by the consideration that within each of the long cycles of recurrence there would have to be, as well, countless variations of this life. And I consider the issue of personal identity within such recurrences. Is it the same person or merely resembling but distinct persons in the recurrences or the variations? If it is the same person in precise recurrences, should the subjectively identical experience be thought of as really additional for that person? (shrink)

Containing the debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on epistemology and politics, this book also features the most significant essays by the most important French thinkers who influenced and were influenced by Foucault. Foucault's teachers, colleagues, and collaborators take up his major claims, from his first to final works, and provide us with the authoritative context in which to understand Foucault's writings. This volume also includes several important works by Foucault previously unpublished in English. The other contributors are Georges (...) Canguilhem, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Hadot, Michel Serres, and Paul Veyne. Here for the first time is the French Foucault. This volume offers lucid and important texts that will appeal to students and professors at every level of study. It is essential reading for all scholars of twentieth-century philosophy and critical theory. (shrink)

Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most prominent and controversial intellectual trends in medieval Islam. The Mu'tazilites (...) developed a view of ethics whose distinguishing features were its austere moral objectivism and the crucial role it assigned to reason in the knowledge of moral truths. Central to this ethical vision was the notion of moral desert, and of the good and evil consequences--reward or punishment--deserved through a person's acts. Moral Agents and Their Deserts is the first book-length study of this central theme in Mu'tazilite ethics, and an attempt to grapple with the philosophical questions it raises. At the same time, it is a bid to question the ways in which modern readers, coming to medieval Islamic thought with a philosophical interest, seek to read and converse with Mu'tazilite theology. Moral Agents and Their Deserts tracks the challenges and rewards involved in the pursuit of the right conversation at the seams between modern and medieval concerns. (shrink)

Some years ago a collection of historical and philosophical essays on sex was advertised under the slogan: Philosophers are interested in sex again. Since that time the history of sexuality has become an almost unexceptionable topic, occasioning as many books and articles as anyone would ever care to read. Yet there are still fundamental conceptual problems that get passed over imperceptibly when this topic is discussed, passed over, at least in part, because they seem so basic or obvious that it (...) would be time badly spent to worry too much about them. However, without backtracking toweard this set of problems, one will quite literally not know what one is writing the history of when one writes a history of sexuality.An excellent example of some of the most sophisticated current writing in this field can be found in Western Sexuality, a collection of essays that resulted from a seminar conducted by Philippe Ariès at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 1979-80.1 As one would expect, Western Sexuality is characterized by a diversity of methodological and historiographical approaches—social history, intellectual history, cultural history , historical sociology, the analysis of literary texts, and that distinctive kind of history practiced by Michel Foucault and also in evidence in the short essay by Paul Veyne. One perspective virtually absent from this collection is the history of science, and since I believe that the history of science has a decisive and irreducible contribution to make to the history of sexuality, it is not accident that I am going to focus on that connection. But the history of sexuality is also an area in which one’s historiography or implicit epistemology will stamp, virtually irrevocably, one’s first-order historical writing. It is an arena in which philosophical and historical concerns inevitably run into one another. 1. Philippe Ariès and Adnré Béjin, eds., Western Sexuality: Practice and Percept in Past and Present Times . Arnold I. Davidson, a coeditor of Critical Inquiry, is assistant professor of philosophy and member of the Committees on General Studies in the Humanities and on the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “How to Do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” appeared in the Winter 1987 issue. (shrink)

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)

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become (...) part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

An epistemology of art has seemed problematic mainly because of arguments claiming that an essential element of a theory of knowledge, truth, has no place in aesthetic contexts. For, if it is objectively true that something is beautiful, it seems to follow that the predicate “is beautiful” expresses a property – a view asserted by Plato but denied by Hume and Kant. But then, if the belief that something is beautiful is not objectively true, we cannot be said to know (...) that something is beautiful and the path to an epistemology of art is effectively blocked. The article places the existence aesthetic properties in the proper context; presents a logically correct argument for the existence of such properties; identifies strategies for responding to this argument; explains why objections by Hume, Kant, and several other philosophers fail; and sketches a realization account of beauty influenced by Hogarth. (shrink)

We agree with Svirsky, Howard, and Berman that the US Food and Drug Administration plays various roles, only one of which is the technical review and evaluation of product safety and e...

In this book Arnold Berleant develops a bold alternative to the eighteenth-century aesthetic of disinterestedness.

The idea that simplicity matters in science is as old as science itself, with the much cited example of Ockham's Razor, 'entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem': entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A problem with Ockham's razor is that nearly everybody seems to accept it, but few are able to define its exact meaning and to make it operational in a non-arbitrary way. Using a multidisciplinary perspective including philosophers, mathematicians, econometricians and economists, this 2002 monograph examines simplicity (...) by asking six questions: what is meant by simplicity? How is simplicity measured? Is there an optimum trade-off between simplicity and goodness-of-fit? What is the relation between simplicity and empirical modelling? What is the relation between simplicity and prediction? What is the connection between simplicity and convenience? The book concludes with reflections on simplicity by Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

Many social practices treat citizens with cognitive disabilities differently from their nondisabled peers. Does John Rawls's theory of justice imply that we have different duties of justice to citizens whenever they are labeled with cognitive disabilities? Some theorists have claimed that the needs of the cognitively disabled do not raise issues of justice for Rawls. I claim that it is premature to reject Rawlsian contractualism. Rawlsians should regard all citizens as moral persons provided they have the potential for developing the (...) two moral powers. I claim that every citizen requires specific Enabling Conditions to develop and exercise the two moral powers. Structuring basic social institutions to deny some citizens the Enabling Conditions is unjust because it blocks their developmental pathways toward becoming fully cooperating members of society. Hence, we have a duty of justice to provide citizens labeled with cognitive disabilities with the Enabling Conditions they require until they become fully cooperating members of society. (shrink)