We sley Salmon, in his influential and detailed book, Four Decades of Scientific Explanation, argues that the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation, “construed as the claim that scientific explanation can be explicated entirely in pragmatic terms” (1989, 185) is inadequate. The specific inadequacy ascribed to a pragmatic account is that objective relevance relations cannot be incorporated into such an account. Salmon relies on the arguments given in Kitcher and Salmon (1987) to ground this objection. He also suggests that Peter Railton’s (...) concepts of the ideal explanatory text and explanatory information (Railton 1981) can provide what the pragmatic approach lacks. This suggestion is not a conclusion of course; we read it as the promotion of part of a research program aimed at forging a greater consensus on scientific explanation-an admirable goal. However, we do not see the pragmatic approach as inadequate. We will show that a synthetic account inspired by Salmon’s adaptation of Railton would be equivalent to van Fraassen’s pragmatic account in three respects: accepting or rejecting requests for explanation; the practice of giving scientific explanations; and the evaluation of the goodness of explanations. We include all three under the general rubric of explanatory “practice.” Admittedly these are not the only three features by which an account of explanation might be evaluated. Roughly, we mean to show that a synthetic account cannot do a better job of accounting for the scientific practices which are of importance to the constructive empiricist, and therefore no argument can be presented to the constructive empiricist to convince her that by her own standards the synthetic account is superior. (shrink)

This collection provides a thorough grounding in the philosophy of American pragmatism by examining the views of four principal thinkers - Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead - on issues of central and enduring importance to life in human society. Pragmatism emerged as a characteristically American response to an inheritance of British empiricism. Presenting a radical reconception of the nature of experience, pragmatism represents a belief that ideas are not merely to be contemplated but must (...) be put into action, tested and refined through experience. At the same time, the American pragmatists argued for an emphasis on human community that would offset the deep-seated American bias in favor of individualism. Far from being a relic of the past, pragmatism offers a dynamic and substantive approach to questions of human conduct, social values, scientific inquiry, religious belief, and aesthetic experience that lie at the center of contemporary life. This volume is an invaluable introduction to a school of thought that remains vital, instructive, and provocative. (shrink)

This textual analysis is a collective case study of K-12 United States History content standards in light of how they represent the historical experiences of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. The study uses a multi-perspective critical conceptual framework to evaluate the standards for nine state-level polities on both the quality of treatment and the orientation of how African Americans are depicted in the standards. Analysis revealed that the reviewed standards tend to discourage rigorous historical thinking in favor of (...) non-conflictual narrative perspectives that accentuate the historical contributions of African Americans within a framework of linear social progress. This curricular approach is ultimately problematic because it encourages teachers and students to rely on convenient historical archetypes to construct a usable past, rather than problematizing the past and present experiences of African Americans. (shrink)

In the thesis I criticize the project of showing that the primary qualities mentioned in a special "scientific" or "objective" conception of the world enjoy a status that secondary qualities do not, and suggest how the appeal of such a distinction might be overcome. ;Descartes argued that we erroneously ascribe illusory "secondary" qualities to the world. In the painting analogy of the First Meditation I identify a line of reasoning that has been previously overlooked yet is crucial to the success (...) of Descartes's project. I show why Descartes's explanation of how we come to have the supposedly erroneous beliefs is unacceptable, and that contemporary accounts of so-called projective error fail for similar reasons. These failures suggest that an explanation of the thoughts we do have cannot succeed without appeal to more than the limited resources Descartes took to be available. ;Pursuing this suggestion I examine alternatives to the form of anti-skeptical reasoning of the painting analogy. I develop a modified transcendental strategy that resembles aspects of Davidson's treatment of error, while respecting the realism that motivates the project in question. I argue that beliefs about the colors of objects, for example, are systematically related and that the attribution of systematic disagreement cannot be justified. This shows that the systematic error Descartes claimed to find in our ordinary judgements is not fully intelligible. ;Finally I survey some contemporary alternatives to Descartes's account. Many dispositional analyses of qualities aim to revise our ordinary understanding of these qualities, thus taking for granted a prior demonstration of the distinction in question. I argue that no non-revisionary dispositional analysis of these qualities can succeed. I show that the notion of "anthropocentricity" is irrelevant to the project. Lastly I consider accounts that characterize primary qualities by their explanatory power. Previous arguments show that identifying some objects as possessing certain qualities is a condition of identifying beliefs as beliefs about those qualities. I end with a lesson about the limits of the explanatory power of a special austere conception of the world. (shrink)

A corrected and extensively annotated version of the sole meeting between two of the most important figures in twentieth-century intellectual life.

(2013). A Review of “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?”. Educational Studies: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 373-377.

Click on the DOI link to access the article.

How should we decide which inequalities between people are justified, and which are unjustified? One answer is that such inequalities are only justified where there is a corresponding variation in responsible action or choice on the part of the persons concerned. This view, which has become known as 'luck egalitarianism', has come to occupy a central place in recent debates about distributive justice. This book is the first full length treatment of this significant development in contemporary political philosophy. Each of (...) its three parts addresses a key question concerning the theory. Which version of luck egalitarian comes closest to realizing luck egalitarian objectives? Does luck egalitarianism succeed as a view of egalitarian justice? And is it sound as an account of distributive justice in general? The book provides a distinctive answer to each of these questions, along the way engaging with the leading theorists identified in the literature as luck egalitarians, such as Richard Arneson, G. A. Cohen, and Ronald Dworkin, as well as the most influential critics, including Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, Samuel Scheffler, and Jonathan Wolff. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Modern Maistre. The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de MaistreAbraham AndersonOwen Bradley. A Modern Maistre. The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Pp. 320. $55.00.In A Modern Maistre, Owen Bradley has sought to defend both the theoretical penetration and the practical wisdom of Joseph de Maistre, most famous of all "reactionaries" or royalist opponents of the French Revolution. (...) Bradley's own explicit philosophical premises are those of the contemporary academic Left—the blend of Foucault, Adorno, and other authors commonly known as "theory." He defends Maistre's claims on our attention partly by pointing to the kinship between the latter's critique of the Enlightenment and that of Foucault, Adorno, et al. Further, Bradley reminds us of the intimate relation between anti-revolutionary thought and historicism, here understood as the doctrine that new climates of belief and social arrangements always have their roots in what precedes them. In this as in other respects he allows us to see the kinship between the thought of Maistre and that of his younger and more liberal contemporary Tocqueville.Maistre was, moreover, a seminal thinker for the French tradition of sociology whose best-known representatives are Comte and Durkheim, and which, like him, was concerned above all with the religious conditions of social order. Maistre was himself a disciple not just of Vico's New Science but of Plato's Republic and Laws, works equally preoccupied with this topic. One of the most interesting themes of the book, in fact, is Maistre's concern with political theology.Maistre was particularly attracted, Bradley shows, to the neo-Platonic and possibly heterodox theology of Origen. The neo-Platonic emphasis on symbols, talismans, and cosmic hierarchy, according to Bradley, helped Maistre formulate his criticism of the "mechanical philosophy" of the Cartesian Enlightenment, the metaphysical premise, according to Maistre, of the Revolution. Maistre, Bradley shows us, argued against the Enlightenment's attempt to replace a politics dependent on faith with one based on modern science partly by showing that modern science itself has its roots in mysticism, magic, and enthusiasm. The Enlightenment, which understood itself as entirely secular in spirit, was ruled by a project of salvation descended from ancient gnosticism. As the gnostics sought salvation through the rejection of the world of creation, the Enlighteners sought political salvation through a rejection of all traditions and institutions, a project which culminated in the Jacobin Terror.But political violence, in Maistre's view, does not stem from theological error alone. According to Maistre, "sacrifice" in the larger sense is central to all human societies. The problem of political order is in large part how to channel the impulse to collective cruelty, which is necessary to political order but can be restrained or allowed to run [End Page 287] wild. Politics is largely theater and symbol; the wise use of these elements is indispensable for taming the love of violence.Maistre's famous assertion of the authority of the Pope is not, Bradley insists, a formula for theocracy; rather, the preservation of a spiritual power distinct from and independent of the sovereign serves to check tyranny without subverting sovereignty (132). Such a spiritual power is necessary partly to preserve "unity of fables, which will never happen without unity of doctrine and authority" (195).Maistre's interest in political theology is continuous with an interest in the political significance of cosmology. Every society, Maistre held, including the Enlightenment, has a view of the cosmos to which its conception of society precisely corresponds. Maistre himself seeks to inflect modern cosmology in various ways. Like Tocqueville and Vico, Maistre uses the doctrine of historical forces to propound a teaching on Providence. The Jacobins themselves, Maistre asserts, were instruments of Providence. Far from emancipating mankind, the Revolution "abruptly shortened" the "chain that binds man" within his proper bounds (215).Bradley does Maistre a valuable service by criticizing misinterpretations of his thought by later defenders of extra-constitutional authority, like Maurras and Carl Schmitt; Maistre himself, Bradley shows, was deeply concerned to preserve constitutional legitimacy and opposed absolutism. Bradley's most interesting chapter is his last one, on Maistre... (shrink)

This paper considers issues raised by Elizabeth Anderson’s recent critique of the position she terms ‘luck egalitarianism’. It is maintained that luck egalitarianism, once clarified and elaborated in certain regards, remains the strongest egalitarian stance. Anderson’s arguments that luck egalitarians abandon both the negligent and prudent dependent caretakers fails to account for the moderate positions open to luck egalitarians and overemphasizes their commitment to unregulated market choices. The claim that luck egalitarianism insults citizens by redistributing on the grounds (...) of paternalistic beliefs, pity and envy, and by making intrusive and stigmatizing judgments of responsibility, fails accurately to characterize the luck egalitarian’s rationale for redistribution and relies upon luck egalitarians being insensitive to the danger of stigmatization. The luck egalitarian position is reinforced by the fact that Anderson’s favoured conception of equality, ‘democratic equality’, is counterintuitively indifferent to all unchosen inequalities, including intergenerational inequalities, once bare social minima are met. (shrink)

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by (...) Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided. (shrink)

This is a volume of twelve essays published in the successful tradition of _Essays in Philosophy_. These essays in metaphysics merge the eternal, the historical, and the immediately encountered dimensions of man’s experience to illustrate what is permanently valuable in the tradition of Western thought. Contributors: John M. Anderson; Karel Berka; Hiram Canton; Joseph C. Flay; Richard A Gotshalk; Carl R. Hausman; Henry W. Johnstone, Jr.; Joseph J. Kockelmans; Robert G. Price; Stanley H. Rosen; Albert Tsugawa; Carl (...) G. Vaught. (shrink)

The eminent philosopher of science Carl G. Hempel, Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and a Past President of the American Philosophical Association, has had a long and distinguished academic career in the course of which he has been professorial mentor to some of America's most distinguished philosophers. This volume gathers together twelve original papers by Hempel's students and associates into a volume intended to do homage to Hempel on the occasion of his 65th year in 1970. The (...) papers are grouped around the unifying topic of Hempel's own interests in logic and philosophy of science, the great majority dealing with issues on inductive logic and the theory of scientific explanatio- problems to which Hempel has devoted the bulk of his outstandingly fruitful efforts. With the approach of 'Peter' Hempel's 65th birthday, an editorial committee sprang into being by an uncannily spontaneous process to prepare to commemorate this event with an appropriate Festschrift. The editors were pleased to receive unfailingly prompt and efficient coopera tion on the part of all contributors. The responsibility of seeing the work through the press was assumed by Nicholas Rescher. The editors are grateful to all concerned for their collaboration. ALAN ROSS ANDERSON PAUL BENACERRAF ADOLF GRUNBAUM GERALD J. MASSEY NICHOLAS RESCHER RICHARD S. RUDNER TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE V PAUL OPPENHEIM: Reminiscences of Peter 1 w. v. QUINE: Natural Kinds 5 JAAKKO HINTIKKA: Inductive Independence and the Paradoxes of Confirmation 24 WESLEY c. (shrink)

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political (...) thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika. (shrink)

This essay describes conversation as an ensemble accomplishment that can be illuminated by critics working with specific texts within a rhetorical framework. We first establish dialogue as the key concept for any criticism of conversation, specifying the rhetorical dimensions of interpersonal dialogue. Second, we show how template thinking is particularly dangerous for conversational critics and suggest a research (anti)method, based on a coauthorship, that provides a thoroughgoing dialogical access to texts. Finally, we exemplify dialogic criticism of a conversational text by (...) analyzing the famous 1957 dialogue of philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Remembering seems, to philosophers and scientists, one of the most mystifying of human activities. Yet natural language users have no problem understanding what is meant by ‘memory’. Memory is simply the ability to recall personally experienced events and certain kinds of information such as facts, names, or faces; or how to perform certain actions, like riding a bike or playing chess. It is on this basis that people sometimes make claims about themselves or others having a good or bad memory, (...) especially for things like names, numbers, or faces. Why then is memory such a mystery? Because, firstly, of its diversity: memory enables us to perform a plethora of different tasks, including the continuous interpretation of every moment of consciousness. Secondly, different forms of memory have different standards of accuracy, and often dramatically different criteria for success. (shrink)

Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a sample of professional philosophers (N = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other (...) populations. We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did, however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for multiple comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism; lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism. We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value. (shrink)

This remarkable book presents a rich and up-to-date view of evolution that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin's theory and emphasizes the power, significance, and relevance of evolution to our lives today. After all, we ourselves are the product of evolution, and we can tackle many of our gravest challenges -- from lethal resurgence of antiobiotic-resistant diseases to the wave of extinctions that looms before us -- with a sound understanding of the science.

Open‐ended tasks can be decomposed into the three levels of Newell's Cognitive Band: the Unit‐Task level, the Operation level, and the Deliberate‐Act level. We analyzed the video game Co‐op Space Fortress at these levels, reporting both the match of a cognitive model to subject behavior and the use of electroencephalogram (EEG) to track subject cognition. The Unit Task level in this game involves coordinating with a partner to kill a fortress. At this highest level of the Cognitive Band, there is (...) a good match between subject behavior and the model. The EEG signals were also strong enough to track when Unit Tasks succeeded or failed. The intermediate Operation level in this task involves legs of flight to achieve a kill. The EEG signals associated with these operations are much weaker than the signals associated with the Unit Tasks. Still, it was possible to reconstruct subject play with much better than chance success. There were significant differences in the leg behavior of subjects and models. Model behavior did not provide a good basis for interpreting a subject's behavior at this level. At the lowest Deliberate‐Act level, we observed overlapping key actions, which the model did not display. Such overlapping key actions also frustrated efforts to identify EEG signals of motor actions. We conclude that the Unit‐task level is the appropriate level both for understanding open‐ended tasks and for using EEG to track the performance of open‐ended tasks. (shrink)

A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution (...) on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ...

This article focuses on mirror self-recognition, the ability to recognize one's own image in a mirror. It presents the result of the first experiment on mirror self-recognition which showed that chimpanzees are able to learn that the chimps they see in the mirror are not other chimps, but themselves, as evidenced by self-directed behaviour. It reviews evidence for neural network for self-recognition and self-other differentiation and cites evidence that frontal cortex and cortical midline structures are implicated in self-recognition tasks. It (...) also suggests that the mirror self-recognition ability correlates to large brain size relative to the animal's body size. (shrink)

Using Asimov’s “Bicentennial Man” as a springboard, a number of metaethical issues concerning the emerging field of machine ethics are discussed. Although the ultimate goal of machine ethics is to create autonomous ethical machines, this presents a number of challenges. A good way to begin the task of making ethics computable is to create a program that enables a machine to act an ethical advisor to human beings. This project, unlike creating an autonomous ethical machine, will not require that we (...) make a judgment about the ethical status of the machine itself, a judgment that will be particularly difficult to make. Finally, it is argued that Asimov’s “three laws of robotics” are an unsatisfactory basis for machine ethics, regardless of the status of the machine. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has placed significant strain on United States’ health care and health care providers. While most Americans were sheltering in place, nurses headed to work. Many lacked adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), increasing the risk of becoming infected or infecting others. Some health care organizations were not transparent with their nurses; many nurses were gagged from speaking up about the conditions in their workplaces. This study used a descriptive phenomenological design to describe the lived experience of acute (...) care nurses working with limited access to PPE during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 28 acute care nurses via telephone, WebEx, and Zoom. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The major theme, emotional roller coaster, describes the varied intense emotions the nurses experienced during the early weeks of the pandemic, encompassing eight subthemes: scared and afraid, sense of isolation, anger, betrayal, overwhelmed and exhausted, grief, helpless and at a loss, and denial. Other themes include: self‐care, ‘hoping for the best’, ‘nurses are not invincible’, and ‘I feel lucky’. The high levels of stress and mental assault resulting from the COVID‐19 crisis call for early stress assessment of nurses and provision of psychological intervention to mitigate lasting psychological trauma. (shrink)