In this paper, I give an argument for the view that non-fact entities – such as physical objects, abstract objects, events and so on – can ground other entities. Roughly put, the argument is as follows: those who accept this view can provide a more plausible account of the grounds of identity facts than those who deny this view.

I show that centered propositions—also called de se propositions, and usually modeled as sets of centered worlds—pose a serious problem for various versions of Lewis's Principal Principle. The problem, put roughly, is that in scenarios like Elga's `Sleeping Beauty' case, those principles imply that rational agents ought to have obviously irrational credences. To solve the problem, I propose a centered version of the Principal Principle. My version allows centered propositions to be objectively chancy.

Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief. The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of (...) moral distortion, to which moral philosophers have paid insufficient attention. Some of these are common to all stereotypes—failing to see members of the stereotyped groups as individuals, moral distancing, failing to see subgroup diversity within the group. Other moral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some attribute a much more damaging or stigmatizing characteristic (e.g. being violent) than others (e.g. being good at basketball). But the characteristic in question must also be viewed in its wider historical and social context to appreciate its overall negative and positive dimensions. (shrink)

I propose a `stage theory’ of groups: a group is a fusion of group-stages, where a group-stage is a plurality of individuals at a world and a time. The stage theory consists of existence conditions, identity conditions, and parthood conditions for groups.

Standard models of adolescent risk taking posit that the cognitive abilities of adolescents and adults are equivalent, and that increases in risk taking that occur during adolescence are the result of socio emotional differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and lack of self-control. Fuzzy-trace theory incorporates these socio emotional differences. However, it predicts that there are also cognitive differences between adolescents and adults, specifically that there are developmental increases in gist-based intuition that reflects understanding. Gist understanding, as opposed to verbatim-based analysis, (...) generally has been hypothesized to have a protective effect on risk taking in adolescence. Gist understanding is also an essential element of informed consent regarding risks in medical decision- making. Evidence thus supports the argument that adolescents’ status as mature minors should be treated as an exception rather than a presumption, because accuracy in verbatim analysis is not mature gist understanding. Use of the exception should be accompanied by medical experts’ input on the bottom-line gist of risks involved in treatment. (shrink)

1. Bd. Wesen, Aufstieg und Verfall der philosophischen Theologie.

Wundt untersucht in diesem Buch die Philosophie der einzelnen Nationen als Beitrag zum Weltkrieg. Nachdruck des Originals von 1915.

The ancient Taoist text that forms the central part of this book was discovered by Wilhelm, who recognized it as essentially a practical guide to the integration of personality. Foreword and Appendix by Carl Jung; illustrations. Translated by Cary F. Baynes.A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Bd. I. Von der Renaissance bis Kant -- Bd. II. Die Blütezeit der deutschen Philosophie.

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of the later Renaissance whose writings encompassed the ongoing traditions, intentions, and achievements of his times and transmitted them into early modernity. Taking up the medieval practice of the art of memory and of formal logic, he focused on the creativity of the human mind. Bruno … Continue reading Giordano Bruno →.

This paper studies the notion of virtuality in the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory of 1924. We situate the virtual entities of BKS within the tradition of the correspondence principle and the radiation theory of the Bohr model. We show how, in this context, virtual oscillators emerged as classical substitute radiators and were used to describe the otherwise elusive quantum transitions. They played an effective role in the quantum theory of radiation while remaining categorically distinct and ontologically separated from the quantum world of (...) the Bohr model. The notion of virtuality thus differs markedly from its counterpart in quantum mechanics or QFT. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 59-74 [Access article in PDF] Francesco Patrizi in the "Time-Sack": History and Rhetorical Philosophy * Paul Richard Blum Contemporary theory of history is much concerned with the narrative structure of history, its nature, and its epistemic status. 1 The problem is not only that sources present events mostly wrapped in narrative language but also that temporality is an inherent feature both (...) of the events told and of storytelling. 2 Narrativity and temporality touch upon basic metaphysical and anthropological questions, as Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, if narration is to be understood as self-explanation of a human being in whom "time" occurs as "being-in-time." 3 The following paper cannot claim to contribute to the current debate but presents Francesco Patrizi (1529-97) 4 as a Renaissance philosopher who addressed several of these problems. In discussing his conceptions of history and time, however, it is the aim of this paper only to locate these within his own philosophy. [End Page 59]One of the unresolved problems in the writings of Francesco Patrizi is the difference between his earlier contributions to the humanistic canon and his late philosophical main treatise, Nova de universis Philosophia. The earlier writings conform to the usual humanist literary topics: the political program of a città felice, the treatises on honor, the poetic fury, Petrarch (1553), and then his two dialogues on history (1560) and rhetoric (1562). The two works which followed, the Discussiones peripateticae (1571) and the Poetics (1586), show a characteristic development of humanist thinking, namely, the differentiation of purely philological from essentially philosophical literature.Patrizi's Discussiones peripateticae 5 is a polemic against Aristotle, written from a Platonic viewpoint, but his own philosophy is concealed under a mass of philological material. In an attempt that seeks to be virtually definitive, he cites passages from Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition in order to point out mistakes and contradictions. It was on this account that Giordano Bruno heaped ridicule on him, calling him "sterco di pedanti." Simply put, he tells us, Patrizi demonstrates "how like he is to an ox or an ass." One cannot say that he has understood Aristotle either well or ill, but merely that he has read him and reread him, cut him up and stitched him together, compared him with a thousand other Greek writers, friends and foes alike, and altogether gone to an immense deal of trouble, not only to no purpose whatsoever but also to our infinite disappointment. Anyone who wishes to see into just what folly and self-regarding vanity pedantic drudgery can plunge and sink should read this book. 6This was one contemporary reaction to Patrizi's attempt to explore all the possibilities of a humanistic style of literary criticism, via the comparison between Plato and Aristotle. 7The Poetics 8 is essentially divided into two quite distinct halves: Della poetica la deca istoriale and Della poetica la deca disputata. The first is a lexicon of [End Page 60] the ancient authors, categories, styles, etc., and the second a series of dissertations on the theory of poetry but these, too, with abundant reference to both ancient and contemporary literature.Finally, and entirely different in style, there is his principal work, the Nova de universis Philosophia (1591). 9 Here the philosopher systematically departs from his accustomed field, ranging from a theory of light (Panaugia), via a discussion on theological principles (Panarchia) and a theory of the soul (Pampsychia) to the Pancosmia, a treatise on cosmology and physics. Even to this work he appends a number of documentary excerpts, and there is no lack of excursions into literary history, but the main part of the work is entirely axiomatic--"methodical"--in approach and argumentative in style.These works of Patrizi represent the development of philosophical humanism in the sixteenth century, a development away from a unified presentation of the problems of the human sciences by the explicit use of the tools of literary rhetoric, and towards the research of philological sources on the one hand and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone, editors. Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xii + 270. Cloth, $75.00 Early-modern philosophy begins in the seventeenth century. This book, based on a colloquium at the Warburg Institute, London in 1997, strives at extending the limits of (...) this period into the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus "the long-standing exclusion of the Renaissance from the standard philosophical curriculum" (xii) should come to an end by acknowledging its being an integral part of early modern philosophy and its relevance for an understanding of modern thought. The distinctive element of the Renaissance was, according to the editors, humanism, understood as the revival of ancient sources from the fourteenth century on, and its impact on the shaping of modern thought by these sources.One can identify the following types of argument offered in the twelve contributions to this book: (1) Renaissance humanists mediated classical sources into the seventeenth and following centuries either by translating Greek texts into Latin (Lohr on Aristotle commentaries) or by offering new interpretations that were to become standard (Hankins on Ficino and Galileo, and Mercer on the German Platonists). (2) Ancient modes of thought, mediated through the Renaissance, shaped modern philosophy (Stone on Aristotelian and Reformed ethics, Levi on Stoicism in Justus Lipsius, Kraye on Marcus Aurelius editions, and Osler on Gassendi and Aristotle). (3) Humanist literary forms and mentalities survived in modern thought (Bianchi on dialogue, Vickers on rhetoric in Bacon, and James on 'grandeur' and scientific argument).Two papers do not fit into this scheme: in "The Theology of Lorenzo Valla," the only paper dealing directly with a Renaissance humanist, Monfasani wants to prove that "Valla was no theologian." Monfasani does this on the basis of a very narrow concept of dogmatic correctness, blaming Valla continuously for being banal, to the effect that the paper does not contribute to the topic of the book. One could well connect Valla's theological issues (free will, summum bonum, trinity, etc.) with his provocative stirring up of philosophy in general and show his influence on Protestant theology and on modern ethics.The other paper is by J. R. Milton, which is enlightening because it summarizes the prejudices against humanism in modern philosophy ("'Delicate learning,' erudition and the enterprise of philosophy"). He endorses "one of the most familiar narratives in European philosophy" (161), namely that Descartes's breakthrough was due to his total rupture [End Page 121] with the philosophical tradition, especially with contemporary humanist and scholastic thought. Thus Descartes's triumph was that of the myth of the irrelevance of history to philosophy as evident in Galileo, Locke, and even Hume. If antecedents are acknowledged, e.g., in Berkeley, then accepting that they "provide us either with an irreplaceable source of wisdom or with equally irreplaceable models for imitation, or indeed both" (167), still fails to recognize that the history of a philosophical problem is a part of that problem rather than just some general "wisdom" or a model for imitation. Of course, Milton repeats the myth of Bacon's anti-humanism, masterly refuted in this very book by Brian Vickers, and Milton believes that Valla "enthroned" "custom and example" and therefore for him "it would be difficult if not impossible to state Hempel's Raven Paradox" (169). One might wonder whether the conclusion: "All ravens are black --all non-black things are non-ravens," is the paramount of modern philosophy. But a thorough reader of Valla's logic might discover similarities to pragmatism, which are fostered by his deep criticism of language with the tools of Renaissance humanism. However, Descartes's indebtedness to Renaissance method and rhetoric is handbook knowledge today.The audience for this collection of samples are specialists either in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century philosophy, or in Renaissance thought, or even philosophers in the narrow sense of the disciplines. The latter are difficult to convince of the usefulness of historic studies or "erudite activity" (Milton... (shrink)

This book demonstrates that ancient Christian Gnosticism was an ancient form of cultural criticism in a mythological garb. It establishes that, much like modern forms of critical theory, ancient Gnosticism was set on deconstructing mainstream discourses and cultural premises. Strains of critical theory dealt with include the Frankfurt School, queer theory, and poststructural philosophy. The book documents how in both ancient Gnosticism and modern critical theories issues that used to serve as premises for discussion or as concepts relegated to the (...) realms of the “natural” and the “given” in their respective historical contexts, are transformed into objects of contention. The main aim of this book is to salvage the historical category of Gnosticism from its present scholarly disavowal, if only because Gnosticism, when read as a cultural, and not only a religious phenomenon, presents us an ancient form of culture criticism which would be hard to parallel until (post) modernity. While Hans Jonas remarked many years ago that “something in Gnosticism knocks at the door of our Being and of our twentieth-century Being in particular,” by the 21st century global world this something has already entered and lives with us. We can thus still benefit from another perspective, even if it comes from Mediterranean people who lived almost 2,000 years ago. (shrink)

When Maggie Hall died on March 3, 1999, CQ lost a valued friend and irreplaceable editorial consultant. Maggie, with her musician's gift for the sound of the written word, left her mark on every issue of the journal; and, with gratitude, this volume is dedicated to her memory. We asked Henrik Blum, Emeritus Professor in the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, who worked with her over many years, to share some of his memories of Maggie.

Emmanuel Levinas's concept of "the face of the Other" involves an ethical mandate that is presumably transcultural or, in his terms, "precultural." His essay "Meaning and Sense" provides his most explicit defense of the idea that the face has a meaning that is not culturally relative, though it is always encountered within some particular culture. Levinas identifies his position there as a "return to Platonism." Through a careful reading of that essay, exploring Levinas's use of religious terminology and the (sometimes (...) implicit) relationships of the essay to the work of other phenomenologists and of Saussure, the author seeks to clarify (1) what Levinas retains and what he rejects in returning to Platonism "in a new way," (2) the sense in which this return constitutes an "overcoming" of relativism, and (3) the nature of the phenomenological warrant that he offers for his position. (shrink)

Muss Philosophie immer eine bierernste Angelegenheit sein? Einer, der das vehement bestritten hat, war der griechische Denker Diogenes, jener berühmte Tonnen-Philosoph, der bis heute als eine der schillerndsten und originellsten Gestalten des Altertums gilt. Seine Gesellschaftskritik lebte er mit einer nachgerade schockierenden Konsequenz vor. Seine Forderung: nicht mehr und nicht weniger als der konsequente Ausstieg aus der Zivilisation. Karl-Wilhelm Weeber stellt in diesem locker geschriebenen Band den scharfzüngigen, schlagfertigen und respektlosen Philosophen und seine Ideenwelt vor.

In this follow-up to the highly successful _Ethnography Unbound,_ Michael Burawoy and nine colleagues break the bounds of conventional sociology, to explore the mutual shaping of local struggles and global forces. In contrast to the lofty debates between radical theorists, these nine studies excavate the dynamics and histories of globalization by extending out from the concrete, everyday world. The authors were participant observers in diverse struggles over extending citizenship, medicalizing breast cancer, dumping toxic waste, privatizing nursing homes, the degradation of (...) work, the withdrawal of welfare rights, and the elaboration of body politics. From their insider vantage points, they show how groups negotiate, circumvent, challenge, and even re-create the complex global web that entangles them. Traversing continents and extending over three years, this collaborative research developed its own distinctive method of "grounded globalization" to grasp the evaporation of traditional workplaces, the dissolution of enclaved communities, and the fluidity of identities. Forged between the local and global, these compelling essays make a powerful case for ethnography's insight into global dynamics. (shrink)

The authors examine the experiences and ideals of African American working-class mothers through 20 intensive interviews. They focus on the women's negotiations with racialized norms of motherhood, represented in the assumptions that legal marriage and an exclusively bonded dyadic relationship with one's children are requisite to good mothering. The authors find, as did earlier phenomenological studies, that the mothers draw from distinct ideals of community-based independence to resist each of these assumptions and carve out alternative scripts based on nonmarital relationships (...) with male partners and shared care of children. (shrink)

Since Prozac emerged on the market at the end of 1987, there has been a dramatic increase in antidepressant use and in its discussion by popular media. Yet there has been little analysis of the gendered character of this phenomenon despite feminist traditions scrutinizing the medical control of women’s bodies. The authors begin to fill this gap through a detailed content analysis of the 83 major articles on Prozac and its “chemical cousins” appearing in large-circulation periodicals in Prozac’s first 12 (...) years. They find that popular talk about Prozac and its competing brands is largely degendered, presented as manifestly gender neutral, yet replete with latent gendered messages. These are about women with neurochemical imbalances but also about the need to discipline elite female bodies, to enhance their productivity and flexibility. This new form of female “fitness” mirrors demands of the New Economy and indicates how psychiatric discourse contributes to the historically specific shaping of gendered bodies. (shrink)

Die Gründe, die C. I. Lewis [5], [6] bewogen haben, neben der gewöhnlichen Implikation eine strikte Implikation einzuführen, sind bekannt. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird aus ähnlichen Gründen eine strenge Implikation eingeführt, die jedoch einen engeren Begriff darstellt als die strikte Implikation. Mit einer Arbeit von Arnold Schmidt [7] hat meine nur geringe Berührungspunkte, da der Verfasser sich mit der strikten Implikation beschäftigt. Für diese wird ein relativ einfaches Axiomensystem angegeben und gezeigt, wie man durch geeignete Definitionen von Notwendigkeit und (...) Möglichkeit bei eventueller Hinzufügung von Zusatzaxiomen die bekannten Systeme des Modalitätenkalküls erhält. Den Hauptteil meiner Arbeit bildet die Einführung meines Implikationsbegriffs; im zweiten Teil der Arbeit komme ich dann auf dieser Basis auch zu einer Einführung der Modalitäten.Um die Art der Einführung des Kalküls zu motivieren, wollen wir kurz auf das eingehen, das uns mehr oder weniger deutlich vorschwebt, wenn wir von der strengen Implikation sprechen. Die strenge Implikation, die wir durchA → Bwiedergeben, soll ausdrücken, daß zwischenAundBein logischer Zusammenhang besteht, daß der Inhalt vonBein Teil des Inhaltes vonAist, oder wie wir es sonst ausdrücken wollen. Das hat mit der Richtigkeit oder Falschheit vonAundBnichts zu tun. So würde man die Allgemeingültigkeit einer FormelA→ (B → A) ablehnen, da sie den Schluß vonAaufB → Aeinschließt und da die Richtigkeit vonAnichts damit zu tun hat, ob zwischenBundAein logischer Zusammenhang besteht. (shrink)

It is shown that many different problems have the same degree of unsolvability. Among these problems are: THE INDUCTIVE INFERENCE PROBLEM. Infer in the limit an index for a recursive function f presented as f(0), f(1), f(2),.... THE RECURSIVE INDEX PROBLEM. Decide in the limit if i is the index of a total recursive function. THE ZERO NONVARIANT PROBLEM. Decide in the limit if a recursive function f presented as f(0), f(1), f(2),... has value unequal to zero for infinitely many (...) arguments. Finally, it is shown that these unsolvable problems are strictly easier than the halting problem. (shrink)