Complexity science has proliferated across academic domains in recent years. A question arises as to whether any useful sense of ‘generalized complexity ’ can be abstracted from the various versions of complexity to be found in the literature, and whether it could prove fruitful in a scientific sense. Most attempts at defining complexity center around two kinds of notions: Structural, and temporal or dynamic. Neither of these is able to provide a foundation for the intuitive or generalized notion when taken (...) separately; structure is often a derivative notion, dependent on prior notions of complexity, and dynamic notions such as entropy are often indefinable. The philosophical notion of process may throw light on the tensions and contradictions within complexity. Robustness, for instance, a key quality of complexity, is quite naturally understood within a process-theoretical framework. Understanding complexity as process also helps one align complexity science with holistically oriented predecessors such as General System Theory, while allowing for the reductionist perspective of complexity. These results, however, have the further implication that it may be futile to search for general laws of complexity, or to hope that investigations of complex objects in one domain may throw light on complexity in unrelated domains. (shrink)

In a town near mine, a small business owner used their changeable-letter sign to wage a public protest against a variety of restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike a great man...

Despite clinical evidence of drug superiority, therapeutic modalities, like combination immunotherapy, are mostly considered cost-ineffective due to their high costs per life year(s) gained. This paper, taking an ethical stand, reevaluates the standard cost-effectiveness analysis with that of the more recent justice-enhanced methods and concludes by pointing out the shortcomings of the current methodologies.

Those who know anything about black history and culture probably know that aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists. The Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the discipline of Black British cultural studies all attest to the intimate connection between black politics and questions of style, beauty, expression, and art. And the participants in these and other movements have made art and offered analyses that wrestle with clearly philosophical issues. In _A (...) Philosophy of Black Aesthetics_, I propose to identify and explore the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life. The book will consist of eight short chapters, each of which will discuss a complex of related themes and phenomena. Every chapter will begin with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then use the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. Many people in several fields have explored various bits of the terrain that I’ll cover. But none has surveyed the entire terrain in the name of aesthetics, and none has conducted this survey from an explicitly philosophical perspective. Setting up the project in this way means that its main conclusions will come in two forms. One kind of conclusion will emerge from the way I frame the issues. The two most important points here are that the field of aesthetics ought to cover more than the study of western fine art, and that the field of black aesthetics allows and requires the sort of comprehensive and philosophical analysis that I’ll offer. Another set of conclusions will emerge from my treatment of the specific issues in each chapter. In each case the aim will be to defend, albeit briefly, some position on the major issues raised in each chapter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. TherrienJean-Paul JugeCross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. Therrien (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), xxii + 303 pp.Although Origen of Alexandria has been misrepresented and maligned since his own lifetime, allies have always arisen to defend him in his stead. Especially after the French Catholic (...) reappraisal of Origen's theology in the twentieth century, the once-dominant interpretation of Origen as a Platonist dressed in Christian garb no longer holds sway among most scholars. As Mark Therrien notes, however, traces of a "metaphysical reductionist" interpretation of Origen, propounded most notably by Adolf [End Page 295] von Harnack, still influences Origenian scholarship (89). Therrien's book vigorously opposes this line of interpretation and provides a rereading of crucial passages in Origen's On First Principles (Peri archōn) and his Commentary on John. In addition to presenting a fresh interpretation of these texts, Therrien also offers an introduction for those who are encountering Origen's theology for the first time. Rather than prefacing with biographical remarks, this book dives straight into Origen's major theological texts, allowing the reader, as Henri de Lubac put it, "to see Origen at work."Therrien operates under the principle that Origen is above all a biblical theologian whose speculation is driven primarily by his commitment to exegesis rather than Platonic presuppositions. Thus, his reading of various controversial excerpts of Origen, particularly from the Peri archōn, pays close attention to the biblical verses that Origen cites, which operate not as mere ornamentation but as the indispensable mechanics of his theology.This book is divided into eight chapters, each of which presents a "fundamental pillar" of Origen's thought: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, eschatology the soul, the world, the Cross, and deification. Drawing attention to the first two cycles that comprise Origen's Peri archōn, Therrien treats the first cycle as authoritative to Origen's system, since it is here that Origen presents the Church's teaching in a more dogmatic form prior to the zetetic approach of the second cycle. Chapter 1 highlights the anti-Valentinian polemic that contextualizes Origen's account of divine incorporeality and the possibility of genuine knowledge of God. Following the insights of Cyril O'Regan, Therrien notes that an extreme apophaticism led the Valentinian Gnostics to "assimilat[e] God to creaturely categories," as seen in their account of various deities emanating from God as if by a material transfer of substance (36). For Origen, only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are absolutely incorporeal, and it is their absolute incorporeality that separates the Trinity from all creatures. Despite this fundamental distinction between the Trinity and creation, Origen affirms that a limited knowledge of God is possible for rational creatures with the caveat that, whenever God is likened analogically to a created reality, the dissimilarity is always greater (38). Therrien contends that, unlike the Gnostics, Origen envisions the material world as the positive and even necessary means for creatures to derive knowledge of God.Chapter 2 focuses on Origen's Christology, especially the primacy of Christ's title "Wisdom," which the author accounts for by explaining the logic behind Origen's exegesis of John's Prologue and Prov 8:22. Long before the Arian controversy of the fourth century, Origen insisted that God is eternally Father and thus generates the Son from all eternity. Origen has often been characterized, however, as arguing that God's eternal status as Creator [End Page 296] necessarily entails the existence of creation ab aeterno. Therrien points out that such a reading conflates Origen's two distinct notions of creation: the foreknown existence of creatures as "sketched and prefigured" in Wisdom from all eternity and the concrete, substantial existence of creatures that begins in time (60). The investigation of Origen's pneumatology in chapter 3 shows how Ps 103 (in the Septuagint) informs Origen's notion of the Holy Spirit as Creator. For Origen, creation is not simply a past event, but is instead a dynamic process: "Created beings must, so to... (shrink)

This book is relevant for anyone involved in the practice of psychology and the social sciences more broadly: researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners. It challenges the status quo with regards to the way that psychology is done, and it offers a unified solution that encompasses both theory and methodology.

Die Frage nach den grundsätzlichen Erkenntnisgrenzen der Physik wird hier verstanden als die Frage danach, welchen Status die Aussagen der Physik über unbeobachtbare Gegenstände haben, z.B. über den Urknall, über Quarks oder über dunkle Materie. Sind die diesbezüglichen Aussagen der besten physikalischen Theorien einfach wahr oder wenigstens annähernd wahr (realistische Interpretation)? Oder wenigstens wahrscheinlich? Oder handelt es sich um bloße Modellvorstellungen, die für Vorhersagen und ggf. technische Anwendungen praktisch sind, aber keinen Wahrheitsgehalt aufweisen (instrumentalistische Interpretation)? In diesem Aufsatz werden verschiedene (...) solcher Möglichkeiten genauer vorgestellt und die wichtigsten einschlägigen Argumente für und gegen solche Positionen diskutiert. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur's Freud and Philosophy was a major reinterpretation of psychoanalysis and its philosophical significance, but Ricoeur also wrote many important articles on similar themes. This volume makes available some of his key writings on Freud and psychoanalysis: together with Freud and Philosophy, they form a major part of his philosophical legacy. What kind of science is psychoanalysis? What kind of truth does it offer and what kind of proof does it provide? What does the concrete practice of psychoanalysis (...) consist of? What can it tell us about creativity and the work of art? What is its place within our culture and how can it transform culture? What is the role of narrative in psychoanalysis? Ricoeur reading Freud: this could have been the title of this volume, in which the focus is on the actual work of Freud and not on subsequent commentaries. An open reading of intellectual integrity. A critical reading which shuns definitive positions. A reading to understand Freud. -- Publisher description. (shrink)

In attempting to form rational personal probabilities by direct inference, it is usually assumed that one should prefer frequency information concerning more specific reference classes. While the preceding assumption is intuitively plausible, little energy has been expended in explaining why it should be accepted. In the present article, I address this omission by showing that, among the principled policies that may be used in setting one’s personal probabilities, the policy of making direct inferences with a preference for frequency information for (...) more specific reference classes yields personal probabilities whose accuracy is optimal, according to all proper scoring rules, in situations where all of the relevant frequency information is point-valued. Assuming that frequency information for narrower reference classes is preferred, when the relevant frequency statements are point-valued, a dilemma arises when choosing whether to make a direct inference based upon relatively precise-valued frequency information for a broad reference class, R, or upon relatively imprecise-valued frequency information for a more specific reference class, R*. I address such cases, by showing that it is often possible to make a precise-valued frequency judgment regarding R* based on precise-valued frequency information for R, using standard principles of direct inference. Having made such a frequency judgment, the dilemma of choosing between and is removed, and one may proceed by using the precise-valued frequency estimate for the more specific reference class as a premise for direct inference. (shrink)

In this book Paul Dragos Aligica revisits the theory of political self-governance in the context of recent developments in behavioral economics and political philosophy that have challenged the foundations of this theory. Building on the work of the 'Bloomington School' created by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and Public Choice political economy co-founder Vincent Ostrom, Aligica presents a fresh conceptualization of the key processes at the core of democratic-liberal governance systems involving civic competence and public entrepreneurship. The result is not (...) only a re-assessment and re-articulation of the theories constructed by the Bloomington School of Public Choice, but also a new approach to several cutting-edge discussions relevant to governance studies and applied institutional theory, such as the debates generated by the recent waves of populism, paternalism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

Like Plato, Protagoras held that young children learn virtue from fine examples in poetry. Unlike Plato, Protagoras taught adults by correcting the diction of poets. In this paper I ask what his standard of correctness might be, and what benefit he intended his students to take from exercises in correction. If his standard of correctness is truth, then he may intend his students to learn by questioning the content of poems; that would be suggestive of Plato’s program in Republic III. (...) But his standard is more likely to be the accurate use of language; in that case he would intend his students to learn to express their thoughts clearly enough that their audience would understand what they were saying. That standard would be independent of the truth of what they are saying; and that would be a precursor to modern techniques by which we try to teach speaking and writing. Truth is not so easy to escape, however, and we shall see that Protagoras’ exercise must assume that the poet is trying to tell the truth. (shrink)

In diesem Band wird eine kritische Edition der ersten Vorlesungen vorgelegt, die der Privatdozent Paul Tillich an der Berliner Theologischen Fakultät gehalten hat. Es handelt sich dabei um folgende Vorlesungen: 1. Das Christentum und die Gesellschaftsprobleme der Gegenwart, 2. Enzyklopädie der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, 3. Religion und Kultur, 4. Religionsphilosophie. Hinzu kommt eine Hörernachschrift der Vorlesung "Religionsphilosophie". Die bisher unveröffentlichten Manuskripte aus dem in der Harvard University befindlichen Nachlaß Paul Tillichs geben uns ein differenziertes Bild des kulturtheologischen und (...) religionsphilosophischen Denkens Paul Tillichs in den ersten Jahren der Weimarer Republik. Der Band enthält einen editorischen Bericht, eine historische Einleitung sowie ein Personen- und Sachregister. Anmerkungen geben textkritische und inhaltliche Informationen zum Text. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die bisher unveröffentlichten Manuskripte der Vorlesungen, die der Privatdozent Paul Tillich vom Wintersemester 1920/21 bis zum Wintersemester 1923/24 an der Theologischen Fakultät der Berliner Universität gehalten hat. Ihr Thema ist die Geschichte des philosophischen Denkens von den Vorsokratikern bis zur Aufklärung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der altchristlichen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Tillich behandelt den traditionellen Stoff der Philosophiegeschichte nach der von ihm in seiner Idee der Geisteswissenschaft begründeten metalogischen Methode, einer theonomen Erkenntnistheorie. Die Vorlesungen zeigen Sinn und Reichweite (...) dieser Methode und stellen Konkretionen seines Programms einer Theologie der Kultur dar. (shrink)

Investigations of data-centered efforts in advocacy and activism are often cast in terms of a narrative of opposition between grassroots activists working through and with data, and corporations or institutions whose actions data might expose. The boundaries are, however, not so distinct in practice. Indeed, one outcome of successful advocacy efforts for opening big data to the public is that the activists may find themselves drawn into the institutions they critique or view as impediments in order to actualize those efforts (...) from the inside. Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic investigation of urban data initiatives inside city government, we explore the productive ambivalences of activism and advocacy that arise when those with data activist ideals find themselves operating within the government structure. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es abordar el reciente problema del nexo entre realismo y fenomenología hermenéutica desde un enfoque específico: el diálogo entre el nuevo realismo de Markus Gabriel y algunas propuestas hermenéutico-fenomenológicas alemanas que se autocomprenden en términos realistas. Afirmo la hipótesis de que es posible un diálogo productivo entre estas propuestas, basado en una comprensión mínima del realismo como fundamentación ontológica viable. Para esto, en primer lugar mostraré el sentido del actual resurgimiento del realismo en el contexto (...) de la ontología continental contemporánea, situando su recepción, crítica e integración a propósito del ámbito de la fenomenología y hermenéutica recientes. En segundo lugar, analizaré la propuesta de nuevo realismo, que está implicada en la ontología de campos de sentido de M. Gabriel. Y, en tercer lugar, reseñaré las propuestas de Günter Figal, Anton Friedrich Koch y Tobias Keiling en su fundamento realista. Mediante este trabajo comparativo, concluiré afirmando que el diálogo entre ambas corrientes comparte una comprensión realista no reductiva a la cuestión del mundo exterior, que le permite entenderlo como búsqueda de cierto criterio de objetividad para lo que aparece sensiblemente con sentido, con el propósito de esclarecer por qué las cosas reales son dependientes de la interpretación (interpretables en general), pero independientes de interpretaciones individuales. (shrink)

This collection of papers makes a step towards increased dialogue among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. The text should be significant for those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

The authors rightly critique existing social sciences approaches. However, they are too quick to dismiss the criticism that their proposed paradigm is atheoretical. Social and cognitive theories are indeed incommensurate, often due to the lack of a unifying framework. Without proper integration with theoretical frameworks, their proposal may merely produce a resource-intensive veneer of thoroughness without substantive improvements to understanding.

Digital spaces are saturated with metaphor: we have pages, sites, mice, and windows. Yet, in the world of digital textuality, these metaphors no longer function as we might expect. Martin Paul Eve calls attention to the digital-textual metaphors that condition our experience of digital space, and traces their history as they interact with physical cultures. Eve posits that digital-textual metaphors move through three life phases. Initially they are descriptive. Then they encounter a moment of fracture or rupture. Finally, they (...) go on to have a prescriptive life of their own that conditions future possibilities for our text environments - even when the metaphors have become untethered from their original intent. Why is "whitespace" white? Was the digital page always a foregone conclusion? Over a series of theses, Eve addresses these and other questions in order to understand the moments when digital-textual metaphors break and to show us how it is that our textual softwares become locked into paradigms that no longer make sense. Contributing to book history, literary studies, new media studies, and material textual studies, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History provides generative insights into the metaphors that define our digital worlds. (shrink)

This book explores noteworthy approaches to modal syllogistic adopted by medieval logicians including Abélard, Albert the Great, Avicenna, Averröes, Jean Buridan, Richard Campsall, Robert Kilwardby, and William of Ockham. The book situates these approaches in relation to Aristotle's discussion in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, and other parts of the Organon, but also in relation to the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius on the one hand, and to modern interpretations of the modal syllogistic on the other. Problems explored (...) include: Aristotle's doctrine of modal conversion, the pure and mixed necessity-moods, modal ecthesis, the pure and mixed contingency-moods, and Aristotle's use of counter-examples. Medieval logicians brought various concepts to bear on these problems, including the distinction between per se and per accidens terms, the notion of essential predication, the distinction between ut nunc and simpliciter propositions, the distinction between de dicto and de re modals, and the notion of ampliation. All these are examined in this book. (shrink)

The concept of speciesism, coined in 1970 as an analogy to racism, has been discussed almost exclusively within philosophical circles. Here, Waldau looks at how non-human animals have been viewed in the Buddhist and Christian religious traditions.

Résumé L’envoûtement médiatique est un travail de l’imagination, effectué par le consommateur, qui occupe désormais la totalité, toujours croissante, de son temps de connexion. Cet hypertravail est au fondement de la nouvelle économie capitaliste, la chronophagie, en raison de sa rentabilité sans précédent, car le consommateur produit lui-même, par son imagination, un surcroît de valeur de la marchandise, qui lui fait accepter de la payer plus cher. L’hypertravail est le premier travail payant.

This paper presents a dilemma for Matthew Kramer’s view, as defended in his _Liberalism with Excellence_. A central aim of that book is to critique existing liberal perfectionist theories, which he labels “edificatory,” and to defend a different such theory, which he calls “aspirational.” Edificatory perfectionism holds that governments ought to promote citizens’ well-being directly by inducing them to live lives that are more wholesome, cultivated, or autonomous. Aspirational perfectionism, meanwhile, holds that governments ought to promote the conditions under which (...) every citizen can be warranted in harboring a strong sense of self-respect, by promoting the occurrence of outstanding achievements within society. We first argue that Kramer’s two central arguments against edificatory perfectionism, which appeal to the value of freedom and to moral integrity, fail to establish the impermissibility of edificatory policies. His critique could be salvaged by holding that the ambit of legitimate government activity is limited to the provision and distribution of primary goods. However, we argue, second, that Kramer’s own aspirational perfectionism also runs afoul of this restriction, because his conception of warranted self-respect is not a primary good. Kramer is thus faced with a choice between upholding his objections to edificatory perfectionism and maintaining the coherence of his aspirational perfectionism. -/- . (shrink)

In developing his trademark use of “consonance” to prescribe a relationship between Christian faith and the natural sciences, Ernan McMullin drew on severaldistinctly Augustinian philosophical and theological themes during his fifty years of scholarship. Particularly prominent in McMullin’s work were an emphasis placed on Augustine’s biblical hermeneutic, which prioritized both literal and non-literal interpretive techniques, and Augustine’s epistemology of divine illumination. This paper examines several elements as part of an expository account of McMullin’s contribution toward the consonance between Christian faith (...) and the natural sciences. It also outlines McMullin’s theory of retroduction and his account of scientific realism, both of which are philosophical positions that provide additional support for consonance from an epistemological perspective. I conclude that for McMullin, consonance is a differentiated term that hints at underlying metaphysical claims without necessarily delineating the nature of those claims. (shrink)

This paper challenges Putnam's claim that his internal realism is a revival of Kant's empirical realism. I agree with Putnam that there are good reasons to revive Kant's rather neglected empirical realist doctrine. However, internal realism is not the way this should be done. At the center of the following discussion lies the important difference between Putman's "real within a scheme" model and Kant's assertion of the independent existence of empirical objects. The strategy for the paper is as follows. I (...) intend to first detail the real and important connections that exist between the analyses of experience offered by Putnam and Kant. These similarities should not be discounted. In fact, I think we can distinguish the two projects only if we first appreciate the conceptual overlap that naturally gives rise to the perceived union of the two programmes. I will then develop a representative response that is invoked commonly by Kantians who disagree with Putman's identification. This will be followed by a brief discussion concerning why this standard reply fails. I will conclude by canvassing a more powerful epistemological reason for dissociating the two programmes. (shrink)