Frederick II neither tolerated the Schwenckfeldians in Silesia as an independent denomination nor recognized them, but, rather from a legal basis demanded that they be incorporated into the Lutheran Church. With the acknowledgement of the Schwenckfeldian movement as an independant denomination, he would have gone beyond article VII of the Instrumenta Pacis Osnabrigense, jeopardizing future peace negotiations with the House of Habsburg. However, he did promise the Schwenckfeldians that the government would respect their personal faith and conscience and would be (...) willing to protect them from attack, though limited by the reason of state which would be endangered if the fundamental articles of the Christian religion were openly denied. For if these were negated one could not discount the possibility that not only Maria Theresea but also the Protestant and Catholic subjects would take offence, causing tension and diminishing the prosperity of the State. The philosopher of Sanssouci himself held freedom of faith and conscience highly, but felt it had to be subordinate to the welfare of the state. The actual reason for he gave this assurance to the Schwenckfeldians though, was not merely to give his subjects a relative amount of freedom, but, more important, to encourage further immigration into his lands. Frederick II, who saw himself as the first servant of his state, thereby hoped to raise the density of population in relatively depopulated areas, to promote manufacturing and trade, and with it the prosperity of the state. The positive impulse for the attitude of Frederic II against the Schwenckfeldians was therefore in the last analysis based on political motives. His concession of freedom of faith and conscience to the Schwenckfeldians was in principle possible only because he had granted such freedom to all his Silesian subjects - who had to belong to one of the three confessions recognized by the Peace of Westphalia- on the condition that they would not deny reverence to God or subservience to the State. In comparison to the intolerant attitude of many contemporary states which gave their subjects no liberty of faith or conscience, the position which the state of Frederic II hat taken vis-a-vis the Schwenckfeldians in Silesia therefore signifies a great step forward. This position, however, was considerably less than the religious freedom enjoyed by those Schwenckfeldians who emigrated to Pennsylvania. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Aristotle’s discussion of chance in the Physics gives an important contribution to the theory of action put forward in the Nicomachean Ethics, in particular as regards its notion that man is himself the origin or ground of his actions. Whereas the ethical works show a tendency to explain this notion in objective and causal terms, the account of chance as the happening of the unexpected not only points to the essential finitude of all human (...) conduct, but also indicates that the concept of ground in connection with human agency must be understood in subjective terms, or in the direction of sense-giving and responsibility. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, on the (...) other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

This article argues that the Statesman should be read as a historically informed reflection on the nature and possibility of political rule, and that it presents us with a dilemma precisely in this regard. On the one hand, as indicated by the famous myth on the evolution of the cosmos, politics is only possible today, in the age of Zeus, when man no longer is like a sheep, ruled by a caring herdsman, as he used to be in the age (...) of Cronus. Instead, he has become an expert who is capable of some degree of self-rule. On the other hand, however, as a ‘technocratic’ age, the present is marked by its loss of the ‘natural’ model for statesmanship. More specifically, when politics tends to be identified with technical expertise, it becomes difficult to make sense of the very idea of political rule. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, and that this (...) implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some limitation of our self-understanding. In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology. Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm. Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

In my comments on Vardoulakis’s paper, I try to challenge the overall thrust of Vardoulakis’s argument, that Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics rests on a fundamental mistake, an inability to recognize the instrumentality, or the relation between means and ends, that is fundamental to the concept of phronēsis. Against Vardoulakis’s supposition that Heidegger for his own part is in search of a conception of action without ends, I suggest that a major aim of Heidegger’s early work is to clarify the (...) teleological structure of human action, with particular focus on the end or telos of action. Vardoulakis seems to think that Heidegger’s later critique of instrumental reason is in place already in the early work, but this is a view that I cannot share. Moreover, I believe that Vardoulakis’s own interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of action is problematic, and in particular the way he conceives of the difference between the end of action and that of production: namely, as a distinction between an instrumental, although provisional end on the one hand, and a causal or final end on the other. I devote the greater part of my comments to a critique of this distinction, such as it is used by Vardoulakis, and also to developing an alternative interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of action in a broader sense, which I hope can also contribute to making Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s ethics seem more plausible than it does on Vardoulakis’s account. (shrink)

This book introduces an account of cognitive architecture, Cognitive Pluralism, on which the basic units of understanding are models of particular content domains. Having many mental models is a good adaptive strategy for cognition, but models can be incompatible with one another, leading to paradoxes and inconsistencies of belief, and it may not be possible to integrate the understanding supplied by multiple models into a comprehensive and self-consistent "super model". The book applies the theory to explaining intuitive reasoning and cognitive (...) illusions and explores implications for epistemology, semantics, and disunity of science. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, it is been common to hear the mind likened to a digital computer. This essay is concerned with a particular philosophical view that holds that the mind literally is a digital computer (in a specific sense of “computer” to be developed), and that thought literally is a kind of computation. This view—which will be called the “Computational Theory of Mind” (CTM)—is thus to be distinguished from other and broader attempts to connect the mind with computation, (...) including (a) various enterprises at modeling features of the mind using computational modeling techniques, and (b) employing some feature or features of production-model computers (such as the stored program concept, or the distinction between hardware and software) merely as a guiding metaphor for understanding some feature of the mind. This entry is therefore concerned solely with the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) proposed by Hilary Putnam [1961] and developed most notably for philosophers by Jerry Fodor [1975, 1980, 1987, 1993]. The senses of ‘computer’ and ‘computation’ employed here are technical; the main tasks of this entry will therefore be to elucidate: (a) the technical sense of ‘computation’ that is at issue, (b) the ways in which it is claimed to be applicable to the mind, (c) the philosophical problems this understanding of the mind is claimed to solve, and (d) the major criticisms that have accrued to this view. (shrink)

In Topics I.2, Aristotle famously claims that dialectic, as a critical inquiry, affords the path to the primary principles of science. This article sets out from the assumption that Aristotle shares with Plato the suspicion that dialectical critique cannot contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge as long as it is of the Socratic, elenctic kind, since its only benefit is to refute false beliefs. But when Plato in the Theaetetus has Socrates act as a midwife to his fellow men, (...) he offers an alternative picture of dialectical critique that also, it is argued, captures the spirit of Aristotle’s dialectical work, especially as pursued in the Metaphysics. In Aristotle, however, the mission of Socratic midwifery, to help other individuals give birth to knowledge that was already innate to them, is transformed into a project that centers on the liberation of the as yet dormant and inarticulate truth of the tradition. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, on the (...) other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

Since the seventeenth century, our understanding of the natural world has been one of phenomena that behave in accordance with natural laws. While other elements of the early modern scientific worldview may be rejected or at least held in question—the metaphor of the world as a great machine, the narrowly mechanist assumption that all physical interactions must be contact interactions, the idea that matter might actually be obeying rules laid down by its Divine Author – the notion of natural law (...) has continued to play a pivotal role in actual scientific practice, in our philosophical interpretations of science, and in their its metaphysical implications. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, the philosophical community has witnessed the emergence of an important new paradigm for understanding the mind.1 The paradigm is that of machine computation, and its influence has been felt not only in philosophy, but also in all of the empirical disciplines devoted to the study of cognition. Of the several strategies for applying the resources provided by computer and cognitive science to the philosophy of mind, the one that has gained the most attention from philosophers (...) has been the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). CTM was first articulated by Hilary Putnam (1960, 1961), but finds perhaps its most consistent and enduring advocate in Jerry Fodor (1975, 1980, 1981, 1987, 1990, 1994). It is this theory, and not any broader interpretations of what it would be for the mind to be a computer, that I wish to address in this paper. What I shall argue here is that the notion of symbolic representation employed by CTM is fundamentally unsuited to providing an explanation of the intentionality of mental states (a major goal of CTM), and that this result undercuts a second major goal of CTM, sometimes refered to as the vindication of intentional psychology. This line of argument is related to the discussions of derived intentionality by Searle (1980, 1983, 1984) and Sayre (1986, 1987). But whereas those discussions seem to be concerned with the causal dependence of familiar sorts of symbolic representation upon meaning-bestowing acts, my claim is rather that there is not one but several notions of meaning to be had, and that the notions that are applicable to symbols are conceptually dependent upon the notion that is applicable to mental states in the fashion that Aristotle refered to as paronymy. That is, an analysis of the notions of meaning applicable to symbols reveals that they contain presuppositions about meaningful mental states, much as Aristotle's analysis of the sense of healthy that is applied to foods reveals that it means conducive to having a healthy body, and hence any attempt to explain mental semantics in terms of the semantics of symbols is doomed to circularity and regress. I shall argue, however, that this does not have the consequence that computationalism is bankrupt as a paradigm for cognitive science, as it is possible to reconstruct CTM in a fashion that avoids these difficulties and makes it a viable research framework for psychology, albeit at the cost of losing its claims to explain intentionality and to vindicate intentional psychology. I have argued elsewhere (Horst, 1996) that local special sciences such as psychology do not require vindication in the form of demonstrating their reducibility to more fundamental theories, and hence failure to make good on these philosophical promises need not compromise the broad range of work in empirical cognitive science motivated by the computer paradigm in ways that do not depend on these problematic treatments of symbols. (shrink)

Many virtue epistemologists conceive of epistemic competence on the model of skill —such as archery, playing baseball, or chess. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: epistemic competences and skills are crucially and relevantly different kinds of capacities. This, I suggest, undermines the popular attempt to understand epistemic normativity as a mere special case of the sort of normativity familiar from skilful action. In fact, as I argue further, epistemic competences resemble virtues rather than skills—a claim that (...) is based on an important, but often overlooked, difference between virtue and skill. The upshot is that virtue epistemology should indeed be based on virtue, not on skill. (shrink)

Epistemic constitutivism (EC) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. (...) I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are ‘reason-giving’ only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what’s special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard-governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has tended to treat.

The theme of the philosopher as therapist dominates Nietzsche's entire opus, from his earliest writings to the Zarathustra period and beyond. Nietzsche wishes to hasten the coming and future sanctification of a new type of synthetic human being, and his entire teaching is shaped by his own struggles against illness.Yet few Nietzsche scholars have paid this crucial therapeutic element of his thought sufficient attention. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field is composed around the Nietzschean insight, which (...) has its roots in the Hippocratic tradition of ancient medicine, that beliefs, behaviours, ideals and patterns of striving are not things for which individuals or even cultures are responsible. Rather, they are symptoms of what an individual or culture is, which symptoms require diagnostic interpretation and evaluation. The book identifies three principal approaches in Nietzsche's philosophy: diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic. Each essay takes up this essential insight into Nietzsche's therapeutic philosophy from a different perspective and collectively they reveal an array of insightful approaches to self-induced enhancement, for both individuals and cultures. (shrink)

Shaftesburys Dialog «The Moralists», ein Schlüsseltext der englischen Literatur und Ästhetik des frühen achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, ist bisher nur ideengeschichtlich interpretiert worden. Die vorliegende Studie zeichnet anhand weitgehend unbekannter Quellen aus dem Shaftesbury-Nachlass zum erstenmal die ebenso langwierige wie komplizierte Genese und Druckgeschichte des Textes nach. Shaftesburys hier erstmals veröffentlichte Briefe und Anweisungen an den Drucker und Verleger John Darby werfen neues Licht auf den Wandel der Typographie und der Buchgestaltung in der Epoche des englischen Neoklassizismus.

Most contemporary philosophers of mind claim to be in search of a 'naturalistic' theory. However, when we look more closely, we find that there are a number of different and even conflicting ideas of what would count as a 'naturalization' of the mind. This article attempts to show what various naturalistic philosophies of mind have in common, and also how they differ from one another. Additionally, it explores the differences between naturalistic philosophies of mind and naturalisms found in ethics, epistemology, (...) and philosophy of science. Section 1 introduces a distinction between two types of project that have been styled 'naturalistic', which I call philosophical naturalism and empirical naturalism . Sections 2 to 6 canvass different strands of philosophical naturalism concerning the mind, followed by a much briefer discussion of attempts to provide empirical naturalizations of the mind in Section 7 . Section 8 concludes the essay with a consideration of the relations between philosophical and empirical naturalism in philosophy of mind, arguing that at least some types of philosophical naturalism are incompatible with empirical naturalism. (shrink)

Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to that question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, playing the piano, or (...) archery, creditworthy moral success is a matter of getting things right by way of manifesting a relevant skill. My main aim in this paper is to bring out an important structural difference between moral creditworthiness and creditworthiness in sports, arts, and craft, undermining attempts to use examples of the latter as a model for understanding the former. As an alternative, I propose an account of morally creditworthy action, according to which such action is a matter of manifesting virtue, not skill—a claim that's based on an important, but underappreciated, difference between the sorts of excellences constituting virtues and skills. The paper thus contributes to a more nuanced picture of normative achievements across different domains of human agency, highlighting largely overlooked structural dissimilarities among them. (shrink)

"This is a Ph.D. Dissertation. In the work of Martin Heidegger, the quest for the proper philosophical beginning is motivated by an awareness of the ""historical"" nature of thought: its dependency upon the beginning of philosophy in the historical sense. Th".

In this article, the author challenges Heidegger’s verdict on Aristotle as the founder of the so-called vulgar notion of time, according to which time can be accurately represented as a sequence of nows. Against Heidegger, who follows the traditional insistence on the now as the number of time, she argues that it is only when we take seriously Aristotle’s comparison between the now, on the one hand, and the point and the limit, on the other, that we will understand his (...) idea that the now actualizes our experience of time, namely, as it delimits the past from the future, a delimitation that is simultaneously a linking together of these two temporal dimensions. Far from being an objective point within the flow of time, the now is an idealized point of view from which the temporal horizon of past and future is opened up to us. In this sense, the now is the ultimate presupposition of our experience of time. (shrink)

Chalmers and others have argued that physicalist microexplanation is incapable of solving the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. This article examines whether evolutionary accounts of the mind, such as those developed by Millikan, Dretske and Flanagan, can add anything to make up for the possible short falls of more reductionist accounts. I argue that they cannot, because evolutionary accounts explain by appeal to a selectional history that only comes into the picture if consciousness can first arise due to spontaneous mutation in (...) some individual organism, and explaining this emergence of consciousness from DNA and embryology calls for precisely the kind of structurally-based supervenience account that Chalmers et al. have objected to. Not only does an evolutionary account not succeed where a reductionist account fails; the evolutionary account presupposes the possibility of a reductionist account. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: A Contribution to Recent Discussion* ST. THOMAS AQUINAS accepted and consistently defended Boethius' definition of person: "persona est substantia individua rationalis naturae." St. Thomas' analysis of this definition necessarily involves metaphysical questions because of the implications of the terms " substance" and " nature" and moreover it manifests the inescapahle imprint of the theological problematics which surrounded the issue (e.g. the (...) Trinity and the hypostatic union). Both of these influences, metaphysical and theological, have engendered problems of interpretation and criticism. Contemporary discussions of person largely either continue the scholastic controversies or adopt a modern perspective from which to expose apparent contradictions in St. Thomas' doctrine. The purpose of this article will be limited to a consideration of the metaphysical problems concerning the relationship between individual substance, universal, nature, and existence. It is hoped that such a clarification will resolve not only the neoscholastic controversies, but also some of the contemporary problems. I. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION OF PERSON AND ST. THOMAS' EXPLANATION A. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION Boethius develops his definition of person in the Liber contra Eutychen et N estorium after a careful consideration of na- * I have to thank cordially Father Brian Shanley, 0.P. for having revised completely this English version, devoting much time and energy to fit the text and the footnotes to the style of The Thomist. He adapted the version in good style and verified the Latin quotations. 435 436 HORST SEIDL ture and substance.1 In the first chapter he sets out to define nature and discovers four possible meanings. The first and broadest definition, embracing both substances and accidents, describes nature as belonging to all things which by their being can be in some way or another be comprehended by reason: "natura est earum rermn quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." A second definition, comprising substances alone both corporeal and incorporeal, describes nature as anything that can effect or suffer something: " natura est vel quod facere vel quod pati possit." A third sense, taken from the Aristotelian analysis of the motion of natural substances, describes nature as the immanent principle of movement : "natura est motus principium per se et non per accidens." Finally, nature can also refer to the formal cause which provides the specific difference: " natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia" (cf. ST Ia. 29, I ad 4). It is this last sense which is most important. In sum, "nature" is a broad term encompassing both composite beings and their causes. Boethius continues in chapter two by first narrowing the relevant sense of nature to substances (thus excluding accidents ) and then presenting a complete division of substances. The major distinction is between corporeal substances and incorporeal substances. Corporeal subdivides further into inanimate and animate, with animate dividing. into insensitive and sensitive and the latter dividing finally into irrational and rational. Incorporeal subdivides into rational and irrational (the life-principle of animals), with rational incorporeal substances being further distinguished into those that are immutable by nature (the Creator) and those that are not so by nature (the human soul and angels) but may become so by virtue of the immutable substance. Boethius then argues that person cannot be affirmed of inanimate beings or irrational animals. A 1 All citations from Boethius are taken from the Loeb text in Boethius: Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918). THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 437 final distinction of :substance into universal and particular leads to the conclusion that person must refer to an individual. Thus the background is set for the definition of person which opens the third chapter: " naturae rationalis individua substantia." Person must be an individual substance of a certain nature, namely rational, which nature accounts for the form or specific difference of the particular substance (the fourth meaning of chapter 1). The connection of this definition with Aristotle 's definition of man as a rational animal is unmistakable. It should also be noted that this definition of person is applicable not only to man, in whom the rational nature is not identical with his substance, but also to the... (shrink)

Fifty years ago Hartman studied the barrier transmission time of wave packets (J Appl Phys 33:3427–3433, 1962). He was inspired by the tunneling experiments across thin insulating layers at that time. For opaque barriers he calculated faster than light propagation and a transmission time independent of barrier length, which is called the Hartman effect. A faster than light (FTL or superluminal) wave packet velocity was deduced in analog tunneling experiments with microwaves and with infrared light thirty years later. Recently, the (...) conjectured zero time of electron tunneling was claimed to have been observed in ionizing helium inside the barrier. The calculated and measured short tunneling time arises at the barrier front. This tunneling time was found to be universal for elastic fields as well as for electromagnetic fields. Remarkable is that the delay time is the same for the reflected and the transmitted waves in the case of symmetric barriers. Several theoretical physicists predicted this strange nature of the tunneling process. However, even with this background many members of the physics community do not accept a FTL signal velocity interpretation of the experimental tunneling results. Instead a luminal front velocity was calculated to explain the FTL experimental results frequently. However, Brillouin stated in his book on wave propagation and group velocity that the front velocity is given by the group velocity of wave packets in the case of physical signals, which have only finite frequency bandwidths. Some studies assumed barriers to be cavities and the observed tunneling time does represent the cavity lifetime. We are going to discus these continuing misleading interpretations, which are found in journals and in textbooks till today. (shrink)