Donald Davidson holds that thought and talk emerge together. His view is an alternative to the views that language precedes thought and that thought precedes language. His basic argument is that in order to understand a language, an interpreter has to simultaneously assign beliefs, not to mention desires and intentions, to the speaker. So bits of language can be interpreted only if thoughts are attributed to the speakers of those bits. Davidson is arguably mistaken because interpretation of nonlinguistic utterances occurs (...) before the interpretation of linguistic ones. (shrink)

When should we make use of the criminal law? Suppose that a responsible legislature seeks to enact a morally justifiable range of criminal prohibitions. What criteria should it apply when deciding whether to proscribe conduct? Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs is a philosophical analysis of the nature, significance, and ethical limits of criminalisation. The authors explore the scope and moral boundaries of harm-based prohibitions, proscriptions of offensive behaviour, and 'paternalistic' prohibitions aimed at preventing self-harm. Their aim is to develop guiding principles (...) for these various grounds of state prohibition, including an analysis of the constraints and mediating factors that weigh for and against criminalisation. Both authors have written extensively in the field. In Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs they have reworked a number of well-known essays and added several important new essays to produce an integrated, accessible, philosophically-sophisticated account that will be of great interest to legal academics, philosophers, and advanced students alike"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'.

The book opens with a description of the smooth transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian behaviour from electrons as their energy is progressively increased, ...

Part I. Concepts and contexts -- Diplomas -- Democracy -- Education as a cleavage -- Part II. Contours -- The education gap in political participation -- The meritocratization of civil society -- Political elites as educational elites -- Part III. Consequences -- The consequences of diploma democracy -- Remedying diploma democracy.

Издание содержит: Жанр интеллектуальной биографии в современной российской историографии; Кризис как риторическое псевдособытие в политической истории и др.

В монографии раскрыта одна из современных концепций теории познания и онтологии – континуалистика. Рассмотрены гипотезы становления информационного подхода в естествознании. Показаны предпосылки формирования информационной химии, заданные рядом современных концепций и моделей. Сформулирована концепция химической континуалистики, предстающей в качестве специальной дисциплинарной онтологии, которая восходит к линии «непрерывной химии нормальных состояний». Проведена демаркация онтологического, гносеологического и социологического аспектов становления информационной, континуальной химии. Книга предназначена для специалистов по философии науки и техники, теории познания и онтологии, для студентов старших курсов, магистров, аспирантов, докторантов, преподавателей (...) философских и естественнонаучных дисциплин факультетов классических, педагогических и технологических университетов. (shrink)

It is often alleged that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves a negative interpersonal response for that transgression, blaming responses such as resentment and indignation being paradigms. Aside from a few exceptions, guilt is cited in recent discussions of moral responsibility, if at all, as merely an effect of being blamed, or as a reliable indicator of moral responsibility, but not itself an explanation of moral responsibility. In this paper, (...) I argue that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves to feel moral guilt for that transgression. I argue that this alternative view offers all that the predominant blame-focused view offers, while also solving some puzzling features of moral responsibility. Specifically, it offers a compelling way to reconcile conflicting intuitions about the suberogatory, and allows those who do not understand what Darwall calls ‘second-personal’ reasons to be morally responsible for their immoral acts. (shrink)