a Mathematicians, like Proust and everyone else, are at their best when writing about their first lovea (TM) a ] They are among the very best we have; and their best is very good indeed. a ] One approaches this book with high hopes. Happily, one is not disappointed. a ]In paperback it might well have become a best seller. a ]read it. From The Mathematical Intelligencer Mathematics is shaped by the consistent concerns and styles of powerful minds a three (...) of which are represented here. Kaca (TM)s work is marked by deep commitment and breadth of inquiry. Rota is the easiest of these authors to reada ]a delight: witty and urbane, with a clear and interesting agenda and an astonishing intellectual range. To read him is to be a part of a pleasant and rewarding conversation. Jacob T. Schwartz attacks problems ina ]computer science, mathematical economics, computer and instructional a ] No matter how slippery the problem, Schwartz manages to capture a substantial chunk of it in his mathematical net. a Mathematics Magazine This is a volume of essays and reviews that delightfully explore mathematics in all its moods a from the light and the witty, and humorous to serious, rational, and cerebral. Topics include: logic, combinatorics, statistics, economics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and applications of mathematics broadly. You will also find history and philosophy covered, including discussion of the work of Ulam, Kant, Heidegger among others. (shrink)

After World War II, quite a few mathematicians, including Mark Kac, John von Neumann, and Nobert Wiener, worked on the physical problem of phase transitions, i.e. changes in the state of matter caused by gradual changes of physical parameters such as the condensation of a gas to a liquid and the loss of magnetization of a ferromagnet above a certain temperature. The significance of these mathematicians was not so much that they brought mathematical rigor to the theoretical description of (...) the phenomena,1 but that they applied their mathematical skills and tools to solve concrete mathematical problems encountered in the microscopic modeling of phase transitions. The present paper deals... (shrink)

In 1959, mathematician Mark Kac introduced a model, called the Kac ring, in order to elucidate the classical solution of Boltzmann to the problem of macroscopic irreversibility. However, the model is far from being a realistic representation of something. How can it be of any help here? In philosophy of science, it is often argued that models can provide explanations of the phenomenon they are said to approximate, in virtue of the truth they contain, and in spite of the (...) idealisations they are made of. On this view, idealisations are not supposed to contribute to any explaining, and should not affect the global representational function of the model. But the Kac ring is a toy model that is only made of idealisations, and is still used trustworthily to understand the treatment of irreversible phenomena in statistical mechanics. In the paper, my aim is to argue that each idealisation ingeniously designed by the mathematician maintains the representational function of the Kac ring with the general properties of macroscopic irreversibility under scrutiny. Such an active role of idealisations in the representing has so far been overlooked and reflects the art of modelling. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

In 1997, I introduced the concept and the phrase “bio art”, originally in relation to my artwork “Time Capsule”. This work approached the problem of wet interfaces and human hosting of digital memory through the implantation of a microchip. The work consisted of a microchip implant, seven sepia-toned photographs, a live television broadcast, a webcast, interactive telerobotic webscanning of the implant, a remote database intervention, and additional display elements, including an X-ray of the implant. While “bio art” is applicable to (...) a large gamut of in vivo works that employ biological media, made by myself and others, in 1998, I started to employ the more focused term “transgenic art”. Republished in Ars Electronica ‘99—Life Science, ed. Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schopf, 289–296.) to describe a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to create unique living beings. Art that manipulates or creates life must be pursued with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues it raises and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life created. I have been creating and exhibiting a series of transgenic artworks since 1999. I have also been creating bio art that is not transgenic. The implications of this ongoing body of work have particular esthetic and social ramifications, crossing several disciplines and providing material for further reflection and dialog. What follows is an overview of theses works, the issues they evoke, and the debates they have elicited. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. (...) In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

Since the 1980s poetry has effectively moved away from the printed page. From the early days of the minitel to the personal computer as a writing and reading environment, we have witnessed the development of new poetic languages. Video, holography, programming and the Web have further expanded the possibilities and the reach of this new poetry. Now, in a world of clones, chimeras, and transgenic creatures, it is time to consider new directions for poetry in vivo. Below I propose the (...) use of biotechnology and living organisms as a new realm of verbal creation. (shrink)

In the fatwas given today related to whether individual or social life, the area of jawāz either has been very wide or very narrow. Those, who feature the behavior making prohibited things lawful, have nearly defined even necessity within the pragmatism on the basis of need and they keep the area in question very wide. On the other hand, those who confine the evidence of maṣlaḥa to a methodological principle, have nearly disregarded needs in solving individual and social problems. Whereas, (...) in the fiqh, the needs have been categorized as necessary/ḍarūrī, human want/ḥājī and making beautiful/taḥsīnī, and many principles have been constructed for taking stock of them. One of the principles is the lex of “Need/al-Ḥāje, general or particular, is dealt with as to meet necessity/al-Ḍarūra.” When it is determined how this lex has come out since the first period and its conditions in the context of implementation are determined, it will be come out that necessary cannot be reduced to need. In the same way, it will be come out that the maṣlaḥa is not an evidence disconnected with life. So, in the article, we will discuss the concepts of necessary and need. Then, we will show what the conditions to be considered in implementation of this lex are, what its base is in the sharia, how it has come out since the first period, and how it has been used in actual issues of the fiqh as well as in a specific example. Thus, with this study, we purpose to contribute to the solution of the actual issues of the fiqh. -/- SUMMARY The notions of need and necessity (ḍarūra, ḥāje) which are of four notions cited in the lex were individually examined and the differences between them were explained. The notions of general or particular (umūmī, khuṣūṣī), because of their using as adjective of the notion of ḥāje, were explained in the context of it. In the literature, the conception of ḥāje was used in the meaning both for all needs containing ḍarūra and just for needs apart from ḍarūra. A similar situation applies to the conception of ḍarūra. Ḍarūra having two descriptions was used in the meaning of ḥāje at times. This closure in using has caused the idea that both concepts have the same notion. In fact, from this point of view, there are the implications about that the lex is unnecessary. In this study, it is purposed that the mentioned idea and implications are wrong. As a requirement, the differences between the mentioned concepts were also examined under a separate title. -/- As for the notions of umūmī and khuṣūṣī, the scope of umūmī and khuṣūṣī ḥāje were not transparently defined and were just explained through examples in the classical period. In the context of ḥāje, the descriptions about the scope of these notions have been done after the lex took its final shape and became popular in this shape. According to these descriptions, umūmī ḥāje is the needs regarding all community. Khuṣūṣī ḥāje is the needs regarding a certain group in the community. There are interpretations as well about that individual needs must be dealt with in the scope of khuṣūṣī ḥāje. This study has same opinion. Taking into consideration of the historical development of the lex, this situation has been more clearly understood. Taking into consideration of the historical development of the lex, it is seen that the first person to make the lex a current issue is Juweynī (d. 1085). Juweynī mentioned the lex in different shapes. These combine in the point of umūmī ḥāje: “Umūmī ḥāje is dealt with as khuṣūṣī ḍarūra.” Juweynī not mentioning the notion of khuṣūṣī ḥāje in the lex shows that there is the differentiation between umūmī and khuṣūṣī ḥāje in his mind. Juweynī has a clear attitude in umūmī ḥāje while is hesitant in khuṣūṣī ḥāje. Another point which he is clear is that the needs dealt with as ḍarūra is not pure advantage and relaxation and it must have some conditions. Likewise, Gazzalī (d. 1111) and ‘Izz b. ʿAbd al-salām (d. 1262) continued the clear attitude of him. Both asserted some conditions about ḥāje dealt with as ḍarūra. But both did not mention any notation to imply these conditions in the lex. However, Ibn al-Wakīl (d. 1317) seems to want to show all ḥāje not to be dealt with as ḍarūra by adding the notation of in some situation: “Umūmī ḥāje is dealt with as ḍarūra in some situation.” In the historical development, it is seen that the first person to mention the notion of “khuṣūṣī ḥāje” in a lex is Zarkashī (d. 1392). But he mentioned this notion in another lex not in the lex in question. It is claimed that the addition of “khuṣūṣī ḥāje” to the lex was done in time of Ibn al-Wakīl or before and Zarkashī divided the lex in two as umūmī ḥāje and khuṣūṣī ḥāje. But this study proves for the mentioned claims to be unsuitable the historical development. Because, the first person to mention the notions both of umūmī ḥāje and khuṣūṣī ḥāje in one lex is Suyūtī (d. 1505): “Ḥāje, umūmī or khuṣūsī, is dealt with as to meet ḍarūra.” The lex has been fixed and become popular as it is. After this, especially in the recent period, the clear definitions have started to be done regarding what scope the notions of umūmī and khuṣūsī ḥāje in question in the lex is and the conditions about ḥāje have been dwelled on. In this study, the conditions in question have been treated under four items. In this study, this conditions have been analyzed with regard to functionality of the lex. It has been determined that the idea claimed about that ḥāje must not oppose to a special base, in the context of the first conditions especially, will cancel the functionality of the lex. The current use of the lex, because of the study’s boundaries, has been dealt with over a specific example topic. The issue of being a resident has been preferred as an example topic. Though there is an alliance about having a residence as a need, there is a conflict about the buying a residence by bank credit. While some have not allowed this by claiming that credit is against to a special base, some have allowed it on the basis of this lex. According to the second group, when its conditions are met, the buying a residence by credit is permissible. Because, residence is among essential needs. In this study, it is stated that the preferred opinion is this. However, by taking into account the spirit of sharia it is expressed that every need for having a residence cannot be dealt with as necessity. It has been emphasized that instead of accepting everything as a need dictated especially by the consumerism that elevates human desires to an uncontrollable level, identifying a suitable need for our own values is important. This study deals with the lex of “Need, general or particular, is dealt with as to meet necessity” used in the fatwās today. The study determining the historical development and break points of the lex and the conditions argued about it examines daily use of it on the basis of a current example. So the study purposes to prove how the lex must come out in solving of the other problems. The study is of important to determine the break points of the lex in its historical development. Ḥāje must be appropriate to a base in the sharia. Ḥāje must contain a hardship over ordinary hardship. Ḥāje must not be possible to eliminate by a legitimate way. Ḥāje must be realized by conclusive evidence or near it. In this study, this conditions have been analyzed with regard to functionality of the lex. It has been determined that the idea claimed about that ḥāje must not oppose to a special base, in the context of the first conditions especially, will cancel the functionality of the lex. The current use of the lex, because of the study’s boundaries, has been dealt with over a specific example topic. The issue of being a resident has been preferred as an example topic. Though there is an alliance about having a residence as a need, there is a conflict about the buying a residence by bank credit. While some have not allowed this by claiming that credit is against to a special base, some have allowed it on the basis of this lex. According to the second group, when its conditions are met, the buying a residence by credit is permissible. Because, residence is among essential needs. In this study, it is stated that the preferred opinion is this. However, by taking into account the spirit of sharia it is expressed that every need for having a residence cannot be dealt with as necessity. It has been emphasized that instead of accepting everything as a need dictated especially by the consumerism that elevates human desires to an uncontrollable level, identifying a suitable need for our own values is important. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

“Time Capsule” is a work-experience that lies somewhere between a local eventinstallation, a site-specific work in which the site itself is both my body and a remote database, a simulcast on TV and the Web, and interactive webscanning of my body. The live component of the piece was realised on November 11, 1997, in the context of the exhibition “Arte Suporte Computador”, at the cultural centre Casa da Rosas, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “Time Capsule” was carried live on the evening (...) newscast of the TV station Canal 21 and on tape by two other TV stations (TV Manchete and TV Cultura). The webscast was transmitted by Casa das Rosas.The object that gives the piece its title is a microchip that contains a programmed identification number and that is integrated with a coil and a capacitor, all hermetically sealed in biocompatible glass. The temporal scale of the work is stretched between the ephemeral and the permanent; i.e., between the few minutes necessary for the completion of the basic procedure, the microchip implantation, and the permanent character of the implant. As with other underground time capsules, it is under the skin that this digital time capsule projects itself into the future. (shrink)

A free logical analysis of singular terms couched in terms of the semantic theory of Keenan and Faltz is shown to avoid problems with both Frege's and Russell's treatments. At its heart is the proposal of Keenan and Faltz to reverse the usual mode-theoretic conception of individuals and properties, taking the latter as primitive and the former as derived therefrom. A simple extension of the notion 'property' is then shown to enable a parallel treatment of definite generics.

In this book Timmons defends a metaethical view that exploits certain contextualist themes in philosophy of language and epistemology. He advances what he calls assertoric non-descriptivism, a view that employs semantic contextualism in giving an account of moral discourse. This view, which like traditional non-descriptivist views stresses the practical, action-guiding function of moral thought and discourse, also allows that moral sentences, as typically used, make genuine assertions. Timmons then defends a contextualist moral epistemology thus completing his overall program of contextualism (...) in ethics. (shrink)

forthcoming in reisner and steglich-peterson, eds., Reasons for Belief If I believe, for no good reason, that P and I infer (correctly) from this that Q, I don’t think we want to say that I ‘have’ P as evidence for Q. Only things that I believe (or could believe) rationally, or perhaps, with justification, count as part of the evidence that I have. It seems to me that this is a good reason to include an epistemic acceptability constraint on evidence (...) possessed…1 It is a truism that adopting an unjustified belief does not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing its consequences. This truism has led many philosophers to assume that there must, at a minimum, be a justification condition (and perhaps even a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. This is the best (or only) possible explanation of the truism, these philosophers have believed. This paper explores an alternative explanation for the truism. According to the alternative explanation that I will offer, unjustified beliefs do not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing their consequences because any evidence you have in virtue of having an unjustified belief is guaranteed to be defeated. Since the lack of justification for a belief guarantees its defeat, I will suggest, we don't need to postulate a special justification condition (much less a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. Why is this important? It is important because the assumption that there must be a justification condition (or perhaps a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence places a high bar on what it takes to have evidence - such a high bar that it is difficult to see how this bar could be met in the case of basic, perceptually justified beliefs. As a result, the high bar set by this condition plays a fundamental role, I will claim, in central features of a core dialectic from the epistemology of basic perceptual belief which plays a central role in the debates between internalism and externalism, foundationalism and coherentism, and rationalism and empiricism.. (shrink)

Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature. Its footprints are virtually everywhere - in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art. Wherever we look, the world is modelled on a simple template: like a steep pile of sand, it is poised on the brink of instability, with avalanches - in events, ideas or whatever - following a universal pattern of (...) change. This remarkable discovery heralds what Mark Buchanan calls the new science of 'ubiquity', a science whose secret lies in the stuff of the everyday world. Combining literary flair with scientific rigour, this enthralling book documents the coming revolution by telling the story of the researchers' exploration of the law, their ingenious work and unexpected insights. Mark Buchanan reveals how the principle of ubiquity will help us to manage, control and predict the future. More controversially, he claims that it may well contain the beginnings of a mathematics of cultural and historical change. Every decade sees a major scientific breakthrough that has implications that go way beyond science. 'Ubiquity' is one of them. This book, the world's first on the topic, will change how we think about the world and our place in it. Chaos Disorder from order. Complexity Complexity from simplicity. UBIQUITY World has a natural 'rhythm': there is a mysterious archetypal organisation that works in the world at all levels and which gives rise to a universal pattern of change - in groups of people, things or ideas. (shrink)

A Clearly argued and easy to read defense of Karl Popper's philosophy.

Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become more studious (...) if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous. He argues that we should think of virtue and character as social constructs: there is no such thing as virtue without social reinforcement. His original and provocative book will interest a wide range of readers in contemporary ethics, epistemology, moral psychology and empirically informed philosophy. (shrink)

In The Politics of Exodus, Mark Dooley offers a lively interpretation of Kierkegaard as a precursor of the ethical and political insights of Jacques Derrida. While many connections have been forged in recent years between these two quintessentially "Continental" figures, Dooley's book argues that these affiliations run much deeper than any previous commentators have suggested. Indeed, his most controversial claim is that Kierkegaard is anything but a proponent of asocial individualism, but is one whose writings bear witness to the (...) notion of an "open quasi-community" which has driven much of Derrida's work over the past decade. In vigorously challenging conventional wisdom surrounding the place of Kierkegaard in contemporary thought and political theory, Dooley shows how powerfully postmodern and politically charged the latter's specifically 'religious' ideas are. As such, Kierkegaard ought to be read as someone who anticipated Derrida's claim that genuine responsibility in the political sphere depends upon a phophetic call for justice on behalf of the least among us. will appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and postmodernism, as well as to those with interests in ethics and politics from a Continental perspective. It will undoubtedly change the way we read Kierkegaard in the new millennium. (shrink)

This book initiates a conversation between the two traditions showing how concepts and tools drawn from one philosophical tradition can help solve problems ...

In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on (...) psychology to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

"Application of the possibilities for this renewal of temperance comes with an examination of how emotion will help moral deliberation in the clinical practice of medicine. Sir William Osler (1849-1919) and his doctrine of aequanimitas is greatly misunderstood to be the founder of emotional detachment in physician/patient relations. This book offers the most detailed look at aequanimitas in print and equates it with a normative view of temperance as a moral virtue." "For upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level students interested in ethics, (...) bioethics, and moral psychology; Oslerians; and students of Aristotle's and Aquinas' views of the moral virtues."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

According to what one might label the traditional view of proof in mathematics, proofs have the following characteristics. They are knowable a priori, the knowledge they provide is certain, rather than merely probable, they are surveyable, and, because of these other features, a mathematical proof is convincing to one who understands it. Opponents of this view typically drew their motivation not from the study of mathematics, but rather from a more general antipathy to apriority in epistemology and necessity in metaphysics (...) (Mill, Putnam and Quine all spring to mind here). Tymoczko (1979) provides a different sort of challenge, taking as its cue a development within mathematics itself, rather than being based on philosophical scruples over apriority or necessity. (shrink)

In this chapter, we address the roles that exemplars might play in a comprehensive response to epistemic injustice. Fricker defines epistemic injustices as harms people suffer specifically in their capacity as (potential) knowers. We focus on testimonial epistemic injustice, which occurs when someone’s assertoric speech acts are systematically met with either too little or too much credence by a biased audience. Fricker recommends a virtue­theoretic response: people who do not suffer from biases should try to maintain their disposition towards naive (...) testimonial justice, and those who find themselves already biased should cultivate corrective testimonial justice by systematically adjusting their credence in testimony up or down depending on whether they are hearing from someone whom they may be biased against or in favor of. We doubt that the prominent admiration­emulation model of exemplarism will be much use in this connection, so we propose two ways of learning from negative exemplars to better conduct one’s epistemic affairs. In the admiration­emulation model, both the identification of what a virtue is and the cultivation of virtues identified thusly proceed through the admiration of virtuous exemplars. We show that this model has serious flaws and argue for two alternatives: the envy­agonism model and the ambivalence­avoidance model. (shrink)

The principle of gratuitous suffering -- The value of humans and the value of animals -- The holocaust of factory farming -- Hunting -- Animal experimentation -- The law and animals -- Women and animals.

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, (...) he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question. (shrink)

This volume of new essays provides a comprehensive and structured examination of Kant's justification of norms, a crucial but neglected theme in Kantian practical philosophy.