The foreskin is a complex structure that protects and moisturizes the head of the penis, and, being the most densely innervated and sensitive portion of the penis, is essential to providing the complete sexual response. Circumcision—the removal of this structure—is non-therapeutic, painful, irreversible surgery that also risks serious physical injury, psychological sequelae, and death. Men rarely volunteer for it, and increasingly circumcised men are expressing their resentment about it.Circumcision is usually performed for religious, cultural and personal reasons. Early claims about (...) its medical benefits have been proven false. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control have made many scientifically untenable claims promoting circumcision that run counter to the consensus of Western medical organizations.Circumcision violates the cardinal principles of medical ethics, to respect autonomy, to do good, to do no harm, and to be just. Without a clear medical indication, circumcision must be deferred until the child can provide his own fully informed consent.In 2012, a German court held that circumcision constitutes criminal assault. Under existing United States law and international human rights declarations as well, circumcision already violates boys› absolute rights to equal protection, bodily integrity, autonomy, and freedom to choose their own religion. A physician has a legal duty to protect children from unnecessary interventions. Physicians who obtain parental permission through spurious claims or omissions, or rely on the American Academy of Pediatrics' position, also risk liability for misleading parents about circumcision. (shrink)

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, has been one of the two or three most influential books in the Chinese canon. It has been used by people on all levels of society, both as a method of divination and as a source of essential ideas about the nature of heaven, earth, and humankind. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Sung dynasty literati turned to it for guidance in their fundamental reworking of the classical traditions. This book explores how four (...) leading thinkers — Su Shih, Shao Yung, Ch’eng I, and Chu Hsi — applied the I Ching to these projects. These four men used the Book of Changes in strikingly different ways. Yet each claimed to find in it a sure foundation for human values. Their work established not only new meanings for the text but also new models for governance and moral philosophy that would be debated throughout the next thousand years of Chinese intellectual history. By focusing on their uses of the I Ching, this study casts a unique light on the complex continuity-within-change and rich diversity of Sung culture. (shrink)

In 2017 Ploug and Holm argued that anonymizing individuals in the Danish circumcision registry was insufficient to protect these individuals from what they regard as the potential harms of being in the registry. We argue that Ploug and Holm’s fears in each of the areas are misguided, not supported by the evidence, and could interfere with the gathering of accurate data. The extent of the risks and harms associated with ritual circumcision is not well known. The anonymized personal health data (...) supplemented with the circumcision registry will enable more precise research into the medical consequences of ritual circumcision, and allow parents to make more fully informed decisions about circumcision with minimal, if any, adverse consequences. (shrink)

“I dare to guarantee [the reader] that from this book he will acquire a clarity about and a deft drilling in individual dogmatic concepts that usually are perhaps not so easily obtained”, writes Kierkegaard at the beginning of this fascinating inquiry into the character of Adolph Peter Adler, a rural pastor and advocate of Hegelian philosophy who asserted in 1843 that he had received a special revelation from Christ but later contradicted himself in a flurry of intellectual prevarication. (...) As Kierkegaard notes, the supposed revelation looks suspiciously like Hegelian metaphysics confusedly combined with half-understood Christian concepts, and the “clarifications” Adler later sent to an ecclesiastical investigator are “evasions”, a way of changing essentially what he had earlier reported. Adler’s ever-changing story about who or what he is, his comical back-and-forth between the incompatible roles of apostle and man of letters, reveals a rootless soul that does not know itself: “he is a private, confused lyrical genius who casually exegetes incidental Bible verses ‘accordingly as these appeal to him’”. Having laid claim to a revelation, however, Adler must be called to account: either he must return to this revelation-fact with the simplicity and fervor of faith, or he must renounce his pretensions and revoke his original statement. For many years Kierkegaard labored over different versions of the book before he abandoned plans for its publication. One can understand his hesitancy. The finished product demolishes Adler’s position with the fury of a worked-up pugilist who keeps hitting his opponent after the knock-out bell has rung. Kierkegaard felt sorry for Adler and feared that his withering critique would “have too strong an effect on him”. (shrink)

Now recognized as one of the nineteenth century's leading psychologists and philosophers, Kierkegaard was among other things the harbinger of exisentialisim. In Fear and Trembling he explores the psychology of religion, addressing the question 'What is Faith?' in terms of the emotional and psychological relationship between the individual and God. But this difficult question is addressed in the most vivid terms, as Kierkegaard explores different ways of interpreting the ancient story of Abraham and Isaac to make his point. Søren Kierkegaard (...) not only ­trans­formed Protestant theology but also anticipated twentieth-century existentialism and provided it with many of its motifs. Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler–addressed to a general audience–have the imaginative excitement and intense personal appeal of the greatest literature. Only Plato and Nietzsche have matched Kierkegaard’s ability to give ideas so compellingly vivid and dramatic a shape. Translated by Walter Lowrie. (shrink)

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

The initial problem for feminist Jewish theology has been its very definition as theology. Whereas, from its beginning, Christian feminism has defined the transformation of theology as a major goal, the nature and boundaries of the Jewish feminist project have been more amorphous. In part, this is because the theological tradition to which Christian feminists react is highly systematized. The nature and methodology of theology are more open questions in Judaism. Biblical and rabbinic Judaisms embody a variety of theologies in (...) narrative, prayer, law, and textual exegesis. While in every period of postbiblical Judaism there have been influential theologies utilizing philosophical forms and categories, there is no standard way of systematizing their Jewish content. That is because Jewish philosophical theologies serve dual purposes. (shrink)

Is it a good time to be alive? Is ours a good society to be alive in? Is it possible to have a good life in our time? And finally, does a good life consist of having a good time? Are happiness and “a good life” interchangeable? These are the questions that Mortimer Adler addresses himself to. The heart of the book lies in its conception of the good life for man, which provides the standard for measuring a century, (...) a society, or a culture: for upon that turns the meaning of each man’s primary moral right – his right to the pursuit of happiness. The moral philosophy that Dr. Adler expounds in terms of this conception he calls “the ethics of common sense,” because it is as a defense and development of the common-sense answer to the question “can I really make a good life for myself?”. (shrink)

At A71/B96–7 Kant explains that singular judgements are ‘special’ because they stand to the general ones as Einheit to Unendlichkeit. The reference to Einheit brings to mind the category of unity and hence raises a spectre of circularity in Kant’s explanation. I aim to remove this spectre by interpreting the Einheit-Unendlichkeit contrast in light of the logical distinctions among universal, particular and singular judgments shared by Kant and his logician predecessors. This interpretation has a further implication for resolving a controversy (...) over the correlation between the logical moments of quantity (universal, particular, singular) and the categorial ones (unity, plurality, totality). (shrink)

According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and “Toward Perpetual Peace”. On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best suggest that Kant mentioned it as a (...) cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved “Negroes” was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant’s part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of “Negroes” as natural slaves. (shrink)

Aristotle taught logic to Alexander the Great and, through his enduring philosophical works, to Mortimer Adler as well. The one went on to conquer the world; the other to dominate the field of adult education in the United States. Now Adler instructs the world in the "uncommon common sense" of Aristotelian logic.

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his core philosophy. They also assume that racism contradicts his moral theory. In this book, philosopher Huaping Lu-Adler challenges both assumptions. She shows how Kant's raciology--divided into racialism and racism--is integral to his philosophical system. She also rejects the individualistic approach to Kant and racism. Instead, she uses the notion of racism as ideological formation to demonstrate how (...) Kant, from his social location both as a prominent scholar and as a lifelong educator, participated in the formation of modern racist ideology. As a scholar, Kant developed a ground-breaking scientific theory of race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature or Naturforscher. As an educator, he transmitted denigrating depictions of the racialized others and imbued those descriptions with normative relevance. In both roles, he left behind, as one of his legacies, a worldview that excluded non-whites from such goods as recognitional respect and candidacy for cultural and moral achievements. Scholars who research and teach Kant's philosophy therefore have an unshakable burden to take part in the ongoing antiracist struggles, through their teaching practices as well as their scholarship. And they must do so with a pragmatic attention to nonideal social realities and a deliberate orientation toward substantial racial justice, equality, and inclusion. Lu-Adler pushes the discourse about Kant and racism well beyond the old debates about whether he was racist or whether his racism contaminates his philosophy. By foregrounding the lasting legacies of Kant's raciology, her work calls for a profound reorientation of Kant scholarship. (shrink)

A ternary relation [Formula: see text] between subsets of the big model of a complete first-order theory T is called an independence relation if it satisfies a certain set of axioms. The primary example is forking in a simple theory, but o-minimal theories are also known to have an interesting independence relation. Our approach in this paper is to treat independence relations as mathematical objects worth studying. The main application is a better understanding of thorn-forking, which turns out to be (...) closely related to modular pairs in the lattice of algebraically closed sets. (shrink)

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

Kant develops a concept of savagery, partly characterized by laziness, to envision a program for human progress. He also racializes savagery, treating native Americans, in particular, as literal savages. He ascribes to this “race” a peculiar physiological laziness, a supposedly hereditary trait of blunted life power. Accordingly, while he grants them the same “germs” for perfections as he does the civilized Europeans, he allows them no prospect of actually fulfilling any such perfection. For the road to perfection must be paved (...) through industry, a condition that Kant denies to the “savages” by racializing their alleged laziness. This case will shed new light on the debated relation between Kant’s moral universalism and his racism. (shrink)

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

A testimony is somebody else’s reported experience of what has happened. It is an indispensable source of knowledge. It only gives us historical cognition, however, which stands in a complex relation to rational or philosophical cognition: while the latter presupposes historical cognition as its matter, one needs the architectonic “eye of a philosopher” to select, interpret, and organize historical cognition. Kant develops this rationalist theory of testimony. He also practices it in his own work, especially while theorizing about race as (...) a subject of natural philosophy. In three dedicated essays on this subject, he treats race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature (Naturforscher), who (as Kant puts it in the first Critique) learns from nature “like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them.” This view underwrites Kant’s use of travel reports (a type of testimony) in developing and defending his theory of race. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

In 1972, the young philosopher Peter Singer published "Famine, Affluence and Morality," which rapidly became one of the most widely discussed essays in applied ethics. Through this article, Singer presents his view that we have the same moral obligations to those far away as we do to those close to us. He argued that choosing not to send life-saving money to starving people on the other side of the earth is the moral equivalent of neglecting to save drowning children (...) because we prefer not to muddy our shoes. If we can help, we must--and any excuse is hypocrisy. Singer's extreme stand on our moral obligations to others became a powerful call to arms and continues to challenge people's attitudes towards extreme poverty. Today, it remains a central touchstone for those who argue we should all help others more than we do. As Bill and Melinda Gates observe in their foreword, in the age of today's global philanthropy, Singer's essay is as relevant now as it ever was. This attractively packaged, concise edition collects the original article, two of Singer's more recent popular writings on our obligations to others around the world, and a new introduction by Singer that discusses his current thinking. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss some problems of Kant’s logic corpus while recognizing its richness and potential value. I propose and explain a methodic way to approach it. I then test the proposal by showing how we may use various mate- rials from the corpus to construct a Kantian demonstration of the formal rules of thinking (or judging) that lie at the base of Kant’s Metaphysical Deduction. The same proposal can be iterated with respect to other topics. The said demonstration (...) will have cleared the path for such iterations. (shrink)

Die folgende Untersuchung ist eine Antwort auf die Frage nach dem Ort des 'Irrationalisten' Johann Gottfried Herder innerhalb des Kontinuums der Aufklärung. Aus dem Inhalt: I. Ästhetik als Desiderat der Gnoseologie A. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz B. Christian Wolff C. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten II. Herders Ästhetik-Kritik A. Herders Kritik der Philosophie der "Wortwelten" B. Herders Auseinandersetzung mit Baumgarten III. Herders Ästhetik-Entwurf A. Zum Konzept der Prägnanz B. Haptik und Skulptur, Optik und Malerei C. Poesie - Phantasie und Dichtungsvermögen IV. Herders Entwurf (...) einer Geschichtsphilosophie A. Der Status der Geschichtsphilosophie B. Aisthesis und Geschichte. (shrink)

This book is both a history of philosophy of logic told from the Kantian viewpoint and a reconstruction of Kant’s theory of logic from a historical perspective. Kant’s theory represents a turning point in a history of philosophical debates over the following questions. (1) Is logic a science, instrument, standard of assessment, or mixture of these? (2) If logic is a science, what is the subject matter that differentiates it from other sciences, particularly metaphysics? (3) If logic is a necessary (...) instrument to all philosophical inquiries, how is it so entitled? (4) If logic is both a science and an instrument, how are these two roles related? Kant’s official answer to these questions centers on three distinctions: general versus particular logic; pure versus applied logic; pure general logic versus transcendental logic. The true meaning and significance of each distinction becomes clear, I argue, only if we consider two factors. First, Kant was mindful of various historical views on how logic relates to other branches of philosophy (viz. metaphysics and physics) and to the workings of common human understanding. Second, he first coined ‘transcendental logic’ while struggling to secure metaphysics as a proper “science,” and this conceptual innovation would in turn have profound implications for his mature theory of logic. Against this backdrop, I reassess the place of Kant’s theory in the history of philosophy of logic and highlight certain issues that are still debated today, such as normativity of logic and the challenges posed by logical pluralism. In Chapter 1, “Kant and a Philosophical History of Logic – Methodological Reflections,” I discuss certain exegetical challenges posed by Kant’s logic corpus and argue for a “history of philosophical problems” method by which to reconstruct a Kantian theory of logic. In Chapter 2, “The Nature and Place of Logic – A History of Controversies,” I construct a partial history of philosophy of logic that revolves around the (supposedly) scientific status of logic on the one hand and its value or utility on the other. In Chapter 3, “The Making of a Scientific Logic from Bacon to Wolff,” I examine how four representative early modern philosophers – Francis Bacon, John Locke, G.W. Leibniz, and Christian Wolff – approached the four questions mentioned above. In Chapter 4, “Kant on the Way to His Own Philosophy of Logic,” I consider how Kant, in the decade between around mid-1760s and mid-1770s, navigated between existing accounts of logic until he finally found his own voice. I highlight the breakthroughs that would mark his critical departures from previous views and pave the way for the final articulation of his own view. In Chapter 5, “Logic and the Demands of Kantian ‘Science’,” I zero in on Kant’s official theory of logic in his monumental publication, Critique of Pure Reason. I foreground both what makes the theory original and what leaves it vulnerable to criticisms from post-Kantian thinkers. (shrink)

Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

La conscience africaine se voit trop souvent caractérisée par son immédiateté et son innocence. Un chef d'État français n'a-t-il d'ailleurs pas récemment déclaré aux élites intellectuelles africaines, à l'université de Dakar, que leur continent n'était pas assez entré dans l'Histoire? Au-delà de ces clichés, comment penser l'Afrique noire dans un monde où l'Occident a prétendu pendant plus de cinq siècles dominer tant les échanges commerciaux que les échanges d'idées? Dans une démarche à la fois anthropologique, historique et philosophique, Alfred (...) class='Hi'>Adler répond à cette question en s'intéressant à l'oeuvre d'Hegel. Ce penseur a, en effet, été convoqué par de nombreux philosophes africains tant pour utiliser sa dialectique libératrice que pour réfuter son discours professoral sur l'Afrique qui pâtissait de ses préjugés. Revenir vers le texte hégélien afin d'en extraire la substance intellectuelle toujours vivante et stimulante en la confrontant à l'histoire de l'Afrique, en particulier les empires de Ghana et Songhay : tel est l'objet de cet ouvrage. En se confrontant à l'"essence" de l'homme africain selon Hegel et à l'idée qu'en Afrique, il n'y a pas de place pour l'éclosion des idées, Alfred Adler nous invite à théoriser une histoire et une conscience propres à ce continent. À l'Afrique, dès lors, de s'inventer un destin. (shrink)

Leibniz, and many following him, saw the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) as pivotal to a scientific (demonstrated) metaphysics. Against this backdrop, Kant is expected to pay close attention to PSR in his reflections on the possibility of metaphysics, which is his chief concern in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is far from clear, however, what has become of PSR in the Critique. On one reading, Kant has simply turned it into the causal principle of the Second Analogy. On (...) a different reading, PSR is but the supreme principle of reason, which roughly states that, if the conditioned is given, so is the unconditioned. On my reading, PSR appears in the guises of both the causal principle and the supreme principle. This twofold specification, I argue, is key to understanding (i) Kant’s allegations that past metaphysicians failed to prove PSR, (ii) his own Critical account of the possibility of metaphysics in both of its parts (ontology and metaphysics proper), and (iii) his nuanced answer to the contentious question about the relation between physical inquiry and metaphysical reasoning about nature (both being quests for reasons). (shrink)

A ternary relation [Formula: see text] between subsets of the big model of a complete first-order theory T is called an independence relation if it satisfies a certain set of axioms. The primary example is forking in a simple theory, but o-minimal theories are also known to have an interesting independence relation. Our approach in this paper is to treat independence relations as mathematical objects worth studying. The main application is a better understanding of thorn-forking, which turns out to be (...) closely related to modular pairs in the lattice of algebraically closed sets. (shrink)

Whereas conventional analyses characterize environmental problems as examples of market failure, proponents of free-market environmentalism (FME) consider the problem to be a lack of markets and, in particular, a lack of enforceable and exchangeable property rights. Enforcing property rights alleviates disputes about, as well as the overuse of, most natural resources. FME diagnoses of pollution are much weaker, however. Most FME proponents suggest that common-law tort suits can adequately protect private property and ecological resources from pollution. Yet such claims have (...) not been substantiated. Further research is needed before the common law, or regulatory reforms grounded in common-law principles, can be seen as a viable alternative to traditional environmental regulation. (shrink)

Prologue: retrospective and prospective -- The ethics of enough -- Real and apparent goods -- Wrong desires: pleasure, money, fame, and power -- Right desires: the totum bonum and its constituents -- Fundamental errors in moral philosophy -- Necessary but not sufficient -- Epilogue: transcultural ethics.

In the 1780s through the end of 1790s, Kant made various references to slavery (in its different forms) and the transatlantic slave trade in the context of his political philosophy or philosophy of right; he thereby had opportunities to speak in favor of abolitionism, which was gaining momentum in parts of Europe, or at least to articulate a normative critique of the race-based chattel slavery or Atlantic slavery and the associated slave trade qua (legalized) INSTITUTIONS; but he did neither. Why? (...) In raising and seeking an answer to this question, I am not interested in what Kant’s normative silence about the institutions of Atlantic slavery and slave trade may tell us about him as a person (for example, whether he was blinded by his own racist prejudices or whether he was affected by some kind of cognitive dissonance). Rather, I will focus on what it may tell us about certain limitations of his political philosophy, limitations that might have made it THEORETICALLY DIFFICULT for him to figure out exactly what to DO about those institutions as entrenched political realities. (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief--that...