This paper deals with the interpretation of the Mechanics chapter of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It is aimed at clarifying the procedure Kant invokes for the transcendental determination of the quantity of matter in mechanical respect. Kant’s intention is to ground mass measurement on the moving force that matter possesses by virtue of its motion, and that moving bodies display by setting other bodies in motion. An important issue in this context concerns the role of gravitation as compared (...) to mechanical processes in the narrow sense of “pressure and impact”. (shrink)

This article considers aspects of Philippa Foot’s theory of naturalist realist metaethics. It addresses the question of whether human nature can function as a direct source of normativity or whether it is more of a metanormative framework that is open to norm-creation based on the agent’s rational volitional activity. This gives rise to the question of whether the source of moral normativity is not in fact the agent’s practical rationality since natural facts may conflict and therefore cannot constitute a (...) direct guide for the articulation of moral norms. Our interpretation is based primarily on Foot’s Natural Goodness, and identifies the tensions between the broader and narrower meanings of the conception of human nature. In the first step we discuss the broader meaning of human nature. In the second we consider the narrower meaning of human nature, practical rationality. In conclusion we show that in its broader sense human nature cannot function as a proper source of moral normativity; rather, it is a metanormative framework for making moral judgements. Within this framework practical rationality operates as human nature in the narrower sense and only it can be considered the source of moral normativity. (shrink)

I have suggested that in looking for shared values which were seen as having force for people's conduct, the SCAA Forum was in effect looking for a shared morality. This does not yet show that a shared understanding was achieved on what kind of thing morality is Ð no such agreement was explicitly aimed at — but it does point in the direction in which such an agreement might be found. The key is to be found, I think, in the (...) idea that morality has a social function, and in a certain understanding of what that function is. (shrink)

I have suggested that popular demands for moral education, and beliefs that it can be effective, for instance in reducing violence, presuppose some appropriate and shared conception of morality and moral education. But the existence, and even the possibility, of such a shared conception is often now called into question. The focus is very often on diversity within a plural society. And I have myself argued before that not only do we have differences of opinion over whether certain sorts of (...) conduct are morally right or wrong, we also have different conceptions of what it means to call something morally right or wrong, and even disagreement over whether such terminology has any useful role at all. (cf. Haydon, 1995; 1999c; 1997 Chapter 6; White, 1990, Chapter 3; Williams, 1985, Chapter 10.). (shrink)

From its very beginning the Royal Society was regarded by many, if not most, of its founders as centrally concerned with practical improvement. How could it be otherwise? The study of nature was not only a pious act in and of itself – a reading of the book of nature – but it was also the way in which God's Providence would provide discoveries for the relief of man's estate. The early ideologues of the Society, such as Robert (...) Boyle and Thomas Sprat, continually returned to the usefulness of natural philosophy in that sense. They were no doubt stimulated in this not only by the narrow purpose of gaining support for their novel institution but also by quite genuine beliefs about the role that natural philosophy could play in creating a stable political and economic order through which prosperity might increase and the years of civil war be left behind. However, by the late seventeenth century the Society, especially after the demise of the history of trades programme, became much more a deliberative forum than a projective organization. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant searched for a universal concept of reason different from the understanding and offered the short formula “the faculty of principles”. I will argue that this is only one and not the most pertinent and general mark of the concept of reason. There are more compelling short expressions in Kant’s Reflexionen, the third Critique and/or in the reception of Kant’s works: “the faculty of ideas” or reason in the narrower sense. The latter narrows down the (...) logical sphere of the concept of rational faculties, and the former contains reason’s most basic mark: ideas. The first part of this article will focus on preliminary remarks on Kant’s philosophical methodology and conceptual analysis. The second part will analyze the division of the logical sphere of the concept of reason by nine necessary and coherent marks. These marks are centered around the concept of ideas, which allows for an ideas-first understanding of reason and preference for the formulas the faculty of ideas and reason in the narrower sense. The article will end with an “imperfect definition” of reason based on those nine marks. (shrink)

The article uses typological understanding of the Lord's Supper to analyze Old Testament text. Intertextual hermeneutics, which connects the lexical units of various parts of texts for comprehensive understanding allowed to see an echo of the Eucharist in Old Testament. One of the most expressive prototypes or typos of the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament is the idea of the Covenants and changing of the covenants. The author analyzes the concept of testament and all cases of using this term (...) in Old Testament texts, and concludes that the word “berith” in the biblical text cannot be identified only with the concept of contract, agreement or union. Also, it cannot be identified only with the concept of law, command or statute. The Testament should be taken holistically, combining different meanings of this concept. In this way, the “berith” describes the idea of a specific agreement, which has the character of a bloody decree. Therefore, on the basis of biblical ideas, the concept of a covenant in a broad sense can be presented as a relationship between God and people, which can be described as a God-initiated contract of a personal-corporate nature, which provides for mutual obligations. This kind of relationship is characterized by a fixed immutability and is accompanied by signs, evidence and a special memory procedure. Therefore, in the Old Testament period, we can confidently talk only about the Covenant with Noah, Abraham and Moses, who were revealed and showed their inner, spiritual essence in the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Only in these cases did the signs of covenant relations in the narrow sense be revealed, namely: God's initiative, personal-corporate relations, the invariability and obligatory commemorativeness are caused. Other ancient covenants do not contain a complete religious component and are not eucharistic prototypes. An important sign of the typos of the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament is the blood of the covenant. All covenants were accompanied by the shedding of sacrificial blood, which indicated the sacrifice of Christ and its echo in the Eucharistic cup. This emphasizes the difference between “berith” as a covenant and “berith” as a commandment or statute. Bloodless covenant are not testaments in the full biblical sense of the word. The idea of a testament as a bloodline expresses the highest seriousness of mutual testamentary obligations. That is, a Testament is an inviolable contract, the non-fulfillment of which threatens death. An additional feature of the testament, as shown in the article, was the theophanic Presence. It manifested itself not only at the time of the covenant, but also in an invisible way throughout its validity. The establishment of a covenant relationship has always been associated with theophany and could not have been otherwise, because the covenant is always personal, so God considered it necessary to show a personal presence at this crucial time. The author proves that in all pre-Christian covenants there is a single prototype line that was revealed in Jesus Christ. By the faith and merit of the ancestor, his descendants enter into the covenant and enjoy the benefits and blessings of their predecessor, as well as inherit all his obligations to God. The people of the New Testament enjoy all the benefits and advantages not because of their own merits, but only because of the merits of Jesus. The sign of entering into the Covenant of Jesus is water baptism, which, as an external action, plays the role of a spiritual sign that indicates spiritual circumcision as a clipping of all sins. Thus, the intertextual analysis of the New Testament and Old Testament texts revealed the typos of Lord's Supper and shows the Christ as a single one, who determines the conditions of the covenants and makes it valid. (shrink)

I argue that Kant has developed a broad systematic account of the architectonic functionality of pure reason that can be used and advanced in contemporary contexts. Reason, in the narrow sense, is responsible for the picture of a well-ordered universe of science consisting of architectonic ideas of science, sciences and parts of sciences. In the first section (I), I show what Kant means by the architectonic ideas by explaining and interrelating the concepts of (a) the faculty of reason, (...) (b) ideas (as principles), (c) method, and (d) sciences of reason. Thereafter (II), I think through his holistic understanding of science and scientific progress and suggest differentiating between four levels of use of architectonic ideas, drawing on the metaphor of a well-structured universe as imagined by Kant in his work on the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. I also claim that each possible idea of reason can be (apart from its primary function) additionally regarded as a fourth-level architectonic concept when explicitly conceived as an object of (e. g. philosophical) studies, i. e. from a mere methodological perspective. In the final section (III), I unveil the potential of Kant’s theory by pointing out how this architectonic methodological function of pure reason is tacitly used in Karl-Otto Apel’s contemporary philosophical research programme. You can get the official version of the paper and the whole issue (open access) by clicking on the attached link. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beginning in the 20s of the last century, historical research into Eiximenis's life and writings has thrown into relief his contribution to the language and political ideas of the kingdoms and towns of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. Of fundamental importance has been the work of medievalists from North America, and in particular that of Canadian scholars during the last decades of the twentieth century.More recently, a number of studies have (...) underlined the decisive contribution of Eiximenis – a representative of a European textual tradition among friars of the Minor Observance that extended from Oxford to Florence – to the establishment of a system of ethical values for the economic sphere and for trading practices that continued to be developed by members of the Franciscan Order throughout the high middle ages and early modern period.As a follow-up to these studies, I believe that a program of textual analysis and systematic investigation of Eximenis's work could provide further information about the range and significance of his political thinking, based as it was on applying, in typically Franciscan fashion, experimental observation to gain an understanding of the nature both of the societas and of the market, the latter being thought of as a defining expression of civic institutions in Western Europe. This same experimental approach can be found in Franciscan thinking from the catalan-aragonese realm not only in the work of Arnau de Vilanova and Ramon Llull, but also in that of Pere Tomas and Anselm Turmeda, two figures fundamental to the preparation and political engagement of the Friar of Girona.1. The concept of contractIn Eiximenian texts, the communitarian dimension is defined as one that is of necessity based on contract. It is expounded in the long opening section of the Dotzè del Crestià, where Eiximenis outlines the political value of the civitas, as well as setting out the elements that constitute civic life.Borrowing from Aristotle's discussion in the First Book of the Politics , the Franciscan friar strongly affirms that one of the principal reasons behind the civitas is the "necessitat de contractes," the need for contracts. Going far beyond the highly qualified analysis of money and coinage set out by the Greek philosopher, Eiximenis here maintains that the aims of the community is the profit that the citizenry realises by means of different forms of exchange, through buying and selling, through contracts, and through trading. Moreover, that the binding nature of trading-contracts is a matter of concern not of the city in the narrow sense, but of each and every kind of human social organization.Even before contract-law, or, better said, conventional or foral procedure, Eiximenis views the idea of the contract as an essential part of the ethical and organizational principles of living as a community, the essence of the civitas. And it is of great significance that when he is discussing the value and function of money, Eiximenis chooses to call the sorts of exchange that to-day we term economic or financial les civils conmutacions, or exchanges between citizens.These lexical hints allow us to capture the strength of meaning and value, the ethical perspective by which the Gerundense defines the inextricable union of the market and civic society. But it is not only an analytical perspective, significant as that is, that unites market and civic ethics; we are presented with a value judgment of contract and economic exchange as elements that determine the very idea of civilitas.The "bona civilitas," an expression that can be roughly translated as "good civic culture," is in fact founded on a concept of economic ethics that has as its distinguishing feature the logic of profitable exchange, of the distribution of that profit, of contractualization, and of the circulation of goods and money. It is characterised by redefining the anti-value of avaritia as a real.. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce the narrow-sense and wide-sense conceptions of the community of inquiry (Sprod, 2001) as a way of understanding what is meant by the phrase ‘converting the classroom into a community of inquiry.’ The wide-sense conception is the organising or regulative principle of scholarly communities of inquiry and a classroom-wide ideal for the reconstruction of education. I argue that converting the classroom into a community of inquiry requires more than following a specific procedural (...) method, and, therefore, that the wide-sense conception must inform the narrow-sense community of inquiry, as it provides the pedagogical guidelines for classroom practice. This is followed by a discussion on the dual role of the teacher as facilitator and co-inquirer in mediating between the two conceptions of the community of inquiry. Finally, I look at three different interpretations of John Dewey’s educational theory and practice that underpins philosophy for children. I conclude that without an understanding of the relationship between the two conceptions of the community of inquiry to guide the larger aims of an education that supports democratic ways of life, the teacher’s role remains unclear. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE REDUCTION OF ESSENCE IN THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQillNAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL MARTIN T. Wooos Loyola, Marymount University Los.Angeles, California 'TIRE PURPOSE of this article is to address, first of all, the iissue of whether St. Thomas anticirp1ated the pheomenological pI1otb~em in both an epistemological and metaphysica,l sense, and subsequently articulated its solution he:£ore the investigations of modern phenomenofogists began. The secondary purpose of this writing is (...) to reveal the anomrulies :£aiced by the phenomenologist Edmund Hussel'll, who, in noting the same problem earlier ·addressed by Aquinas, attempted to discover the narrow bridge between reality and knowledge and £ailed to find it. This effort will he amply documented from his Gottingen lectures published 1 as The Idea of Phenomenology late in his career. Thomas, on the contrary, seemed to find this bridge with relative ease.and went on to clarify with admira:hle lucidity the steps to be taken in traversing it, paxticularly in the latter part of his little work On Being and Essence (De Ente et Essentia), written for the Dominican students 1at Naples rubout U55. Aquinas and Essence Absolutely Coniidered After analyzing in some detail the notion of species, genus·and difference Aquinas states in his work On Being and Essence thaJt sruoh universal notions could not be said to belong in.the strict sense to real existent individuals, an in·sight the Blatonists had highlighted from antiquity by assuming that universals exist independently of thought. "In this way" 443 444 MARTIN T. WOODS Aquinas says, "the genus a.nd species would nut be predicated of th~s individual; for,it cannot be said that Socmtes is what is separated from him," 1 n.a.mely, the universal natures of man and animal. However, in.spite of the pmblem of ontologism the Platonists eventually CTeated, they were the first to clarify the distinction tha.t still sepa,rates sense experienoe f·rom universal notions in the thinkiing of philosophers today. In order to close the yawning epistemologiorul chasm that resulted, Plato, the architect o[ this separation, had gone on to claim that the world of ideal forms or unive'l's·al notions somehow i11umined the wodd of sense appearances a;nd gave them meaning. It is ;at this point that Aquinas, unlike his master in philosophy, Aristotle, parts company comp~etely with the Platonists and goes on to question the immediate relation of formal universals to the understanding o[ parlicula!'.s. "Nor further, would this sepamted something (e.g. the species man) be of any use in knowing this singular (i.e. Soorates the individual man)." 2 This somewhat unexpected statement of Aquinas seems to put him at odds with the position of Aristotle on whom he relied so heavily for his classic analysis of predicrubles. Why this striking deviiation from the ·authority of the philosopher who states quite specifically in the Categories that while the univerrsrul is not in any way present in things, it·is nevertheless predicable of them? Aqumas on the contmry seems to suggest that his notion of a " predicable " is a bit more 1 ahstmct than Aristotle's. It was at this point in the De Ente et Essentia that Aquinas laid a firm basis :for trhe ela:bo.ootion of a phenomenological reduction without lrubeling it as such. In order to accomplish this purpose, Aquinas decided to clarify.an important distinction between the essence conceived as " a universal " iand the " essence absolutely considered." 1 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia (52) trans. by Joseph Bobik, On Being and, Essence. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965. p. 119. 2 Ibid,. THOMAS AQUINAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL 445 " Now a natlliVe or essence signified as a whole," he states, " can be considered in two ways. In one way it can be considel.1ed according to its proper content, and this is an absolute oonsidemtion of it. And in this way, nothing is true of it except what :belongs to it as such. For e:immple, to man as man belong rational animal, and whatever else falls in ills definition." 3 Regarding this first me8!Iling of essence, he then goes on to say, "1and... (shrink)

"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of public reason. (...) Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice. (shrink)

With a few exceptions, the relation of modern science to medieval natural philosophy is a question that has been largely shunned in the Neothomistic era, in favor of a preoccupation with establishing a “realist metaphysics” that has no need for science in the modern sense nor, for that matter, any need for natural philosophy either. Fr. Ashley’s work confronts this narrow preoccupation head-on, arguing that, in the view of St. Thomas himself, there can be no human wisdom which (...) leaves aside scientific development. Ashley even goes so far as to point the way tothe possible development of philosophy beyond the terms of the realist / idealist framework in which Neothomism had its say. (shrink)

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal moral (...) standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

Natural theology is the branch of theology and philosophy that attempts to gain knowledge of God through non-revealed sources. In a narrower sense, natural theology is the discipline that presents rational arguments for the existence of God. Given that these arguments rarely directly persuade those who are not convinced by their conclusions, why do they enjoy an enduring appeal? This article examines two reasons for the continuing popularity of natural theological arguments: (i) they appeal to intuitions that humans robustly (...) hold and that emerge early in cognitive development; (ii) they serve an argumentative function by presenting particular religious views as live options. I conclude with observations on the role of natural theology in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This essay comprises two chapters from the first part of Bollnow’s book on moods, namely the second chapter on the concept of Stimmung and the third chapter on Stimmungen as the sustaining foundation of the soul. It argues that moods constitute the simplest and most original form in which human life comes to know itself. Moods are understood as a specific harmony between, first, the inner and outer world; second, the states of the body and the soul; and, third, the (...) individual faculties of the soul. Moods differ from emotions in the narrow sense, which are always intentionally directed towards a specific object, whereas moods do not have any specific object; they are states of being, structuring and coloring human existence as a whole. Hence, no system of moods is provided, but their extensive diversity is indicated. Furthermore, transient, unsteady, or “moody” moods are distinguished from persistent or basic moods. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s two famous claims that man is by nature a political animal, and that he is the only animal who possesses speech and reason (logos). Aristotle’s thesis that man is by nature a political animal is inextricably linked with his thesis that the polis exists by nature. This paper examines the argument that Aristotle develops in Pol. I. 2 to support these two theses. It argues a) that the definition of man as an animal (...) who possesses logos is part of this argument, b) that in the chapter Aristotle understands the term “political animal” not in a broad biological sense but in a narrow sense, c) that Aristotle’s thesis that the polis is “by nature prior to the household and to the individual” is not an independent third theorem – as David Keyt and Fred D. Miller claim – but is part of this argument. (shrink)

Albert Camus is most famous for his engagement with the absurd. Both in his philosophical and literary works his main focus was on the nature and normative consequences of this idea. However, Camus was also concerned with what he referred to as the “feeling of the absurd”. Philosophers have so far paid little attention to Camus’ thoughts about the feeling of the absurd. In this paper I provide a detailed analysis of this feeling. It turns out that the feeling (...) of the absurd is not, strictly speaking, a feeling. It is rather a conjunction of a mood (feeling of the absurd in the narrow sense) and of emotions that this mood tends to give rise to (appearances of the feeling of the absurd). Moreover, both moods and emotions qualify as absurd in virtue of their promoting the discovery of the absurd; that is, the discovery that humans search for meaning, but the world does not answer this search. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. ROBIN DARLING YOUNG Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its History and (...) Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper). In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate "lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the ministry of the Church. Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative might be condensed as follows. The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion : Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good. Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does BOOK REVIEWS 333 not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church. This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which, while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus, and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship " (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship " (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains... (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three kinds of kinds: traditional philosophical kinds such as truth, knowledge, and causation; natural science kinds such as spin, charge and mass; and social kinds such as class, poverty, and marriage. The three-fold taxonomy I work with represents an idealised abstraction from the wide variety of kinds that there are and the messy phenomena that underlie them. However, the kinds I identify are discrete, and the three-fold taxonomy is useful when it comes to understanding claims (...) about the normativity, scope, and implementation of conceptual engineering. In particular it reveals: first, that conceptual engineering in a broad sense is not distinctively normative; but second, that there is a distinctive normativity present in conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration; third, that conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration is only possible for terms that refer to kinds whose grounds we can change; and fourth, that the amelioration of such kind terms can be brought about as a result of changing the grounds of those kinds. The overall aim is to draw attention to the differences between kinds of kinds to make sense of the diverse and often conflicting claims in the conceptual engineering literature, both from its proponents and from its detractors. The hope is that paying attention to the differences between kinds of kinds will provide a better understanding of the landscape. (shrink)

International relations constitute a purely intersubjective field. Its actors, objects and meanings have no self-standing “objectivity” in a narrow sense. As such, the IR theorisation for conducting studies on the IR phenomena and events lacks the anchor of the independent objectivity which the positive sciences enjoy. The IR theorisation consequently relies on its own preceding world-views, interpretative frameworks and narratives, which become genetic acts, creating an ontological complication. In doing so, the IR theorisation tends to bend, alter and (...) occasionally omit the pre-theoretical, immediate and intersubjective givenness of the IR phenomena and events. Also, the theory’s narrative on the phenomena and events needs to include the narrative of their genesis, which are imposed upon their immediate, therefore post-genetic givenness, causing a temporal distortion. Still, there might be a possibility to study them as they are given, avoiding these complications. The Husserlian phenomenology provides this endeavour with fundamental concepts and tools that are related to intersubjectivity, temporality and access to the immediacy of the givenness of the phenomena and events. However, the Husserlian phenomenology itself has also a tendency to relapse into the complications of theorising, in particular due to its “genetic” proposals. Yet, these are “remediable” under the light of the Heideggerian criticism on the matters of intersubjectivity, temporality and the nature of the immediate, “innerworldy” givenness. In other words, the phenomenology, with contributions of the Heideggerian phenomenological-ontology, may effectively provide the IR studies with ways to approach the IR phenomena and events in their pre-theoretical, immediate, intersubjective, authentic givenness. Keywords: phenomenology, international relations, international relations theory. (shrink)

The ambiguity of the word ‘nature’ is so remarkable that I need not remark upon it. Except perhaps to emphasise that this ambiguity — scarcely less apparent, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, in its Greek near-equivalent physis — is by no means a merely accidental product of etymological confusions or conflations: it faithfully reflects the hesitancies, the doubts and the uncertainties, with which men have confronted the world around them. For my special purposes, it is enough to say, (...) I shall be using the word ‘nature’ in one of its narrower senses — so as to include only that which, setting aside the supernatural, is human neither in itself nor in its origins. This is the sense in which neither Sir Christopher Wren nor St Paul's Cathedral forms part of ‘nature’ and it may be hard to decide whether an oddly shaped flint or a landscape where the trees are evenly spaced is or is not ‘natural’. The question I am raising, then, is what our attitudes have been, and ought to be, to nature in this narrow sense of the word, in which it excludes both the human and the artificial. And more narrowly still, I shall be devoting most of my attention to our attitudes towards that part of nature which it lies within man's power to modify and, in particular, towards what Karl Barth calls ‘the strange life of beasts and plants which lies around us’, a life we can by our actions destroy. (shrink)

Process thought refers to the mode of thinking rooted in the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Drawing heavily on Whitehead and Hartshorne, this chapter presents an account of process natural theology. The discussions cover the decline of natural theology's reputation in modern times; process theology in the broad sense; panexperientialism's avoidance of materialism's mind–body problems; sensationism's knowledge problems; how prehensive perception solves sensationism's knowledge problems; and process theology in the narrow sense.

The chapter examines some common assumptions regarding the shape of the history of theories of mind. It questions the conception that the Scientific Revolution resulted in placing the mind “outside of nature.” During the seventeenth century, the followers of Descartes routinely placed study of the mind, or, at least, mind–body interaction, within “physics” considered as a science of nature in general (and so including physics in the narrow sense, biology, and psychology). By the end of the (...) eighteenth century, many authors treated the psychological and the physical as distinct areas of investigation (with points of contact, to be sure), both amenable to natural scientific study. Another assumption is that, prior to behaviorism, the notion of “the psychological” was equivalent to “the mental.” And yet, during the seventeenth century psychological phenomena were assigned to both sides of the mind–body divide: the Cartesians and their allies offered (nonmentalistic) mechanistic explanations for the sensory and behavioral capacities that human beings share with animals, while also holding that some aspects of mental life (including consciousness, free will, conceptual language, and general intelligence) require an immaterial mind. Finally, from the late eighteenth century onward, some have maintained that if mental states are reached only by introspection then they cannot be studied objectively. The chapter argues that the standard version of this objection misunderstands the nature of introspection, and it mounts a reply founded on Wundt’s methodological discussions and making reference to the perceptual investigations of the Gestalt psychologists. (shrink)

This is an article whose intended scope is to deal with the question of infinity in formal mathematics, mainly in the context of the theory of large cardinals as it has developed over time since Cantor’s introduction of the theory of transfinite numbers in the late nineteenth century. A special focus has been given to this theory’s interrelation with the forcing theory, introduced by P. Cohen in his lectures of 1963 and further extended and deepened since then, which leads to (...) a development and further refinement of the theory of large cardinals ultimately touching, especially in view of the discussion in the last section, on the metatheoretical nature of infinity. The whole undertaking, which takes into account major stages of the research in large cardinals theory, tries to present a defensible argumentation against an ontology of infinity actually rooted in the notion of subjectivity within the world. This means that rather than talking of a general ontology of infinity in the ideal platonic or in the aristotelian sense of potentiality, even in the alternative sense of an ontology of the event in A. Badiou’s sense, one can argue from a subjective point of view about the impossibility of defining cardinalities greater than the first uncountable one \ that would correspond to a distinct existence in real world terms or would be supported by a mathematical intuition in terms of reciprocity with experience. The argumentation from the particular standpoint includes also certain comments on the delimitative character of Gödel’s constructive universe L and the influence of the constructive approach in narrowing the breadth of an ‘ontology’ of infinity. (shrink)

Aristotle takes his ethics to be an inquiry into the ultimate good of human life. In the course of his criticism of Plato and Eudoxus, Aristotle formulates two general conditions on the concept of the ultimate good. Firstly, the ultimate good has to be something prakton. The primary sense of prakton is not, as it is often taken to be, of something that is "realizable" in human action, but of something that is, or can be, aimed at in human (...) action. Secondly, in addition to being based on an appropriate moral psychology and theory of action, an adequate ethical theory has to be non-reductivist--it has to give its due weight to the plurality and variety of the goodness of particular intrinsic goods. I examine why Aristotle's criticism of Eudoxus' hedonism as a reductive ethical theory is ineffective, and point out some deficiencies in Aristotle's own account of pleasure. ;Aristotle takes the view that every desire--whether rational or non-rational--is for something that appears good to the agent. This view is compared with what seems to be the currently accepted view, that some of our desires do not involve a valuation of any sort. Although I do not claim that the current view is wrong, I do argue that Aristotle's position may provide an alternative, and plausible, way of thinking about the nature of human motivation. I discuss next Aristotle's concept of telos. A telos has a dual character: it is something an action is aimed at, and also something attained in human action. Although Aristotle's ethics is not teleological, outcomes are important for the ethical evaluation of actions. In order to explicate how outcomes matter, I introduce the concepts of an Aristotelian outcome and of a good Aristotelian outcome. The notion of a third actualization is introduced to throw some light on the sort of success in the conduct of life which Aristotle takes eudaimonia to be. ;Finally, I provide an account of Aristotle's theory of practical reason. I argue that his ethical theory demands a very wide interpretation of the concept of deliberation. An analysis of Aristotle's concept of choice is given, and an attempt made to specify the conditions under which an action counts as chosen. Deliberation is ethical if it is guided by the deliberator's conception of eudaimonia. I explicate briefly what it is for a person to have such a conception, what such a conception is like, and in what way a person can be thought to be guided by it. Finally, the concept of practical reason is linked with the concept of the ultimate good. I propose an interpretation of the three conditions Aristotle imposes on the ultimate good in EN I.7--finality, self-sufficiency and choiceworthiness which requires that we initially construe the concepts of finality and of self-sufficiency in a narrow sense, and take the concept of finality as a comparative notion. The three conditions can then be regarded as specifying how deliberation ought to be conducted if it is to lead to eudaimonia. (shrink)

This paper addresses a recent argument of the Churchlands against the "linguistic-rationalist" tradition exemplified by current cognitive-computational psychology. Because of its commitment to methodological solipsism--the argument goes--computational psychology cannot provide an account of how organisms are able to represent and "hook up to" the world. First I attempt to determine the exact nature of this charge and its relation to the Churchlands' long-standing polemic against 'folk psychology' and the linguistic-rationalist methodology. I then turn my attention to the Churchlands' account (...) of what it is for computational psychology to be methodologically solipsistic. I argue that there is no reason to suppose that methodological solipsism commits one to a purely syntactic theory of the mind (of the kind that Stephen Stich has recently advocated): the formality constraints that methodological solipsism imposes on psychological explanation do not exclude 'essential' reference to the representational content of mental states, as long as this content is construed in the 'narrow' sense. I conclude by raising a problem for computational psychology that may provide some real cause for concern. (shrink)

Kant’s early work The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures is typically considered a narrow, technical work still embedded in the tradition of Wolffian logic. I argue instead that it needs to be considered in light of Kant’s developing theory of cognition and his corresponding criticism of the Wolffian single faculty theory. Whereas the mature Kant criticizes the rationalists for misrepresenting the nature of sensibility, the urgent task facing him at this stage seems to have been a (...) proper determination of the nature of the understanding. On the Wolffian framework, the latter is defined in a merely nominal manner, in terms of a generic cognitive task: the distinct representation of the possible. On Kant’s view, however, distinctness entails a capacity to relate representations, which only happens in the act of judgment. Thus, the stated aim of the False Subtlety notwithstanding, the work attempts to reorganize the logical operations around the capacity to judge. In turn, by defining the higher faculty of cognition in terms of an act of relating representations, Kant wants to show that this faculty cannot stem from a power of representation that we share with non-rational animals and must instead rest on a different fundamental power, which at the time he alternatively calls “inner sense” or “consciousness”. (shrink)

The ambiguity of the word ‘nature’ is so remarkable that I need not remark upon it. Except perhaps to emphasise that this ambiguity — scarcely less apparent, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, in its Greek near-equivalent physis — is by no means a merely accidental product of etymological confusions or conflations: it faithfully reflects the hesitancies, the doubts and the uncertainties, with which men have confronted the world around them. For my special purposes, it is enough to say, (...) I shall be using the word ‘nature’ in one of its narrower senses — so as to include only that which, setting aside the supernatural, is human neither in itself nor in its origins. This is the sense in which neither Sir Christopher Wren nor St Paul's Cathedral forms part of ‘nature’ and it may be hard to decide whether an oddly shaped flint or a landscape where the trees are evenly spaced is or is not ‘natural’. The question I am raising, then, is what our attitudes have been, and ought to be, to nature in this narrow sense of the word, in which it excludes both the human and the artificial. And more narrowly still, I shall be devoting most of my attention to our attitudes towards that part of nature which it lies within man's power to modify and, in particular, towards what Karl Barth calls ‘the strange life of beasts and plants which lies around us’, a life we can by our actions destroy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in NatureAnik Waldow (bio)I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what follows, I (...) will first discuss the proposal to distinguish between a narrow and a broad sense of experience, then specify how I understand the connection between having a body and being able to engage in experiences. In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted.1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of ExperienceDario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have.To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries.It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the 1970s. Because of this, it operates with a picture of the history of philosophy that has long been challenged by studies that show that there is far more to early modern philosophy than the standard works of some selected canonical figures.3 When dealing with Locke, the entry for instance exclusively focuses on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and does not even mention that experience is a key concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.The rather short and general entry on experience in Chauvin’s Lexicon Philosophicum (1692) is not very telling either—at least not if treated in isolation from other dictionaries and encyclopedias of the period, such as D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie: a tremendously influential work, that, according to its editors, is in itself committed to the Baconian method.4 And here César Chesneau Du Marsais’s entry on experience straightforwardly highlights the moral dimension of the knowledge acquired through experience:Experience, abstract term, commonly means the knowledge acquired through a long life, combined with the reflections made on what one has seen, and on the good and bad that has happened to us. In this sense, reading history is a highly profitable way of gaining experience; it tells us of events, and shows us the good or bad repercussions and consequences of these events.5The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Nature of Space by Milton SantosDave McLaughlinThe Nature of Spaceby milton santos (trans. by brenda baletti) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2021When asked to review Milton Santos’s The Nature of Space, I was interested mostly in the book’s core theme. As a literary geographer, my own research focuses heavily on space as an analytical concept and a lived experience; I was keen to read (...) and understand a fresh perspective on this topic. Little did I know that opening this book would connect me to a world of geography scholarship for the most part ignored, actively or otherwise, in the Anglophone academy. For my sins, I was not alone in this ignorance. In 2017, for example, one scholar felt confident in writing that:The English-speaking geographical community knows very little about the theoretical work in geography being produced in the so-called [End Page 147] “global South.” They are unaware, for example, of the work of Brazilian geographer Milton Santos.1It is not my place here to write about the reasons why this is such a mistake. Others, better qualified than me, have already done so.2 My aim here is to do three things. First, to put Santos’s arrival into English-language geography in context; second, to consider briefly his key contribution to defining the nature of space; and finally, to touch on what Santos’s book offers us more broadly.Published in 2021, Brenda Baletti’s translation of Santos’s great work arrived on the crest of a wave of discussions, debates, and scholarly interventions around decoloniality in Western geography. This movement emphasizes uncovering “still colonising frames of knowledge”3—frames “through which the world is apprehended and explained and modelled for the future”—and “craft[ing] ways of thinking harder about and against them.”4 Others have argued that the long wait for an English translation of Santos’s The Nature of Space is evidence of just such modes of thought continuing, unreflectively, among Anglophone academia. In 2019, an English-language translation of Santos’s For a New Geography was published by the University of Minnesota Press, followed by The Nature of Space in 2021. Hopefully, publications indicate that some publishers, at least, are following Stephen Legg’s call to think hard against certain predominant Western frames.The Nature of Space, despite its mere 280 pages, is an opus of sorts. Santos’s style eschews narrow conceptualization in favor of building a solid theory of space on a remarkably broad foundation of thinkers, including Braudel, Merleau-Ponty, Habermas, Latour, and many, many others. This broad foundation is a result not only of his long career and his own widely travelled life; it is necessary due to the slippery and almost-undefinable nature of space itself. In a wonderful section of For a New Geography, Santos lays out the problem facing geographers in defining this concept around which our discipline revolves:I understand why geographers have spent more time defining geography than space as the latter is extremely hard to do. The same could be said of space as Saint Augustine said of time: “if I ask myself if I know [End Page 148] what it is, I respond that I do; but, if I ask myself to define it, I respond that I do not know how.”5Part of this complication, recognized by Santos, is that “space” is a word with many meanings outside academia.6 Yet, geographers also face no simple task in defining this core concept for our own needs. Doreen Massey’s definition from For Space is one of my favorites, not only because it well illustrates the complexity of the term “space,” but also due to the range of reactions it produces in my first-year undergraduate students when I introduce it: Space is the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality.7 This is a very crunchy sentence! But it gets to the heart of a conceptually complex truth: that space is the dimension in which things happen, a dimension in which we must live at all times, as well as... (shrink)

Plato’s definition of pleasure as perceptible replenishment of a lack has been criticized as too narrow and incapable of accounting for some of the corporeal and all the non-corporeal pleasures. Plato’s suggested reply, based on objective standards in relation to which we are to estimate the reality and degree of replenishment we experience, seems to give rise to another difficulty, concerning the legitimate diversity of our natural inclinations and tastes. I argue that Plato’sdefinition of pleasure makes perfect sense (...) when integrated in the horizon of his metaphysical presuppositions and that he is successful in reconciling the diversity of subjective tastes with his view of an ultimate objective hierarchy of value by appeal to the notion of the mean. (shrink)

In this chapter, I show that there is at least one crucial, non-short, argument, which does not involve arguments about spatiotemporality, why Kant’s subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge, argued in the Transcendental Deduction, must lead to idealism. This has to do with the fact that given the implications of the discursivity thesis, namely, that the domain of possible determination of objects is characterised by limitation, judgements of experience can never reach the completely determined individual, i.e. the thing in itself (...) or the unlimited real, but only objects as objects of possible experience. As such, it can be shown by reference to a key argument from Kant, that Hegel’s famous criticism that Kant is not licensed, on the basis of his core arguments concerning the original-synthetic unity of apperception, to restrict our knowledge to appearances, is mistaken on purely systematic grounds. More specifically, I argue that idealism follows already from the constraints that the use of the categories, in particular the categories of quality, places on the very conceivability of things in themselves. My claim is that, although it is not only possible but also necessary to think things in themselves, it does not follow that by merely thinking them we have a full grasp of the nature of things in themselves, as some important commentators claim we have. We must therefore distinguish between two kinds of conceiving of things in themselves: conceiving in the standard sense of ‘forming the notion of’, and conceiving in the narrow sense of ‘having a determinate intellectual grasp’. So although we must be able notionally to think things in themselves, as the grounds of their appearances, we cannot even conceive, through pure concepts, of how they are in themselves in any determinate, even if merely intellectual, sense. To put it differently, we cannot have a positive conception of things in themselves (this is in line with Kant’s distinction between noumena in the negative and positive senses; cf. B307–9). For support, I resort to a much overlooked chapter in the Critique, concerning the transcendental Ideal, where Kant discusses what it is for a thing to be a thing in itself proper, namely, something that is thoroughly determined. This concerns the real ontological conditions of things, which are not satisfied by the modal categories alone, namely, their existence conditions. I claim that the chief reason why, given Kant’s view of determinative judgement, we cannot determine a thing in itself is because of two connected reasons: (1) a thing in itself is already fully determined and therefore not further determinable and (2) we cannot possibly determine all of the thing’s possible determinations. In this context, I also discuss the notion of material (not: empirical) synthesis—of which Kant speaks in the chapter on the transcendental Ideal—which must be presupposed as the ground of the formal a priori synthesis that grounds possible experience. This material synthesis, which is an idea of reason that defines a thing as thoroughly determined with regard to all of its possible predicates and has mere regulative status, can by implication not be determined by the forms of the understanding, which synthesise only a limited set of predicates. As a result, given this definition of ‘thing in itself’, any object (appearance) as at best44 a limited set of determinations of the thing can never be numerically identical to the thing in itself as thoroughly determined individual. This undercuts a standard assumption about the identity relation between appearances and things in themselves in many contemporary interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Recent developments in computer science, particularly ”data-driven procedures“ have opened a new level of design and engineering. This has also affected architecture. The publication collects contributions on Coding as Literacy by computer scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, cultural theorists, and architects. The main focus in the book is the observation of computer-based methods that go beyond strictly case-based or problem-solution-oriented paradigms. This invites readers to understand Computational Procedures as being embedded in an overarching ”media literacy“ that can be revealed through, and acquired (...) by, ”computational literacy“, and to consider the data processed in the above-mentioned methods as being beneficial in terms of quantum physics. ”Self-Organizing Maps“ (SOM), which were first introduced over 30 years ago, will serve as the concrete reference point for all further discussions. (shrink)

Chapter 1: An Introduction: The ‘Semantic Sting’ Argument Describes Dworkin’s theory as concerning the conditions of legal validity. “A legal system is a system of norms. Validity is a logical property of norms in a way akin to that in which truth is a logical property of propositions. A statement about the law is true if and only if the norm it purports to describe is a valid legal norm…It follows that there must be certain conditions which render certain norms, (...) but not others, legally valid. Hence it also follows that there can be two types of disagreement over the truth or falsehood of propositions about the law. People can disagree over the question ‘What are the conditions of legal validity?’, in which case their disagreement is a theoretical one. Or they can agree on the conditions of validity, and disagree as to whether or not those conditions actually obtain in a given case or not.” Argues that the best way to interpret Dworkin’s ‘semantic-sting argument’ is as a general argument against conventionalism in legal positivism. Summarizes the outcome of Dworkin’s argument as follows: “[I]f Dworkin is right about the legal reasoning of lawyers and judges, conventionalism would be self-defeating: if lawyers and judges recognize as legally binding not only those norms which are uncontroversially identifiable under the Rule of Recognition, that is, if what they recognize as binding is not only source-based law, then conventionalism turns out to be false on its own terms. In other words, either law is not what lawyers and judges think that it is, in which case law is not a matter of conventions, or – if it is what lawyers and judges think – conventionalism is false, as they do not see the law as purely a matter of conventions.” Dworkin’s theory, then, is a new conception of jurisprudence aiming to present itself as a rival to conventionalism. The book will be concerned with re-examining positivism in light of the interpretative challenge. Chapter 2: Meaning and Interpretation “[R]oughly, interpretation can be defined as an understanding or explanation of the meaning of an object.” Interpretation in this narrow sense is distinct from a less formal and broader use of interpretation that makes it equivalent to explanation. “Hence also, only those objects which are capable of bearing some meaning qualify as objects of interpretation.” [Why shouldn’t we think of interpretation as object-identification? This seems to be closer to what Dworkin has in mind.] Thus, a consideration of the philosophical work on meaning is appropriate. First, a consideration of Davidson on interpretation. The thesis is that Davidson’s “radical interpretation” can only account for sentence meaning and not for linguistic interpretation in general. Davidson cannot account for the non-rule-governed aspects of communication. “Semantics, as opposed to interpretation, concerns those aspects of communication which are rule or convention governed…but such rules are normally unavailable as reasons or justifications for an interpretation. On the contrary, interpretation is usually required because the issue is not determined by rules or conventions.” Interpretation, rather, is parasitic with understanding the meaning of an expression and not equivalent with it. As Dummett notes, any reflection on the meanings of words assumes prior knowledge of ordinary meanings. “This leads to the conclusion that understanding or explaining the meaning of an expression and interpreting it, are two conceptually separate things. It also indicates that seman ics can only be employed, if at all, to elucidate the concept of interpretation by way of contrast: interpretation concerns those aspects of communication which are under-determined by semantic rules or conventions.” Pragmatics, the study of problems posed by discrepancies between utterer’s meaning and sentence meaning, would seem to be closer to inquiry into interpretation. Both are concerned with understanding how meaning is possible where conventional rules leave off. Contemporary pragmatics, moreover, recognizes the logically indeterminate character of communicative inferences beyond conventional meaning and that the contextual conditions that account for the possibility cannot be realized in the semantic structure of the sentence. However, different criteria of success may be at work in pragmatics than interpretation. Pragmatics is concerned with how communication is achieved and thus the criteria of success would be grasping a speaker’s intentions. Many think, however, that communication is unimportant in certain spheres of communication, e.g. artistic interpretation, and that in these cases the aim of interpretation is not to uncover the actual artist’s intentions. What kind of meaning is interpretation aimed at then? It cannot be the meaning the object has for the interpreter. “Interpretation purports to be a statement about the object interpreted, not about the subject who offers the interpretation…it is crucial to remember that not everything we say about a work of art, or any other text, amounts to an interpretation of it. Only those aspects of a text which can shed light on its meaning form part of the text’s interpretation. What the text means for someone rarely entails anything about what the text means.” [This is puzzling to some extent for it remains somewhat ambiguous what it means to talk of subject-independent meaning.] Interpretive meaning attribution is, rather, counterfactual. “In general, I will suggest that the answer to this question consists in the fact that meaning is assigned by a counterfactual statement. Given that x is the meaning attributed to, for instance a text T, and x is not the literal meaning of T, nor is it the meaning of T intended by its author, then the attribution of meaning x to T can only be understood as the contention that on the basis of certain assumptions a certain fictitious or stipulated speaker would have meant x by expressing T.” Thus, on this account, interpretation, when it does not concern an actual speaker, turns out to be a kind of counterfactual intention attribution. Twofold point: “First, that interpretation is essentially a matter of attributing intentions, that is, in the pragmatics sense of ‘meaning’, namely, meaning that such-and-such by an act or expression. At the same time, interpretations need not be based on the intentions of actual authors; the meaning of an act or expression is understandable in terms of counterfactual intentions.” [Are we really restricted to understanding the coherence and integrity of meaning in such a way? Presumably the author is a kind of device for organizing meaning, much like Dworkin’s integrity, but need it take that format?] The logic of interpretation is typically reducible to intention attribution. [What role does the counterfactual author play in structuring meaning?] The criteria of interpretive success will depend upon the object, whether it is the real author or the counterfactual author. If the former, success will depend upon the retrieval of the author’s actual intentions. “Likewise, if the author is characterized in terms of some ideal representative of a certain genre, for instance, the presumptions which are taken to determine this c aracterization would provide the criteria of success for the particular interpretation offered.” [The criteria of success would seem, then, to be the principles, ideals, etc. that we attribute to the counterfactual author. These attributed qualities would be doing all the work – is the attribution of intention to the hypothetical author, then, really necessary at all?] [Does this account presuppose a weird dichotomy between what an object is and what it means? This dichotomy is different, if present at all, in Dworkin.] Chapter 3: Dworkin’s Theory of Interpretation and the Nature of Jurisprudence Three main insights of Dworkin’s theory of interpretation: “First, that interpretation strives to present its object in its best possible light. Second, that interpretation is essentially genre-dependent. And third, that there are certain constraints that determine the limits of possible interpretations of a given object.” Why the best light? Dworkin doesn’t really address this question in depth but claims that otherwise we are left with no way of justifying and choosing an interpretation or we are left with the author’s intention model, which we should reject. [Marmor doesn’t seem clear on what precisely it means to present something in its best light – seems to conflate it with most appealing light which, I take it, is different than what Dworkin has in mind.] “Dworkin is quite right to maintain that without having some views about the values inherent in the genre to which the text is taken to belong, no interpretation can take off the ground. The values we associate with the genre partly, but crucially, determine what would make sense to say about the text, what are the kinds of meaning we could ascribe to it.” There is no necessity for an interpretation to present an object in its best light with regards to the genre it is taken to be part of. Interpretations “could simply strive to present it in a certain light, perhaps better than some, worse than others, but in a way which highlights an aspect of the meaning of the text which may be worth paying attention to for some reason or another.” [What kind of reasons would count in choosing to present it in one light rather than another?] There is simply zero grounds for Dworkin’s assertion that we have no reason to pay attention to an interpretation that does not present it in its best light. Take a psychoanalytic interpretation of Hamlet, for example – not the best light, but a legitimate one. [This seems related to the next criticism – clearly Dworkin would have to loosen his insistence on the best, though not to detriment.] Moreover, especially with regards to art, it doesn’t appear possible to make an all things considered judgment about the best interpretation given the incommensurability of different values that are taken to inhere in a given genre. [Dworkin can respond here that we may have different available interpretations that could be justified with respect to the relevant value. Moreover, a lack of common denominator does not prevent any comparison whatsoever.] Constructive interpretation concerns social practices constituted by norms – it imposes a purpose or value rendering intelligible the normative character of the practice. There is a separate aspect of constructive interpretation that maintains that elements of the practice are sensitive to the point of the practice. It is important to note that different social practices will institutionalize themselves in different ways – thus, different practices will establish varying conditions on how the practice can be altered. The position of the positivists is that evaluative judgments concerning what the law should be are insufficient for determining what the law is given the nature of law’s institutionalization.&nb p; [This would seem to reside on a certain conception of law, i.e. an interpretation about where the value of law lies.] “[T]his being one of the main points of dispute between Dworkin and his positivist opponents, Dworkin cannot at this initial state presume law to be sensitive to its value in the manner that other, non-institutional practices might be, without incurring the charge of having assumed the very point at issue.” The upshot for Dworkin is that any explanation of a social practice such as law requires the same kind of reasoning as participation in that practice. This will be called the hermeneutic thesis. We can try to reconstruct a justification for this view based on the necessity of shared background assumptions – but this will not do since Dworkin’s claim is stronger: it contends that participants’ and theorists’ must “adopt one and the same normative point of view.” [The sense of normative here is unclear. It is true, though, that shared background assumptions do not imply viewing the law as valuable in any particular way, or at least it does not imply this in any strong sense.] Dworkin makes two distinct points with the hermeneutic thesis: “First, that the explanation of a social practice, like law or the arts, is essentially interpretative, and as such, necessarily value laden. Second, that the interpretation of such social practices, which Dworkin calls ‘argumentative’, is unique in the sense that the practice itself is an evaluative enterprise, and that therefore the interpreter of such a practice must form an evaluative judgment of her own about those values which are inherent in the practice that she purports to interpret.” [As stated, the first thesis is terribly ambiguous – for Dworkin, it clear implies a commitment to constructive interpretation. For Marmor, who accepts it, it is totally unclear what commitment he intends to make. He seems to mean simply that we have criteria for success concerning what counts as a successful explanation.] Mamor denies the second thesis. “What Dworkin seems to ignore here is that there is a crucial difference between forming a view about the values which are manifest in a social practice, like law, and actually having evaluative judgments about them.” [The problem, however, it that it is a contentious matter what values are part of the law – a theorist’s account of what values are constitutive of a particular legal system must rely on the kind of arguments which participants rely on. Of course, a theorist might simply note a debate about values and attempt to remain agnostic, but this will fail to be a full theoretical account of what law is!] Dworkin’s thesis seems to depend exclusively on his account of constructive interpretation. [This seems exactly right.] Chapter 4: Coherence, Holism, and Interpretation: The Epistemic Foundation of Dworkin’s Legal Theory Begins with discussion of Rawls’ reflective equilibrium. Sums up dual criticism as follows: “[T]he assumption that intuitions are independently true and the converse one, that their truth depends on fitting a coherent scheme, both seem to yield paradoxical results.” Dworkin, in his article “The Original Position”, claims that Rawls cannot commit himself to ethical realism. “[T]he natural model presupposes some form of ethical realism, while the constructive model does not. One important difficulty arising from an attempt to apply the natural model to Rawls is, that under the natural model, any theory which dopes not account for an intuition, at least for one which is held firmly, cannot be wholly satisfactory, just as scientific theory which does not account for certain observational data it is supposed to cover, would not be satisfactory in a familiar way.” Rawls, rather, is committed to a constructivist view of morality. Moreover, the reason we value coherence epistemically in moral theory is that it itself is a value of political morality – fairness requires consistency and publicity in the application of moral standards. Marmor notes the following problem with such a view: “[I]f coherence is justified, as it is here, with reference to certain moral values, that is, a specific conception of fairness, then we face the following problem: the presupposed values of fairness must themselves be based upon intuitive convictions, in which case the question of their truth cannot be ignored. If they are taken to be true…we are driven back to the perplexities of the natural model.” Discusses, helpfully, the Fish/Dworkin debate. The upshot is that Dworkin’s interpretive model is best off if it commits itself to a Quineian holism. However, this undermines his distinction between internal and external skepticism since holism must deny that moral judgments constitute a closed system. [This analysis seems exactly right.] Endorses Simmonds view that Dworkin’s theory does not meet the requirements of complexity he identifies as necessary to avoid vicious circularity in interpretive judgments of fit and identity. Coherence is doing the work through and through and therefore the interpretive theory of law is circular. [Will require further investigation, though it is unclear how coherence is doing any work in the pre-interpretive stage. At this stage, the judgments, if interpretive, seem to be derived from different sources. In any case, using coherence as a value seems to be highly suspect.] Why doesn’t Dworkin just reject Fish’s assumptions: because of his jurisprudence. “If legal texts can have a meaning that is not entirely dependent on a process of interpretation, then it is at least sometimes the case that the law can simply be understood, and applied, without the mediation of interpretation. And if that is the case, then the argument from interpretation against legal positivism collapses. It is no longer the case that every conclusion about what the law is, depends on evaluative considerations about what it ought to be.” Chapter 5: Semantics, Realism, and Natural Law Assessment of Michael Moore’s legal realism and its implications. [The final criticisms of Moore are not decisive.] Chapter 6: Constructive Identification and Razian Authority A consideration of Dworkin’s denial that the communication model of interpretation is appropriate for legal interpretation. Marmor argues that intentions do play a crucial role in the identification of legal norms in a way that is incompatible with Dworkin’s “coherence thesis”. Marmor takes Dworkin to be committed to the constructive identification thesis: that the identification of something as part of the legal, artistic, etc. genre can be done sufficiently by evaluative considerations. “Here, one must maintain that evaluative considerations are sufficient to determine whether something is a legal norm or a work of art”. [Fit, however, constrains possible evaluative considerations – thus evaluative considerations are not sufficient in themselves.] “Now the crucial point here is this: if you maintain the possibility of constructive identification in art, you must assume that works of art can be identified as such on the basis of certain features they happen to possess, features which contain no reference to any particular intention to create a work of art…unless we take intentions into account, how can we discriminate between the concept of an aesthetic artifact and the con ept of a work of art?” [It is unclear, and I think false, that constructive interpretation of anything requires identifying something irrespective of an artificers intentions. Those intentions may be relevant, dependent upon the genre under which we are trying to classify the object. Nothing, seemingly, about constructive interpretation in general excludes this possibility.] Marmor’s point is that it turns out to be impossible to identify art as art without reference to an artist’s intentions – especially given the state of contemporary art. [It is notable that Marmor’s response to counterexample implicitly depends upon a fully developed theory of aesthetics. His cursory comments on the matter of identifying art seem insufficient to say the least.] The rest of the chapter considers the incompatibility of Raz’s account of authority with constructive interpretation. The incompatibilities mentioned do not move beyond what Raz identifies in his article “Authority, Law and Morality”, but a defense of this notion of authority is defended in several [inconclusive] respects. [Raz and Marmor want to separate identification from content. This is not clearly a defensible separation.] Chapter 7: No Easy Cases? Chapter defends notion that there is a distinction between easy and hard cases in the positivist sense. Takes a Hartian approach and ultimately defends the distinction by associating it Wittgenstein’s conception of rule following. The point is that one need to look the purpose of rule in order to understand what the rule requires. Chapter 8: Legislative Intent and the Authority of Law Examines the following doctrine concerning the role of legislative intent in adjudication: “[F]irst, it would hold that laws, at least in certain cases, are enacted with relatively specific intentions, and that this is a matter of fact which is discernible through an ordinary fact-finding procedure. Second, that in certain cases the presence of such a fact, namely, that the law was enacted with a certain intention, provides judges with a reason to decide the legal dispute in accordance with the relevant legislative intent.” [It is important that for Marmor, interpretive strategies are only appropriate in hard cases. However, we should wonder what grounds positivism can offer for deciding a hard case in any manner which is not the morally best manner according to the judgment of the judge. There are no legal grounds, by definition, in hard cases and so what justificatory strategy would endorse any judicial decision except for the morally best one?] We can ascribe intentions to a legislative body, when this is possible at all, by taking the shared intentions of the majority, rather than some group intention, to be the significant intentions. Moreover, we should expect a good deal of consensus about intentions for otherwise it is hard to explain how legislative bodies are able to produce so much legislation. Discussion of kinds of intentions concludes as follows: “I have distinguished between three main types of intention that are potentially relevant from the legal point of view. Apart from the intentions that are manifest in the language of the law itself, legislators typically have further intentions in enacting a given law, and sometimes they would have certain intentions bearing on its proper application. I have also suggested that some of these further intentions may be essentially non-avowable, in which case they are rendered initially irrelevant. Finally, I have pointed out that considerations of consistency require that the legislator’s application intentions be taken into account only if, and to the extent that, they are in accord with his further intentions.” The manner in which intentionalism is to be justif ed relies on the distinction, Marmor maintains, between expert and mere collective action authority. “The point I wanted to make is strictly conditional: if, and only if, a certain law is justified on the basis of the expertise branch of the normal justification thesis, would it make sense to defer to the legislature’s intentions in the interpretation of the law, that is, to the extent that there is, in fact,; such an intention and it can clarify something that needs clarification.” Insofar as a legislature can be considered an expert on the matter requiring adjudication and interpretation should the body’s intention be taken into account. Chapter 9: Constitutional Interpretation Begins by laying out general necessary features of a constitution. Then Marmor moves on to consider general questions of constitutional legitimacy. First, he considers what grounds might be offered for the legitimacy of a constitution at all. He notes that the central question is what permits a single generation to bind future generations. He then examines four arguments to avoid this problem. The first is based on the moral legitimacy of the constitution; Marmor rejects this solution for the [truly dubious] reason that the constitution would make no practical difference because it would not supply reasons in addition to those provided by morality [but, presumably, the point is that these legally valid rules would be institutionally enshrined]. The second is based on the moral authority of the framers and Marmor rightly rejects this on the basis of the idealization of the framers it requires and less rightly on the basis that there cannot be moral authorities. Third is the “argument from interpretation” which claims that “as long as the particular content of the constitution is determined by its interpretation, and the authoritative interpretation at any time correctly instantiates the values which ought to be upheld in the community, the constitution would be morally legitimate”. The fourth is Raz’s which argues that a constitution is valid so long as its constraints are morally permissible because conventions of this type might aid the continuity of the legal system, i.e. it is important to have a convention of this type and the constitution is a kind of this type. Marmor appears to endorse these two approaches and concludes: “The conditions for the legitimacy of a constitution must comprise the following conditions. First, the values and principles enshrined in it must be morally permissible…Second, when certain choices are made in particular cases, they would be legitimate if they are either morally underdetermined, or else, morally correct…It follows from this that both arguments must assume that at least in those areas in which the constitution would make a moral difference, it can be interpreted to make the difference that it should, that is, according to the true moral principles that should apply to the particular case...the moral legitimacy of constitutions very much dependent on the practices of their interpretation. In other words, a great deal of the burden of moral legitimacy is shifted by these arguments to the application of the constitution, thus assuming that the constitution is legitimate only if the courts are likely to apply the constitution in a morally desirable way.” [This implies that the only significant value constitutions have is in providing a conventional practice where some such practice is required.] Moves on to argue that courts typically rely, and rightly so, on moral considerations when deciding constitutional issues because typically, in cases of the kind that reach the supreme or constitutional court, there is no law on the case. Much of this relies on his earlier discussion about the nature of interpretation in the law – that legal interpretation is always a matter of cha ging the law. (shrink)

I contrast the integrity of nature understood as a community with the integrity of nature understood as an organism. Whereas the latter is typified by nature in its pristine condition and precludes almost all human uses of nature and so excludes the human from the natural, I argue that the integrity of nature (ecological integrity) allows for human uses of nature to sustain human life when nature is understood as a community, which includes (...) humans among its members. Cultural landscapes, understood in a narrow sense, are manifestations of such uses and of man's being in nature on nature's terms. An example of a literary expression of this view is Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil. As an ethical value, ecological integrity imposes certain moral constraints on our uses of nature, on the manner in which humans live and co-exist. (shrink)

The starting point of this PhD project is a constructivist interpretation of scientific practices: science does not study independent and pre-given phenomena, but constructs them in an active way. Although this topic has already been argued for in general, this project wants to focus on recent emerging life sciences, such as systems biology, Artificial Life and synthetic biology. These disciplines bring forth an extreme form of this constructivist aspect: they actively and explicitly produce biological phenomena, such as synthetic cells that (...) do not exist outside of the laboratories. It is, however, unclear what this ‘construction’ of nature entails. There are multiple interpretations of how to understand these technical mediations and how this constructive element either shows the uniqueness of scientific practices or precisely shows how there is nothing special about scientific practices in relation to other practices. On the one hand this project wants to identify the different interpretations of constructivism in science: what does it in fact mean to claim that science constructs its object? Secondly, it wants to differentiate the notion of constructivism itself, by abandoning it as a general claim to more local, historical claims. This allows us to differentiate how a discipline, such as synthetic biology, is constructive in a unique sense, rather than being classified merely as one illustration of constructivism. This allows us to make room for the singularity of synthetic biology: in what specific way is synthetic biology a constructive practice? (shrink)

The term "fuzzy logic," as it is understood in this book, stands for all aspects of representing and manipulating knowledge based on the rejection of the most fundamental principle of classical logic---the principle of bivalence. According to this principle, each declarative sentence is required to be either true or false. In fuzzy logic, these classical truth values are not abandoned. However, additional, intermediate truth values between true and false are allowed, which are interpreted as degrees of truth. This opens a (...) new way of thinking---thinking in terms of degrees rather than absolutes. For example, it leads to the definition of a new kind of sets, referred to as fuzzy sets, in which membership is a matter of degree. The book examines the genesis and development of fuzzy logic. It surveys the prehistory of fuzzy logic and inspects circumstances that eventually lead to the emergence of fuzzy logic. The book explores in detail the development of propositional, predicate, and other calculi that admit degrees of truth, which are known as fuzzy logic in the narrow sense. Fuzzy logic in the broad sense, whose primary aim is to utilize degrees of truth for emulating common-sense human reasoning in natural language, is scrutinized as well. The book also examines principles for developing mathematics based on fuzzy logic and provides overviews of areas in which this has been done most effectively. It also presents a detailed survey of established and prospective applications of fuzzy logic in various areas of human affairs, and provides an assessment of the significance of fuzzy logic as a new paradigm. (shrink)

Abstract This paper turns the tables on the criticisms of sociobiology that stem from a sociological perspective; many of those criticisms lack cogency and coherence in such measure as to demand, in their turn, a psycho?sociological explanation rather than a rational justification. This thesis, after a brief exposition of the main ideas of sociobiology, is argued in terms of four of the most prominent complaints made against it. Far from embodying tired prejudices about the psychological and sociological implications of biology, (...) sociobiology actually reverses a number of naive assumptions about the consequences of natural selection. I surmise that what really provokes the critics of sociobiology is a certain philosophical relevance of sociobiology both in the broad sense (the application of natural selection principles to behaviour) and in the narrow sense (the insistence on the centrality of certain mechanisms, such as gene selection). In both cases, taking biology seriously affects our philosophical vision of the nature of human beings. At the deepest level, however, the distinction between the level at which rational criteria apply and those where we must have recourse to psycho?social explanations probably breaks down. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question regarding the relation between capitalism and nature, on the one hand, and that of the continued existence of life, including humankind, on earth in light of the disturbing evidence that has emerged since the early 1970s, concerning massive environmental degradation, on the other. It is argued that the evidence of such destruction is there for every one to see; what is less obvious – in fact, mostly ignored or denied – is the connection between (...) capital as a process which either grows, or dies, and the devastating effect of such uncontrollable growth on geo-ecology (where a distinction is made between ecology and environment in terms of the relations of interdependence by which the former is characterised). Ironically, as far back as 1972 the ‘Club of Rome' warned against the dangers of ‘unlimited growth'. The paper draws substantially, but not exclusively, on the work of Joel Kovel, who argues in favour of what he terms eco-socialism as the best kind of alternative to capitalism. Needless to say, this entails an understanding of the latter, in an encompassing sense as a state of being, instead of in a narrow economistic sense. It also requires that one should distinguish clearly between a mechanistic conception of nature (the Cartesian) that seems to legitimize its exploitation for human use and eventual degradation, on the one hand, and another (Kantian) conception which makes room for the inscrutability of a natural purposiveness that transcends human cognition. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.24(2) 2005: 121-136. (shrink)

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which occurred on the occasion of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, caused enormous damage to the political, social, cultural and natural environments in Japan and still continues to create problems.What can we learn from the case of Fukushima from the viewpoint of the philosophy of technology?First, I emphasize that technology is not considered a closed system constituted only of a technological factor in the narrow sense (...) of the term, but must be considered an open system related to and constituted of various factors, including social, cultural, and natural environmental factors. In this sense, technology is inherently multidimensional.Second, as there is no guarantee that multiple factors maintain a harmonious and stable unity under various circumstances, technology inevitably brings about unintended consequences. We must always consider the unmanageable and unpredictable character of technology, which can be characterized as the “otherness” character of technology and is to be considered a central problem of the philosophy and ethics of technology. (shrink)

The paper re-expresses arguments against the normative validity of expected utility theory in Robin Pope (1983, 1991a, 1991b, 1985, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007). These concern the neglect of the evolving stages of knowledge ahead (stages of what the future will bring). Such evolution is fundamental to an experience of risk, yet not consistently incorporated even in axiomatised temporal versions of expected utility. Its neglect entails a disregard of emotional and financial effects on well-being before a particular risk is (...) resolved. These arguments are complemented with an analysis of the essential uniqueness property in the context of temporal and atemporal expected utility theory and a proof of the absence of a limit property natural in an axiomatised approach to temporal expected utility theory. Problems of the time structure of risk are investigated in a simple temporal framework restricted to a subclass of temporal lotteries in the sense of David Kreps and Evan Porteus (1978). This subclass is narrow but wide enough to discuss basic issues. It will be shown that there are serious objections against the modification of expected utility theory axiomatised by Kreps and Porteus (1978, 1979). By contrast the umbrella theory proffered by Pope that she has now termed SKAT, the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory, offers an epistemically consistent framework within which to construct particular models to deal with particular decision situations. A model by Caplin and Leahy (2001) will also be discussed and contrasted with the modelling within SKAT (Pope, Leopold and Leitner 2007). (shrink)

Abstract. In this article we developed scientific and applied foundations of commercialization of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects, on the example of exhausted mines. It is determined that the category of “anthropogenic object” can be considered in a narrow-applied sense, as specific anthropogenic objects to ensure the target needs, and in a broad theoretical sense, meaning everything that is created and changed by human influence, that is the objects of both artificial and natural origin. It (...) was determined that problems of commercialization of the natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects are most often considered by researchers for specific objects, without having complex methodological coverage from the point of view of combining environmental, technical, economic and managerial components. When studying the substantiation of the scientific base, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the commercialization of natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects on the example of a number of theoretical scientific studies in reclamation, reconstruction, recreation, remediation, restoration of biological productivity and economic value of land disturbed by economic activity. The considered examples of exhausted mines in the 21st century in the USA, Canada, Germany, Romania, and Poland indicate a wide range of opportunities for their commercialization. The study of the potential for commercialization of exhausted mines in the post-Soviet countries testified to the underused reserves for the commercialization of their nature-resource potential and their high potential for further development. The authors proposed the identification of anthropogenic objects on the basic livelihood spheres of society. There were identified the main system (natural, biological, technical, economic, social, managerial) and structural (subjects, trends, threats, risks, problems, challenges) factors of diagnosing the state of an anthropogenic object. A set of measures has been developed for commercialization of an anthropogenic object in functional and production activities, product policy, financial and investment spheres, pricing and sales policies, promotion, management and determination of property rights. Recommendations were provided on optimizing the management decision-making process based on a set of positivistic development principles, methods, and management functions. The study allows international organizations, state and local authorities, territorial communities, owners and potential investors to see new opportunities and make mutually beneficial decisions on the rational use of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects. (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)

Collingwood was prevented by his death from elaborating his philosophy of history in the full sense of the term. He believed that he could do no more than to attempt "a philosophic inquiry into the nature of history regarded as a special type or form of knowledge with a special type of object". Since philosophy of history in the narrower sense admittedly points to philosophy of history in the comprehensive sense, it might seem that Collingwood unjustifiably (...) postponed the discussion of the fundamental issue. But it is perhaps fairer to say that philosophy of history in the comprehensive sense presupposes philosophy of history in the narrower sense, or that the fusion of philosophy and history presupposes the soundness or adequacy of "scientific history": if the historical understanding of the last four or five generations is not decisively superior to the historical understanding that was possible in the past, the conversion of philosophy into history loses its most convincing, or at least its most persuasive, justification. (shrink)

This contribution tries to analyse in a systematic and hermeneutic approach the ideas that Leibniz developed regarding the concept of ‘history’ (historia, histoire). ‘History’ is understood here not only in the narrow sense of the discipline established since the Humanist debates and conceived as a “narratio rerum gestarum”, but also in the much broader sense of a certain “conditio humana”, as a denomination also with regard to nature (historia naturalis) or, also, as an expression for the (...) temporality of all being. (shrink)

When it originated in the late 19th century, psychometrics was a field with both a scientific and a social mission: psychometrics provided new methods for research into individual differences, and at the same time, these psychometric instruments were considered a means to create a new social order. In contrast, contemporary psychometrics - due to its highly technical nature and its limited involvement in substantive psychological research - has created the impression of being a value-free discipline. In this article, we (...) develop a contrasting characterization of contemporary psychometrics as a value-laden discipline. We expose four such values: that individual differences are quantitative (rather than qualitative), that measurement should be objective in a specific sense, that test items should be fair, and that utility of a model is more important than its truth. Our goal is not to criticize psychometrics for employing these values, but rather to bring them into the open and to show that these values are not inevitable and are in need of systematic evaluation. (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)

This article discusses the theories of perception of Robert Kilwardby and Peter of John Olivi. Our aim is to show how in challenging certain assumptions of medieval Aristotelian theories of perception they drew on Augustine and argued for the active nature of the soul in sense perception. For both Kilwardby and Olivi, the soul is not passive with respect to perceived objects; rather, it causes its own cognitive acts with respect to external objects and thus allows the subject (...) to perceive them. We also show that Kilwardby and Olivi differ substantially regarding where the activity of the soul is directed to and the role of the sensible species in the process, and we demonstrate that there are similarities between their ideas of intentionality and the attention of the soul towards the corporeal world. (shrink)

A survey of the literature on the problem of the synthetic a priori soon reveals that the term “analytic” is used in a narrower and a broader sense. In the narrower sense, a proposition is analytic if it is either a truth of logic or is logically true. By saying of a proposition that it is logically true, I mean, roughly, and with an eye on the problem of the relation of logical categories to natural languages, that when (...) defined terms are replaced by their definientia, it becomes a substitution instance of a truth of logic. And a truth of logic can be adequately characterized for present purposes as a proposition which occurs in the body of Principia Mathematica, or which would properly occur in a vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage of this already monumental work. If we now agree to extend the convenient phrase “logically true” to cover truths of logic as well as propositions which are logically true in the sense just defined, we can say that an analytic proposition in the narrower sense is a proposition which is logically true. (shrink)