Kameron Carter’s reading of Black life as matter, as the imaginary, and as an innovation of possibilities enmeshes Black theology, Black womanist/feminist thought, Black Diaspora and Black American Studies, Philosophy, and Queer of Color Critique to reveal how the project of the western world erases Black physical and intellectual legacy. A project that is anti-black, anti-other, anti-difference that erases the legacy of the physical and intellectual aspects of Black contributions to the western world. His book is an invitation to think (...) through what Black ontology would look like outside of white western constructions of religion and social scripts. Carter’s radical shift from being beyond the long durée of enslavement, colonization, segregation, and its afterlives scripts an (anti)blackening because of the western project of erasure works to undo such a project. The book is working against the social ontology of being a fragmented object that is plasticized, fetishized, and dissolved into a state of non-being. It is a project that disrupts and decolonizes previously constructed (anti)blackening architecture by creating a blueprint that asks for Black matter as an incomplete project because it must include imagination and innovation. (shrink)

This essay is to invite a new form of theorizing Baldwin’s intellectual archive beyond a work of protest or as being contributory to Queer writing. I argue that Baldwin’s thought often in the form of the polemic is a form of non-violent resistance. Baldwin’s contestation against whiteness and the methods of Black erasure in general and Black male annihilation in particular is why he is challenging the complexity of protest. In pushing against traditional or what has become traditional ways of (...) analyzing Black thought, my essay highlights why figures like Baldwin are read in fragmentation. Hence, my insistence on Baldwin being categorized as a Gender/Genre theorist more so than a Queer theorist. Because his writings are on the erasure of Black Male existence within and outside of heteronormative spaces. (shrink)

The article is a brief analysis of Cornell’s Imaginary Domain (1995) as an intervention into decolonizing intersecting systems of oppression. Cornell’s Imaginary Domain forces us to think of the intersecting factors that retain systems of power. It isn’t just about one form of oppression but all systems of oppression that separate us. However, creating a shared struggle to find and embody wholeness in response to the historical traumas of slavery, segregation, and systems of anti-Black oppression is fraught with tensions.

This article is a discourse analysis based on a theory of figures of speech advocated by Orecchionni that analyzes implicit not only as a mark of literality but also as trope of illocutionary type not lexical, lexical, metaphorical or semantic. It considers also the explicit information of the novel through four levels of competency: linguistic, encyclopedic, logical and pragmatic rhetorical and analyzes the romantic statement according to the maxims of quantity, quality, relation or relevance and modality. This study shows, through (...) verbal interactions of « Douane de mer » that the story is the heiress of the mnemonic representation than of historical representation. It sheds light on the dual role played by implicit as a mediator in relation to historical reality or an opaque screen over the truth of the world. (shrink)

Sagānî's Mashāriq al-Anwār is one of the most used sources about the science of hadith in the Ottoman Empire. This work reinforced its authority with the commentaries of Ibn Melek and Ekmeleddin Bāberti. Many studies have been done about Mashāriq and its commentaries in the Ottoman Empire. Most of them are in manuscript form, and some do not even have introductory information. One of these works, about which there is no study, is Darwīsh Ali's Anwār a'l-Mashāriq. The work is a (...) voluminous hāshiya written about the commentaries of Ibn Malak and Bābartī together with Mashāriq al-Anwār. Studies attribute this work to Ali Dede el-Bosnawi (d. 1007-1598). However, this ratio needs to be corrected. One of the questions of this article is whether Darwīsh Ali b. Muhammad, who is stated as the author of the book, and Ali Dede al-Bosnawi are the same person. The answer to this question has been researched as a result of comparing information obtained from the different copies of the work and the points where Ali Dede's life overlaps and does not over-lap. Although Ali Dede lived in Bosnia, Zigetvar, Istanbul, Mecca, and Medina, there is no information that he lived in Aleppo. However, our author Darwīsh Ali clearly states that he was a mufti in Aleppo in the introduction of some of his copies. The author also talks about a period when he was in the Husrev Pasha madrasah. Even though Gazi Husrev Pasha madrasah in Bosnia comes to mind when Husrev Pasha madrasah is mentioned, there is also a madrasah with this name in Aleppo. It is known that Darwīsh Ali, who was a mufti in Aleppo, has a history book called Hulāsa al-Tawārīh. In different copies of Anwār al-Mashāriq, Ahmed Pasha Madrasa in Karahisar is mentioned as the place where his work was written. What is meant here may be the Gedik Ahmed Pasha madrasah in Afyonkarahisar or the Ahmed Pasha madrasah in Tekirdag Çorlu. It is difficult to identify the author from the information used in the hashiya. Because the features such as the use of poetry and Persian, a good knowledge of hadith, and knowledge of Sufism in the book can point to both authors. (shrink)

[fr] La Muršida, traité ašʿarite attribué à Ibn Tūmart (m. 524/1130), représente une des plus célèbres traces écrites de la présence de l’ašʿarisme au Maghreb. L’un de ses commentaires les plus répandus a pour titre al-Anwār al-mubayyina al-muʾayyida li-maʿānī ʿaqd ʿaqīdat al-Muršida (« Les lumières qui exposent et appuient les sens de la profession de foi al-Muršida »). Sa célébrité par rapport aux autres commentaires tient de celle de son auteur présumé : Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (m. 895/1490), figure centrale (...) de l’ašʿarisme tardif au Maghreb. Pourtant, tout - ou presque - porte à croire qu’il n’est vraisemblablement pas l’auteur de ce commentaire. Mais cela n’amoindrit pas l’importance du texte : il pourrait être l’un des premiers commentaires de la Muršida. (shrink)

C. Henry, J. Drew, N. Anwar, D. Benoit‐Asselman and G. Campbell, EVA Project Report of the Ethics and Values Audit, Preston: University of Central Lancashire, 1992, pp. iii + 131, pb, £12.

C. Henry, J. Drew, N. Anwar, D. Benoit‐Asselman and G. Campbell, EVA Project Report of the Ethics and Values Audit, Preston: University of Central Lancashire, 1992, pp. iii + 131, pb, £12.

Novel, as a literary genre, is described as the expression of events and emotions by using unconventional methods and techniques; beyond this, novek is also a subject of sociology. For this reason, writers have used the art of the novel as a way of expressing the pain experienced by the individual and its social dimensions. One of these writers is Mourid Barghouti (d. 2021), who was born in Palestine in 1944 and studied English Language and Literature at Cairo University. Banned (...) from entering Palestine in 1967 when he graduated from the university, and exiled from Egypt for criticizing Anwar al-Sādāt's (d. 1981) visit to Israel, Barghouti lived in exile for 17 years in various Arab and European countries away from his wife and child. Barghouti, who returned to Palestine 30 years after his departure, wrote a novel called I Saw Ramallah. This novel was first published in 1997, and he expressed his homesickness and the experiences of the Palestinian people after the occupation. Divided into nine chapters, consisting of 220 pages and translated into many languages, the novel shows the drama of many Palestinians who entered the British mandate after World War I, whose lands were occupied with the establishment of Israel in 1948, and who was forced to leave their homeland. In this sense, the novel I Saw Ramallah reflects both the expatriation of Palestine and the author. In this study, the work named I Saw Ramallah was elaborated in terms of technique in order to determine to what extent the author used the rules of the art of the novel, and thematically which subjects were handled in the novel. It is understood that the name of the novel was chosen to reflect the content by making use of the symbolic value of the place. This novel is seen as an autobiographical novel type, due to the author’s narrator technique used and the author tells his own life. The author's entry into Palestine is used as the objective tense of the novel; the author, with recollections and connotations in objective time, conveyed his experiences by using the flashback method. Events that contain enough sadness have been tried to be conveyed as they happened by mentioning time, place and individuals in order to awake the reader's feelings. Although the events in the novel are listed non-chronologically, when the whole novel is examined, it is seen that the author writes his experiences within the framework of the days he spent in Ramallah and the memories that they remind him of, and in the order in which they come to mind. In almost all of the novel, classical Arabic is preferred. The novel has avoided as much forced expressions and literary expressions that enlarge or reduce events as possible. Although it is impossible to claim that he is completely impartial as a Palestinian, it is seen that the author describes the events with the simplicity of a Palestinian citizen, away from political conflicts as much as possible and in a natural language. It is possible to say that the dominant use of critical style in the novel as the experiences of a writer suffered living abroad throughout his life, shaped his perspective on life and its reflection on the novel. The main topic of the novel is the absence from home. In addition, those killed far away from their homeland, Jewish settlement, the effect of Jewish occupation on the social life, the Oslo Agreement and the role of the phone in the life of the expat are handled as sub-themes. Although the novel named I Saw Ramallah is mostly close to daily or commemorative works and does not fully fit in the definitions of novel art as it emerged in the West, it includes the style of novel art at a certain level. It is seen that the novel has an important place in terms of raising awareness on the Palestinian issue in the Arab and Islamic world. The novel I Saw Ramallah, which was awarded The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature by the American University in Cairo in 1997, is likely to have received this award because of its thematic aspect rather than its stylistic aspect. Considering this award that the novel won against its peers and the considerations we mentioned during the technical and stylistic analysis we made about the novel, it is seen that the art of the novel in Arabic literature is still in the development stage. (shrink)

The hereafter, one of the main pillars of Islam, has been discussed by both theologians and Ṣūfīs from various angles and interpreted in many different ways. Although there is consensus on the main subjects, there are a lot of controversies in details. One of the Ṣūfīs who authored on diverse problems over the hereafter is ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336). He was a Kubrawī shaykh during the Īlkhānid era. He inclined towards the Ṣūfī path after serving the Buddhist ruler Arghun (...) (r. 1284-1291) for ten years, thanks to a spiritual experience he had. He met with Nūr al-dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Isfarāyīnī (d. 717/1317), a Kubrawī shaykh based in Baghdad, and became a disciple of him, granted ijāza (a certificate of authority) from him. Upon his shaykh’s order, he turned back to his hometown and spent his life until his death, in his Ṣūfī lodge raising disciples and writing works. He had contributed greatly both to his own order and to the literature of Ṣūfism with his disciples and written works. As regards to the hereafter, his opinions on the reality of this world and its position against the next, death, the doomsday and its kinds, the existence of the paradise and the hell today and their present location are remarkable. In this article, his views over those problems are discussed in the context of his understanding of mystical training.Summary: ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336) lived between the second half of the seventh century (h.) and the first half of the eighth century, in today’s Iran, during reign of the Īlkhānid’s. Thanks to the connection of his family to the Īlkhānid court, his father and uncle’s administrative positions at the court and his will and efforts, he started to serve Arghun (r. 1284-1291) around the age of fifteen and gained his personal intimacy. After serving him for ten years, he experienced a spiritual transformation and inclined towards a mystical life. He left Arghun for his hometown Simnān, on the pretext of his disease that courtier doctors could not treated, but under the condition that he would turn back after he recovered from the disease. He got better just after a while but did not return. He arrived Simnān at the beginning of a holy month of Ramadan, took off his formal clothes and began to mystical training himself based on Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s Qūt al-qulūb. After a while, he met with one of the disciples of Nūr al-dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Isfarāyīnī (d. 717/1317) and wondered about him. Then left Simnān for Baghdad with the intention of visiting him. However, Arghun was informed about this and prevented him from going to Baghdad, withholding him for some time. After a while, Simnānī escaped from Arghun and returned to Simnān and wrote a letter to al-Isfarāyīnī on this incident. In response, al-Isfarāyīnī said that he does not need to visit Baghdad, al-Isfarāyīnī would be with him spiritually and ordered him to start his training. Simnānī kept his connection alive with his shaykh during this period via letters and spiritual meetings but he could not meet with him face to face. Afterwards, he could meet him twice and granted ijāza from him.After that, upon his shaykh’s order, he turned back to Simnān and engaged with disciples’ mystical trainings and authoring books. He gained an eminent position in both his order and history of the Ṣūfism, upbringing too many disciples and writing around ninety works. His importance in the Kubraviyya rooted firstly in the fact that the extant sub-branches of the order have him in their silsila (spiritual genealogy). In this regard Simnānī is a key actor within his order. Besides, it is significant that he had great impact on the founders of two branches of the Kubraviyya, i.e. Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385) and Muhammad Nurbakhsh (d. 869/1464) that indicating his influence among the order itself. When examined from the angel of the history of the Ṣūfism, the most apparent and distinctive point regarding Simnānī is his criticism against Ibn ʿArabī (d. 637/1240) on the problem of being. Notwithstanding, his supreme contribution to the Ṣūfism is his doctrine of latāif, which particularly influenced Pārsā (d. 822/1240), a leading disciple of the founder of the Naqshbandiyya. Likewise his mystical experiences and thoughts on rijāl al-ghāib had also influenced subsequent Ṣūfīs. His thoughts on the problem of khawātir, which is crucial component of Kubravī path, and detailed information given in his books regarding the lights (anwār) and the truth of nūr as well as his explanations about the situations experienced during the manifestation of God can be listed among his contributions to the history of the Ṣūfism.Simnānī who wrote on various problems of Ṣūfism, dealt with the problem of the Hereafter in the context of his understanding of initiation. For the world cannot be disunited from the Hereafter, as his understanding of the Hereafter is examined, his view of the world is studied as well. With reference to the presupposition that there are three distinct dimensions of the world, Simnānī says that man’s relationship with the world should be differentiated according to following three aspects: the world’s being a plantation for the hereafter, the world’s being a place that should be abandoned and the world does not have a reality. According to him the hereafter is a continuous moment, whereas the worldly life is bound by the past and the future. Since the past and the future do not have a real being, hence the world as well does not have real being. Simnānī embraces the death and the Doomsday in an intertwined fashion in the context of his own understanding of mystical training. Approvingly the consensus of the Ṣūfis, he divides the death into two: necessary and voluntary. And he divides the Doomsday into three: big, middle and small. According to this, the wayfarer who has weakened his soul’s evil attributes via the voluntary death observes the situations of the small doomsday. Thereby the wayfarer who observed everything that is depicted in the Quran that will be experienced after the necessary death, gains time to take necessary precautions before the necessary death, which is irremediable. Another issue that Simnānī raises regarding the Doomsday is the sorts of the Doomsday. Based on the different names of the Doomsday, he says that there are different doomsdays each of which is related with one of the latāif situated among human faculties. Ultimately salvation from those doomsdays is possible with a different good deed. Another point that Simnānī comes up with is the problem of existence of the paradise and the hell today. He thinks that the paradise and the hell both exist today, with reference to his own kashf. He relates this narrating the verses and the traditions, which support his view. Besides, he accepts that there are two paradises and hells, one is inside the human nature and the other is out there. According to Simnānī, entering the outer paradise without observing one’s inner paradise is nonsense. This is possible only through a spiritual journey from one’s external being into his/her internal being. In the end, this can only be accomplished via the voluntary death. (shrink)

The many-property problem has traditionally been taken to show that the adverbial theory of perception is untenable. This paper first shows that several widely accepted views concerning the nature of perception---including both representational and non-representational views---likewise face the many-property problem. It then presents a solution to the many-property problem for these views, but goes on to show how this solution can be adapted to provide a novel, fully compositional solution to the many-property problem for adverbialism. Thus, with respect to the (...) many-property problem, adverbialism and several widely accepted views in the philosophy of perception are on a par, and the problem is solved. (shrink)

Mathematicians distinguish between proofs that explain their results and those that merely prove. This paper explores the nature of explanatory proofs, their role in mathematical practice, and some of the reasons why philosophers should care about them. Among the questions addressed are the following: what kinds of proofs are generally explanatory (or not)? What makes a proof explanatory? Do all mathematical explanations involve proof in an essential way? Are there really such things as explanatory proofs, and if so, how do (...) they relate to the sorts of explanation encountered in philosophy of science and metaphysics? (shrink)

In this paper I present an empirical solution to the puzzle of Macbeth's dagger. The puzzle of Macbeth's dagger is the question of whether, in having his fatal vision of a dagger, Macbeth sees a dagger. I answer this question by addressing a more general one: the question of whether perceptual verbs are intensional transitive verbs (ITVs). I present seven experiments, each of which tests a collection of perceptual verbs for one of the three features characteristic of ITVs. One of (...) these features is Nonexistence: the failure of sentences involving transitive verbs to entail the existence of their direct objects. The experiments reveal that with respect to all three of these features, "see" behaves much more like a paradigmatically extensional verb than an intensional one. But surprisingly, unlike "see", "perceive" behaves much more like a paradigmatically intensional verb. This shows that the category of perceptual verbs is not uniform with respect to the features of intensionality; while Macbeth does not see a dagger, he may still perceive one. (shrink)

In this paper I explore graded attributions of blameworthiness—that is, judgments of the general sort, "A is more blameworthy for x-ing than B is," or "A is less blameworthy for her character than B is." In so doing, I aim to provide a philosophical basis for the widespread, if not completely articulate, practice of altering the degree to which we hold others responsible on the basis of facts about them or facts about their environments. To vindicate this practice, I disambiguate (...) several related properties and identify the properties of being more blameworthy for an action with a complex set of relations between what an agent deserves for her action and how good it is from the point of view of desert that she receives that response. (shrink)

Gauss’s quadratic reciprocity theorem is among the most important results in the history of number theory. It’s also among the most mysterious: since its discovery in the late 18th century, mathematicians have regarded reciprocity as a deeply surprising fact in need of explanation. Intriguingly, though, there’s little agreement on how the theorem is best explained. Two quite different kinds of proof are most often praised as explanatory: an elementary argument that gives the theorem an intuitive geometric interpretation, due to Gauss (...) and Eisenstein, and a sophisticated proof using algebraic number theory, due to Hilbert. Philosophers have yet to look carefully at such explanatory disagreements in mathematics. I do so here. According to the view I defend, there are two important explanatory virtues—depth and transparency—which different proofs (and other potential explanations) possess to different degrees. Although not mutually exclusive in principle, the packages of features associated with the two stand in some tension with one another, so that very deep explanations are rarely transparent, and vice versa. After developing the theory of depth and transparency and applying it to the case of quadratic reciprocity, I draw some morals about the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

The literature on the wrong kind of reason problem largely assumes that such reasons pose only a theoretical problem for certain theories of value rather than a practical problem. Since the normative force of the canonical examples is obvious, the only difficulty is to identify what reasons of the right and wrong kind have in common without circularity. This chapter argues that in addition to the obvious WKRs on which the literature focuses, there are also more interesting WKRs that do (...) not overtly refer to the advantages of having some evaluative attitude. Instead they refer to features of the object that bear on the propriety of having certain attitudes toward it. What is interesting about these cases is that their normative force is opaque. It can be clear that some consideration bears on whether or not to feel shame, pity, or amusement, for example, but unclear just how it does so—specifically, whether the consideration helps make the object of the attitude shameful, pitiable, or funny. The problems caused by WKRs are ubiquitous, and they outstrip the wrong kind of reason problem as it has ordinarily been conceived, since extant solutions to the technical problem offer no help resolving the opacity of normative force. (shrink)

The role of a functionalist account of phenomenal properties in Keith Frankish's illusionist position results in two issues for his view. The first concerns the ontological status of illusions of phenomenality. Illusionists are committed to their existence, and these illusions would appear to have phenomenal features. Frankish argues that functionalism about phenomenal properties yields a response, but I contend that it doesn't, and that instead the illusionist's basic account of phenomenal properties must be reapplied to the illusions themselves. The second (...) concern is that phenomenal properties would seem to be intrinsic properties of experience, but functionalism has them consist solely in relations. The nonfunctionalist option can recapture the sense that these properties are intrinsic. It can also preserve the intuition that they are causal powers in a robust sense, and thereby, perhaps surprisingly, provide a stronger response to the knowledge and conceivability arguments. (shrink)

This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in describing attentional experiences, tends to apply the so-called spotlight metaphor, according to which attention is characterized as the illumination of certain surrounding objects or events. In this framework, attention is not seen as involving our bodily attitudes or modifying the way we experience those objects and events. It is primarily conceived as a purely mental and volitional activity of the cognizing subject. Against this (...) view, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that attention is a creative activity deeply linked with bodily movements. This paper clarifies and systematizes this view and brings it into dialogue with current empirical findings as well as with current theoretical research on embodied cognition. By doing this, I spell out three main claims about embodied attention: the transcendentalism of embodiment for attention, the bodily subjectivity of attention, and the creativity of embodied attention. (shrink)

Bainbridge’s well known “Ironies of Automation” Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 129–135, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9) laid out a set of fundamental criticisms surrounding the promises of automation that, even 30 years later, remain both relevant and, in many cases, intractable. Similarly, a set of ironies in technologies for sensor driven self-quantification is laid out here, spanning from instrumental problems in human factors design to much broader social problems. As with automation, these ironies stand in the way (...) of many of the promised benefits of these wearable technologies. It is argued here that without addressing these ironies now, the promises of wearables may not come to fruition, and instead users may experience outcomes that are opposite to those which the designers seek to afford, or, at the very least, those which consumers believe they are being offered. This paper describes four key ironies of sensor driven self-quantification: know more, know better versus no more, no better; greater self-control versus greater social control; well-being versus never being well enough; more choice versus erosion of choice. (shrink)

I am glad that David Chalmers has now come round to the view that explaining the 'problem intuitions' about consciousness is the key to a satisfactory philosophical account of the topic. I find it surprising, however, given his previous writings, that Chalmers does not simply attribute these intuitions to the conceptual gap between physical and phenomenal facts. Still, it is good that he doesn't, given that this was always a highly implausible account of the problem intuitions. Unfortunately, later in his (...) paper Chalmers slides back into his misguided previous emphasis on the conceptual gap, in his objections to orthodox a posteriori physicalism. Because of this he fails to appreciate how this orthodox physicalism offers a natural solution to the challenges posed by consciousness. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine's activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children's causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

In locating friendly fire in contemporary philosophy of religion, D.Z. Phillips shows that more harm can be done to religion by its philosophical defenders than by its philosophical despisers. Friendly fire is the result of an uncritical acceptance of empiricism, and Phillips argues that we need to examine critically the claims that individual consciousness is the necessary starting point from which we have to argue: for the existence of an external world and the reality of God; that God is a (...) person without a body, a pure consciousness; and that to assent to a religious belief is essentially to assign a truth value to a proposition independent of any confessional context. When these products of friendly fire are avoided, we arrive at a new understanding of belief, trust and the soul, and refuse to say more or less than we know about the realities of human life in the service of religious apologetics. (shrink)

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling. Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian Salimkhani, Andrea Reichenberger, Anne Sophie Meincke, Javier Suárez, Roger Deulofeu, Ludger Jansen, (...) Peter Hucklenbroich, Martin Carrier, Elizaveta Kostrova, Lara Huber, Jens Harbecke, Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona and Axel Gelfert. This collection fosters dialogue between philosophers of science working in different subfields, and brings readers the finest and latest work across the breadth of the field,illustrating that contemporary philosophy of science has successfully broadened its scope of reflection. It will interest and inspire a wide audience of philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The volume shares selected contributions from the prestigious second triennial conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science/ Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP.2016, March 8, 2016 - March 11, 2016). (shrink)

D. N. MacCormick; XI*—The Obligation of Reparation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 175–194, https://doi.org/10.

David Stove reviews Selwyn Grave's History of Philosophy in Australia, and praises philosophers for thinking harder about the bases of science, mathematics and medicine than the practitioners in the field. The review is reprinted as an appendix to James Franklin's Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia.

Causal theories of content, a popular family of approaches to defining the content of mental states, commonly run afoul of two related and serious problems that prevent them from providing an adequate theory of mental content—the misrepresentation problem and the disjunction problem. In this paper, I present a causal theory of content, built on information theoretic tools, that solves these problems and provides a viable model of mental content. This is the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, which identifies the (...) content of a signal as the event the surprisal of which is most reduced by that signal. Conceptually, this amounts to the claim that the content of a signal is the event the probability of which has increased by the largest proportion, or the event that the signal makes the most less surprising to us. I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content in four stages. First, I introduce the general project of causal theories of content, and the challenges presented to this project by the misrepresentation and disjunction problems. Next, I review two recent and prominent causal theories of content and demonstrate the serious challenges faced by these approaches, both clarifying the need for a solution to the misrepresentation and disjunction problems and providing a conceptual background for the greatest surprise reduction theory. Then, I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, demonstrate its ability to resolve the misrepresentation and disjunction problems, and explore some additional applications it may have. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of a particularly difficult challenge that remains to be addressed—the partition problem—and sketch a path to a potential solution. (shrink)

D.W. Hamlyn presents a history of the great philosophical thinkers and their responses to the profound problems involved in trying to understand the world and our place in it.

This is a teaching and learning guide to accompany "Explanation in Mathematics: Proofs and Practice".

Pour un arbitrage entre la théorie cognitive de l’esprit et la phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité la technologie simule une situation de croisement perceptif dans un espace virtuel, où la reconnaissance par un agent de la présence d’un autre repose uniquement sur l’interaction comportementale. À la justification de Merleau-Ponty et Varela quant au caractère non représentationnel ni inférentiel de la reconnaissance d’autrui, en dissociant celle-ci d’avec une détermination spatiale, on ajoutera un analogon technologique de l’expérience du « visage » comme halo de (...) présence non objectivable, d’après Levinas. (shrink)

D.O. Thomas; VI*—The Duty to Trust, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 89–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

This paper shows that direct-object perceptual verbs, such as "hear", "smell", "taste", "feel", and "see", share a collection of distinctive semantic behaviors with depictive verbs, among which are "draw'', "paint", "sketch", and "sculpt". What explains these behaviors in the case of depictives is that they are causative verbs, and have lexical decompositions that involve the creation of concrete artistic artifacts, such as pictures, paintings, and sculptures. For instance, "draw a dog" means "draw a picture of a dog", where the latter (...) occurrence of "draw" denotes a creative activity. While perceptual verbs are not obviously causatives, they have analogous decompositions involving noun phrases that denote modality-specific sense-objects, such as a sounds, smells, flavors, touches, and sights. Thus, "hear a trumpet" means "hear the sound of a trumpet", and the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for verbs denoting the other sensory modes. If we take this analogy at face value, our perceptual reports will commit us to a form of the sense-datum theory of perception. While the analogy can be resisted, resistance requires taking on unexpected commitments. (shrink)

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, In (...) Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Findings – Floridi’s PI, including (...) this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects. Research implications – Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS. Originality/value – The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Need Philosophy of Education be so Dreary?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–165, https://doi.org/10.1.