Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

Over the last several years a number of leading philosophers – including Catherine Elgin, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Duncan Pritchard – have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the contemporary focus on knowledge in epistemology and have attempted to “recover” the notion of understanding. According to some of these philosophers, in fact, understanding deserves not just to be recovered, but to supplant knowledge as the focus of epistemological inquiry. This entry considers some of the main reasons why philosophers have (...) taken understanding to be more valuable than knowledge, focusing on claims that it is more transparent, that it better reflects or mirrors the world, and that it is a greater intellectual achievement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become FriendsCatherine ZuckertIn the Platonic dialogues Socrates is shown talking to two, and only two, famous teachers of rhetoric, Thrasymachus of Chalcedon and Gorgias of Leontini.1 At first glance relations between Socrates and Gorgias appear to be much more courteous—they might even be described as cordial—than relations between Socrates and Thrasymachus. In the Gorgias Socrates explicitly and intentionally seeks an opportunity to talk to Gorgias (...) and treats him with great respect. Socrates shows that Gorgias’s claims concerning the power of his art are contradictory, but the philosopher does not press his advantage or embarrass the rhetorician (Stauffer 2006, 34). Although Gorgias indicates his interest in hearing what Socrates has to say by urging his young friends Polus and Callicles to continue the conversation, Gorgias never says that he is convinced by Socrates. And Socrates never announces that Gorgias has become his friend.2In the Republic Socrates reports that Thrasymachus burst into the conversation like a lion. Socrates even claims that he and his interlocutor (Polemarchus) were frightened. The initial exchange between Socrates and Thrasymachus thus appears to be hostile. In the argument that follows, Socrates embarrasses Thrasymachus; the famous teacher of rhetoric blushes. Nevertheless, Socrates declares later in the conversation (1900, 498d) that he and Thrasymachus have become friends.3 [End Page 163]The difference in the relations Socrates had—or at least thought that he could have—with the two teachers of rhetoric is important, because it indicates what sort of rhetoric Socrates thought was compatible not only with his philosophy but also with a just political order and what was not. The differences between the claims and arguments of the two teachers of rhetoric are not easy to pinpoint, however. Many of the charges that Gorgias’s associates Polus and Callicles make against Socrates, at least partly in defense of Gorgias, sound very much like charges Thrasymachus makes against Socrates. In order to discover the grounds of the difference in the relation between the philosopher and the two teachers of rhetoric, it thus becomes necessary to review and compare the claims Gorgias and his students make with those Thrasymachus levels against Socrates at the beginning of the Republic.Socrates’ Encounter with GorgiasAt the beginning of the Gorgias the famous rhetorician’s Athenian host Callicles expresses surprise that Socrates has come to hear Gorgias declaim. But Socrates is not interested in witnessing a demonstration of Gorgias’s prowess as a speaker; he wants to ask the rhetorician what the power of his art is and what he teaches. Since Gorgias had previously offered to answer any questions after his speech, he agrees to respond to Socrates’ queries.In order for them to converse, Socrates emphasizes, Gorgias will have to keep his responses short. Although Gorgias sensibly observes that all questions cannot be answered adequately with brief replies, his first responses to Socrates’ questions are very short. Since Gorgias claims to be a knower and practitioner of an art, Socrates asks what he does and makes others capable of doing. Gorgias replies that he gives speeches and teaches others how to orate. Socrates asks what the speeches are about. “The greatest of human affairs, and the best” (1998, 451d), Gorgias vaguely and rather evasively responds. Pressed to be more specific, he finally declares that his art provides “the greatest good and cause both of freedom for human beings themselves and rule over others in each man’s own city” by enabling them to make speeches that “persuade judges in the law court, councilors in the council, assemblymen in the assembly, and in every other... political gathering” (1998, 452d–e, translation slightly modified).The Grounds of Gorgias’s ClaimsIf Gorgias had not been restricted to brief replies by his agreement with Socrates, he might have explained the reasons for his vast claims with [End Page 164] arguments like those to be found in two of his remaining fragments. In his “Encomium to Helen” he explains the overwhelming power of speech, and in “On the Nonexistent” he demonstrates the reason or basis of this power by arguing that there is no form of “being” that exists independent of our... (shrink)

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning models to determine whether different goals result in (...) different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems. (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus is usually taken to be a sequel to the Republic which shows the cosmological basis of Plato’s politics. In this article I challenge the traditional understanding by arguing that neither Critias’s nor Timaeus’s speech performs the assigned function. The contrast between Timaeus’s monologue and the silently listening Socrates dramatizes the philosophical differences between investigations of “the human things,” like those conducted by Socrates, and attempts to demonstrate the intelligible, mathematically calculable order of the sensible natural world, like that (...) of Timaeus. (shrink)

The concept of biopolitics has been one of the most important and widely used in recent years in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. In Biopolitics, Mills provides a wide-ranging and insightful introduction to the field of biopolitical studies. The first part of the book provides a much-needed philosophical introduction to key theoretical approaches to the concept in contemporary usage. This includes discussions of the work of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Roberto Esposito, and Antonio Negri. In the (...) second part of the book, Mills discusses various topics across the categories of politics, life and subjectivity. These include questions of sovereignty and governmentality, violence, rights, technology, reproduction, race, and sexual difference. This book will be an indispensable guide for those wishing to gain an understanding of the central theories and issues in biopolitical studies. For those already working with the concept of biopolitics, it provides challenging and provocative insights and argues for a ground-breaking reorientation of the field. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s understanding of painting oriented him and his readers to an alternative history of art through a means or an approach well known to philosophers and literary critics, that of irony. A close reading of the first chapter of The Order of Things shows that Foucault rejected the traditional interpretations of art history generated by a focus on the intentions of the individual artist, the identification of the subjects portrayed, and the expectations of a genre, relying instead on a (...) synthesis of the approaches to painting given by Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Lacan, which converged with his ironic approach. (shrink)

Preface Introduction Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith: Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy Part One: Adam Smith: Heritage and Contemporaries 1: Nicholas Phillipson: Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections 2: Leonidas Montes: Newtonianism and Adam Smith 3: Dennis C. Rasmussen: Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment 4: Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith and Early Modern Thought Part Two: Adam Smith on Language, Art and Culture 5: Catherine Labio: Adam Smith's Aesthetics 6: James Chandler: Adam Smith as Critic 7: Michael (...) C. Amrozowicz: Adam Smith: History and Poetics 8: C. Jan Swearingen: Adam Smith on Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety Part Three: Adam Smith and Moral Philosophy 9: Christel Fricke: Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience 10: Duncan Kelly: Adam Smith and the Limits of Sympathy 11: Ryan Patrick Hanley: Adam Smith and Virtue 12: Eugene Heath: Adam Smith and Self-Interest Part Four: Adam Smith and Economics 13: Tony Aspromourgos: Adam Smith on Labour and Capital 14: Nerio Naldi: Adam Smith on Value and Prices 15: Hugh Rockoff: Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level 16: Maria Pia Paganelli: Commercial Relations: from Adam Smith to Field Experiments Part Five: Adam Smith on History and Politics 17: Spiros Tegos: Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption 18: David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart: Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform 19: Fabrizio Simon: Adam Smith and the Law 20: Edwin van de Haar: Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations Part Six: Adam Smith on Social Relations 21: Richard Boyd: Adam Smith, Civility, and Civil Society 22: Gavin Kennedy: Adam Smith on Religion 23: Samuel Fleischacker: Adam Smith and Equality 24: Maureen Harkin: Adam Smith and Women Part Seven; Adam Smith: Legacy and Influence 25: Spencer J. Pack: Adam Smith and Marx 26: Craig Smith: Adam Smith and the New Right 27: Tom Campbell: Adam Smith: Methods, Morals and Markets 28: Amartya Sen: The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith. (shrink)

This study of the metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz gives a clear picture of his philosophical development within the general scheme of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Catherine Wilson examines the shifts in Leibniz's thinking as he confronted the major philosophical problems of his era. Beginning with his interest in artificial languages and calculi for proof and discovery, the author proceeds to an examination of Leibniz’s early theories of matter and motion, to the phenomenalistic turn in his theory of substance and (...) his subsequent de-emphasis of logical determinism, and finally to his doctrines of harmony and optimization. Specific attention is given to Leibniz’s understanding of Descartes and his successors, Malebranche and Spinoza, and the English philosophers Newton, Cudworth, and Locke. Wilson analyzes Leibniz’s complex response to the new mechanical philosophy, his discontent with the foundations on which it rested, and his return to the past to locate the resources for reconstructing it. She argues that the continuum-problem is the key to an understanding not only of Leibniz’s monadology but also of his views on the substantiality of the self and the impossibility of external causal influence. A final chapter considers the problem of Leibniz-reception in the post-Kantian era, and the difficulty of coming to terms with a metaphysics that is not only philosophically "critical" but, at the same time, “compensatory.” Originally published in 2050. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book helps break down and analyze the process of solid decision making.

A collection of new essays addressing Foucault’s thought and its impact on thinking about the visual arts, literature and aesthetic discourse in the 21st century.

In this introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes' famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes' thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes' writings and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces (...) concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

The principle that epistemic justification is necessarily transmitted to all the known logical consequences of a justified belief continues to attract critical attention. That attention is not misplaced. If the Transmission Principle is valid, anyone who thinks that a given belief is justified must defend the view that every known consequence of the belief is also justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection principle is modified, the (...) possibility of deductive justification is threatened. If some known consequence fails to be justified, the failure may extend to every known consequence. To reject Transmission is to insert a logical gap between the justification of a premise and the justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection on the Transmission Principle therefore usefully brings us face to face with the following dilemma: accept the principle and hand Cartesian scepticism a powerful weapon, or modify the principle and risk undermining deductive justification. (shrink)

Infants' knowledge need not have the same structure as the mature knowledge that develops from it. Fundamental to an understanding of number are concepts of equivalence and less-than and greater-than relations. These concepts, together with the concept of unit, are posited to be the starting points for the development of numerical knowledge.

In this paper I examine the meaning of physical touch as it occurs in the nurse–patient interaction. There are two aspects of the nurse–patient relationship that are found in most nurse–patient interactions which together have profound implications for nurses as practitioners and as individual human persons. The first is the clinical intimacy of the nurse–patient relationship where nurses touch, rub, smooth, clean, dress and otherwise physically interact with patients. The other is the existential crisis, the possibility of loss, suffering and (...) death that lurks at the horizon of most, if not all, healthcare encounters. Edmund Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty and more recently Robert Sokolowski argue that tactile sensations and resultant perceptions are fundamental to all sensory perception. Further, they argue that tactile sensation is fundamental for the ongoing constitution of ‘my’ self as a person and for the development and exercise of human intersubjectivity. If tactile interaction is crucial to the development of our very selves as persons and a significant aspect of our interaction with patients includes direct or observed tactile sensations and if further these sensations occur around the context of existential crises for our patients, then nurse's very selves as persons are being challenged by these interactions. Here, then I examine the philosophical argument for the role of tactile sensations in our human development and briefly look at contemporary neurophysiologic research that supports this philosophical account. I then suggest ways such physical intimacy can lead to a strengthening or weakening of the person of the nurse and the nursing interaction and end with some thoughts about ways to support nurses in these activities. (shrink)

This article explores a problem of the articulation of an adequate account of the human person in both philosophical and nursing theory. It follows the lead of philosopher Norris Clarke in suggesting that there has been a significant division in the way philosophers have looked at the human person and goes on to suggest that this division is paralleled in prominent nursing theories. The paper reviews and argues for the synthesis of two contemporary philosophic theories of the person that arise (...) from the traditional philosophical division, and uses Clarke's account to show the ontological need for such a synthesis if we are to have a more adequate account of the human person. Next, accounts of the person identified in a number of the prominent theories of nursing are briefly reviewed revealing the vast complexity of the person encountered in nursing practice. It is suggested that each new theory of nursing is founded, at least in part, on the need to account for attributes of the person missing from prior nursing theories. It will be seen that the synthesized account of the person argued for here more adequately accounts for the various attributes identified in these nursing accounts and it is hoped that this synthesized account will serve as a somewhat more complete basis for a continued exploration of the persons encountered in nursing practice in its many and varied manifestations. (shrink)

In a previous paper (Duncan, T.L., Semura, J.S. in Entropy 6:21, 2004) we considered the question, “What underlying property of nature is responsible for the second law?” A simple answer can be stated in terms of information: The fundamental loss of information gives rise to the second law. This line of thinking highlights the existence of two independent but coupled sets of laws: Information dynamics and energy dynamics. The distinction helps shed light on certain foundational questions in statistical mechanics. (...) For example, the confusion surrounding previous “derivations” of the second law from energy dynamics can be resolved by noting that such derivations incorporate one or more assumptions that correspond to the loss of information. In this paper we further develop and explore the perspective in which the second law is fundamentally a law of information dynamics. (shrink)

Cognitive advancement is not always a matter of acquiring new information. It often consists in reconfiguration--in reorganizing a domain so that hitherto overlooked or underemphasized features, patterns, opportunities, and resources come to light. Several modes of reconfiguration prominent in the arts--metaphor, fiction, exemplification, and perspective--play important roles in science as well. They do not perform the same roles as literal, descriptive, perspectiveless scientific truths. But to understand how science advances understanding, we need to appreciate the ineliminable cognitive contributions of non-literal, (...) non-descriptive symbols. (shrink)