" L'allure du temps a tout à fait changé, disait déjà Michelet en 1872. Il a doublé le pas d'une manière étrange. Dans une simple vie d'homme, j'ai vu deux grandes révolutions, qui autrefois auraient peut-être mis entre elles deux mille ans d'intervalle. " Daniel Halévy, historien, philosophe, biographe, avait vu beaucoup plus de choses encore, et plus extraordinaires, et en beaucoup moins de temps, quand il écrivit ce livre au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L'Histoire va-t-elle plus (...) vite? Etudiant le rythme des grands courants qui ont animé les empires et les peuples, l'auteur croit discerner dans son déroulement une allure constamment plus rapide. Cette thèse, qui soulève bien des interrogations et des objections, eut à l'époque un grand retentissement. Elle n'a rien perdu de son actualité. Le progrès technique en est-il la cause? Fait-il courir à l'humanité autant de dangers qu'il lui apporte de satisfactions? Ce court essai, un des plus denses et des plus riches qui aient été écrits sur la question, contient aussi un panorama fulgurant et passionné de l'Histoire universelle. On pourra lire à la suite quelques-uns des commentaires et des débats auxquels il a donné lieu, notamment une discussion avec Albert Bayet, le père Daniélou, et Raymond Aron, ainsi qu'une réflexion de Daniel Halévy sur Leibniz, le philosophe auquel il a consacré le plus d'attention. (shrink)

Peterson et al. (2023) identify important ethical issues that are relevant to psychedelic therapy and research in various clinical populations and contexts. This is certainly the case in palliative...

Medical care in the United States traditionally has focused on the treatment of disease rather than on its prevention. Heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic diseases are the primary drivers of American health care costs; compared to other high-income countries, U.S. health indices are lowest and costs are highest.A “triple aim” — “improving the individual experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing the per capita costs of care for populations” — has gained traction, as the (...) social determinants of health are recognized as having significant effects on health outcomes. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an argument strengthening the view of Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy and Ichiro Kawachi that justice is good for one's health. We argue that the pathways through which social factors produce inequalities in sleep more strongly imply a unidirectional and non-voluntary causality than with most other public health issues. Specifically, we argue against the 'voluntarism objection' – an objection that suggests that adverse public health outcomes can be traced back to the free and voluntary choices of (...) individual actors. Our argument proceeds along two lines: an empirical line and a conceptual line. We first show that much of the empirical research on sleep supports the view that those with fewer opportunities are those who have poorer sleep habits. We then argue that sleep-related decisions are not of the same nature as most other lifestyle choices, and therefore are not as easily susceptible to the voluntarism objection. (shrink)

Bob Hale in Hale 1995b posed a dilemma for modal fictionalism (more specifically, Rosen's version of modal fictionalism). A modal fictionalist who maintains the version outlined in Rosen 1990 believes that the fiction of possible worlds (PW, to use Rosen and Hale's abbreviation) is not literally true. The question arises, however, about its modal status. Is it necessarily false, or contingently false? In either case, Hale argues, the modal fictionalist is in trouble. Should the modal fictionalist (...) claim that the story of possible worlds is necessarily false, then the modal fictionalist cannot gloss their "according to the fiction of possible worlds ... ." prefix as "were the fiction of possible worlds true, then ... would be true". This is because, according to Hale, conditional claims with antecedents which are necessarily false are automatically true, so it follows that if the fiction of possible worlds is taken to be necessarily false, all conditionals of the form "were the fiction of possible worlds true then ..." are true, and not merely the ones that the modal fictionalist wishes to endorse. If the modal fiction is to be useful, not everything should be true according to it: examples of claims that had better not be true according to it include the claim that 2+2=7, or the claim that there are no possible worlds. On the other hand, if the fiction of possible worlds (PW) is only contingently false, Hale claims this also lands the Rosen's fictionalism in unacceptable trouble, though it is not so clear why (see below). Let me discuss these horns in turn. (shrink)

This book offers a collection of contemporary essays that explore philosophical themes at work in chess. This collection includes essays on the nature of a game, the appropriateness of chess as a metaphor for life, and even deigns to query whether Garry Kasparov might—just might—be a cyborg. In twelve unique essays, contributed by philosophers with a broad range of expertise in chess, this book poses both serious and playful questions about this centuries-old pastime. -/- Perhaps more interestingly, philosophers have often (...) used chess in discussions of their work. Walter Benjamin compares the marching of history to an automaton playing chess. John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce utilize chess to explain their pragmatism. The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure employs the analogy of chess to explain the exchange of signifiers. There are approximately 181 uses of the word chess or one of its cognates in the published works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. John Rawls explains that one might want to make a distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, which can best be understood by examining a game of chess. John Searle, deeply convinced of this distinction, explains further: "The rules of football or chess are given as an example of constitutive rules because they 'create the very possibility of playing such games.'" Hubert Dreyfus and Daniel Dennett have had extensive public discussions about the issue of artificial intelligence and chess. Dreyfus, utilizing chess examples, has written extensively on what computers still cannot do. Meanwhile, in spite of his protestations, chess-playing computers continue to fascinate those who work in the area of artificial intelligence. -/- The game of chess has endured since at least the sixth century. Its earliest variant, the Indian game of Chaturanga, was from the beginning a game for thinkers. Since its inception, scholars, statesmen, strategists, and warriors have been fascinated by the game and its variants. German philosopher Emmanuel Lasker and famed French artist Marcel Duchamp were both Grandmasters at chess. Karl Marx played chess avidly, as did Sir Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the logical positivist Max Black. Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions in his Confessions that, at the time, he "had another expedient, not less solid, in the game of chess, to which I regularly dedicated, at Maugis's, the evenings on which I did not go to the theater. I became acquainted with M. de Legal, M. Husson, Philidor, and all the great chess players of the day, without making the least improvement in the game." More recently, philosopher Stuart Rachels reports that his father, the late philosopher and prominent ethicist James Rachels, received a bribe from a Russian Grandmaster while he was the chair of the U.S. Chess Federation's Ethics committee. -/- "Whether you’re a professional philosopher, an armchair chess player, or something in between, Philosophy Looks at Chess gives you hours of thought-provoking reading. With chapters on technology, ethics, hip hop, and backward analysis, this book carves out a new space in the literature on both chess and philosophy" -/- —Jennifer Shahade, two-time U.S. Women's Champion and author of Chess Bitch -/- "Chess and philosophy are natural mates that have been awaiting the proper introduction. This wide-ranging collection of stimulating essays is the perfect opening gambit for philosophical chess enthusiasts." -/- —Will Dudley, author of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom. (shrink)

L’article s’emploie à comparer la doctrine de l’Incarnation dans les trois grandes œuvres spéculatives de saint Thomas : Scriptum super Sententiis, Summa contra Gentiles, Summa theologiae. Il examine d’abord le plan suivi dans les trois ouvrages pour traiter ce thème ; puis la façon dont saint Thomas remédie à deux lacunes de la christologie du Lombard (convenances de l’Incarnation, mystères de la vie du Christ) ; ensuite, les deux opinions christologiques du Lombard rejetées par les docteurs parisiens et concernant, l’une, (...) l’âme séparée du corps et, l’autre, la question de savoir si, durant le triduum mortis, le Christ était un homme ; enfin, dix-sept des articuli in quibus. Malgré son caractère pointilliste, cette recherche permet d’explorer les aspects essentiels de la christologie de saint Thomas, de souligner les progrès de sa pensée et aussi de relever quelques positions problématiques de son enseignement. (shrink)

Fantasies of Flight invigorates the field of personality psychology by challenging the contemporary academic view that individuals are best studied as carriers of traits. Daniel Ogilvie exchanges a heart-to-heart, case study approach to understanding human behavior for the current strategies of categorizing and comparing individuals according to their manifest traits. Ogilvie asks and endeavors to answer questions like "What were the psychological conditions that led Sir James Barrie to create a character named Peter Pan?" and "What were the dynamics (...) behind the Marshall Herff Applewhite's conviction that a space ship, hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, would rescue him and his Heaven's Gate followers after they enacted a mass suicide pact in 1997?" Answering these questions requires him to resurrect "old" ways to think about personality and "old" strategies for studying individuals one by one. Early in the book, Ogilvie reviews the history of why intensive case studies were discredited in psychology and describes how Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical account of Leonardo da Vinci's fascination with flight inadvertently abetted critics of psychoanalytic psychology. He then performs a partial psychobiography of James Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan, followed by an investigation of Carl Jung, who fashioned the collective unconscious to serve as humankind's link to eternity. Arguing that personality psychology needs to become less insular, Ogilvie integrates information from the disciplines of developmental psychology and neuroscience into a theory regarding the latent needs that both Barrie and Jung sought to satisfy. The theory, including its emphasis on the onset of self and consciousness, is then applied to an array of well-known and obscure individuals with ascensionistic inclinations. Well written and accessible, but complex and scholarly, this volume will restore interest in the investigation of people's inner lives. (shrink)

Here, Bob Hale and Crispin Wright assemble the key writings that lead to their distinctive neo-Fregean approach to the philosophy of mathematics. In addition to fourteen previously published papers, the volume features a new paper on the Julius Caesar problem; a substantial new introduction mapping out the program and the contributions made to it by the various papers; a section explaining which issues most require further attention; and bibliographies of references and further useful sources. It will be recognized as (...) the most powerful presentation yet of a neo-Fregean program. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of John Stuart Mill's theory of higher and lower pleasures in his Utilitarianism. I argue that the quality of pleasure is best understood as the density of pleasure per unit of delivery. Mill is illustrated with numerous beer examples.

This volume provides a survey of contemporary philosophy of language. As well as providing a synoptic view of the key issues, figures, concepts and debates, each essay makes new and original contributions to ongoing debate.

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

Kit Fine’s book is a study of abstraction in a quite precise sense which derives from Frege. In his Grundlagen, Frege contemplates defining the concept of number by means of what has come to be called Hume’s principle—the principle that the number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs just in case there is a one-to-one correspondence between the Fs and the Gs. Frege’s discussion is largely conducted in terms of another, similar but in some respects simpler, (...) proposal—to define the concept of direction by laying down the principle that the direction of a line a is the same as that of line b if and only if lines a and b are parallel. Such principles have come to be known as abstraction principles. More generally, abstraction principles are ones of the shape: ∀α∀β ↔ α ≈ β), where ≈ is an equivalence relation on entities of the type over which α and β vary and, if the principle is acceptable, § is a function from entities of that type to objects. Since ‘the direction of’ is intended to stand for a function from objects of a certain sort to other objects, the Direction Equivalence is a first-order, or in Fine’s terminology objectual, abstraction; since ‘the number of’ is intended to stand for a function from concepts to objects, Hume’s principle is a higher-order, or as Fine says conceptual, abstraction. As is well-known, Frege himself abandoned the idea of defining number implicitly or contextually by means of Hume’s principle—adopting instead an explicit definition of the number of Fs as the extension of the concept concept equinumerous to the concept F— because he thought that an adequate definition should settle the question whether Julius Caesar, for example, is or is not the number of some concept, but that the proposed implicit definition cannot do so. But interest in abstraction principles has revived in the last couple of decades, largely as a result of Crispin Wright’s attempt to show that in spite of the many difficulties confronting it—including the notorious Julius Caesar problem— Hume’s principle can after all serve as a foundation for arithmetic. (shrink)

I argue that Monique Wittig's view that lesbians are not women neglects the complexities involved in the composition of the category "woman." I develop an articulation of the concept "woman" in the contemporary United States, with thirteen distinct defining characteristics, none of which are necessary nor sufficient. I argue that Wittig's emphasis on the material production of "woman" through the political regime of heterosexuality, however, is enormously fruitful for feminist and queer strategizing.

A beer-lovers' book which playfully examines a myriad of philosophical concerns related to beer consumption. Effectively demonstrates how real philosophical issues exist just below the surface of our everyday activities Divided into four sections: The Art of the Beer; The Ethics of Beer: Pleasures, Freedom, and Character; The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Beer; and Beer in the History of Philosophy Uses the context of beer to expose George Berkeley’s views on fermented beverages as a medical cure; to inspect Immanuel Kant’s (...) transcendental idealism through beer goggles, and to sort out Friedrich Nietzsche’s simultaneous praise and condemnation of intoxication Written for beer-lovers who want to think while they drink. (shrink)

Based on a series of interviews with blue-collar women and their husbands in Istanbul, Turkey, this article examines the negotiation of family work in households in which the wives are major providers. The relationships between provider status, women's expectations, and the actual configuration of family work are complexly mediated by cultural constructions, perception of women as providers, marital dynamics, and extended family relationships. Three different discourses characterize family work. Woman's evaluation of her husband as “responsible” or “irresponsible” informs the construction (...) of the male role in the household. Conflict is heightened when men default on both domestic and economic grounds. This study makes a contribution toward a comparative understanding of negotiation of family work by providing an analysis of how structural conditions and cultural ideology interact to construct a gendered division of family work in the household in the context of continuities and discontinuities in sociocultural patterns. (shrink)

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise-use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise-use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss (...) the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written by Bob Hale (three co-authored), with a critical introduction from Kit Fine. They comprise Hale’s final years of work, adding to and extending beyond his landmark monograph Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (OUP, 2013, 2nd edition 2015). The essays develop and consolidate several key themes in Hale’s work, most notably the notion of definition, especially as it extends beyond definition of a word (...) to definition of a thing more generally, and its relations to essence and existence; how the recently influential notion of truthmaking relates to and illuminates some of these issues; and ontological questions connected with Hale’s metaphysical commitments on the one hand, and his commitments in the foundations of mathematics on the other. Several of the essays engage with and respond to work by Kit Fine, and contributions to Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (OUP 2018). As such, these essays also demonstrate a rich and fruitful philosophical dialogue between Hale and his critics and friends. (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

Sometimes it takes years of debate for philosophers to discover what it is they really disagree about. Sometimes they talk past each other in long series of books and articles, never guessing at the root disagreement that divides them. But occasionally a day comes when something happens to coax the cat out of the bag. "Aha!" one philosopher exclaims to another, "so that's why you've been disagreeing with me, misunderstanding me, resisting my conclusions, puzzling me all these years!".