Bonaventure's Breviloquium is a concise compilation of the principal points of theology, from creation to the last judgement. It is the gateway to the seraphic doctor's major treatises, such as the classical De reductione artium ad theologiam and Itinerarium mentis in Deum. It articulates Christian teaching on God, creatures, the Fall, the Incarnation, grace, the sacraments and judgement. It provides a summary of material treated elsewhere in his Opera Omnia and is accorded the first place among his authentic works by (...) Balduinus Distelbrink in his Bonaventurae Scripta. This persuasive text is revisited by a team of bonaventurean scholars. The genesis of this project is explained by J. A. Wayne Hellmann, OFM.Conv.... (shrink)

This case note reviews the guidelines issued by Morison J. in the Employment Appeal Tribunal at the end of the decision in Reed and Bull Information Systems Ltd v. Stedman [1999] I.R.L.R.299. The author argues that while the judge’s decision is to be welcomed in adopting an approach more sympathetic to victims of sexual harassment, it also raises a number of problems by placing a burden on the victim to place the harasser on notice that she does not welcome his (...) conduct. The guidelines are likely to be usefully applied in any jurisdiction that has rules forbidding sexual harassment. The author considers the guidelines from both a practical and a doctrinal angle and indicates that the right to be free from sexual harassment is one that the courts are reluctant to protect like other civil rights. (shrink)

This 1978 Oxford dissertation is a useful addition to the commentaries on individual Plotinian treatises at present available: Schröder on I.8; Beierwaltes on III.7; Wolters on III.5. Atkinson notes the important facts about Plotinus' life and writing in a brief introduction; provides a summary of the contents of Ennead V.1; reprints the Greek text of V.1 as printed in Henry-Schwyzer's editio maior ; provides an English translation; a long and detailed commentary; a brief bibliography; and indices. The translation is generally (...) very careful, clear and reliable and there are few places that I have doubts about. Line references in the margins of the translation would help. The commentary is also of a high standard. Writing an extensive commentary on such a text requires a range and depth of reading that is to be expected from someone with much more experience. But Atkinson meets the challenge well. The commentary is thorough, well-informed, sensible, and based on the exegesis of particular phrases. Perhaps a few essays giving a more comprehensive view would have helped. The commentary is for the most part philological. Atkinson writes in his Preface: "It is now generally accepted that Plotinus is not an irrelevant curiosity to be dismissed"--in the English-speaking world, he should add--"by the historian of ancient philosophy." This had no doubt to do with contempt for Plotinus as a philosopher. However Ennead V.1 is not I think a text that will convert the modern sceptic. As Atkinson notes the treatise is a protreptic. Much is presupposed. There is little argument. Plotinus leads us to self-knowledge by indicating the nature of soul and its grounding in Intellect and ultimately in the One. The path consists of images and brief recallings of principles whose exploration and justification can be found developed at greater length elsewhere. Ennead V.1 can thus be read as an introduction to Plotinus. But I suspect the philosopher will find of greater interest some of Plotinus' later, more elaborate and problematical treatises, e.g., V.3; V.4; VI, 1-3; VI, 7-8.--Dominic J. O'Meara, Université de Fribourg. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s oeuvre is driven by the recurring theme of“emancipation”—that is, the attempt to liberate man from socialexploitation and the projection of an alternative society, a socialistsociety which Marcuse describes as “free, happy, and non-repressive.”1 This suggests that Marcuse saw the existing society as pathological and therefore it needs to be diagnosed and remedied. His readings on Marx led him to his initial findings that the capitalist social order is the primordial cause of thesepathologies, and, hence, it is the transformation (...) of this social order that can bring emancipation to fruition. Inasmuch as this struggle for emancipation requires an active political agent, a critical theorist is, therefore, bound to seek for this agent. This is precisely what concerned Marcuse in his pre-World War II writings. His theory of historicity, which straddles Heidegger, Hegel, andMarx, is a search for that viable political agent who can be the hope of emancipation. Thus, Marcuse’s theory of historicity is premised, among other things, on the attempt to develop a theory of emancipation, and I call this “Marcuse’s first theory of emancipation.”. (shrink)

The concept of “difference” forms the core of contemporary attacks on “liberal legalism” and is central to proposals for replacing it. Critics charge that liberal law quashes difference because it grounds political equality and individual rights in the assumption that all persons share certain “samenesses,” such as rationality or autonomy. In the words of the philosopher Iris Marion Young, “liberal individualism denies difference by positing the self as a solid, self-sufficient unity, not defined by or in need of anything or (...) anyone other than itself.” The claim is that this “sameness”-based vision of equality is in fact an exercise of power, reflecting a highly specific model of personhood that was constructed by and for a white male elite and ensures its continued social dominance. Liberalism's critics conclude that the achievement of social justice will be possible only when sameness-based conceptions of equality are rejected. (shrink)

The present essay analyzes an eighteenth-century phase of the querelle des monstres and highlights two main points. 1) As the cases of Lémery and Winslow demonstrate, in the period when preformation was the dominant view, the dispute over the origin of monsters carried into the very field of preformation the contrast which had originally opposed it to the now defeated model of epigenesis, namely the alternative between mechanical genesis and pre-existence of the monstrous form itself. 2) One of the most (...) important episodes in the shift of teratology from a primarily theological or metaphysical issue to a purely natural one was due to Albrecht von Haller. Haller shifted the dispute from anatomy to embryology; and it is on an embryological base and not on metaphysics that he built his own demonstration of the original nature of the monster. He was furthermore the only scientist of authority who dealt with teratology from an epigenetic standpoint. His numerous changes of view in the field of embryology did in fact never affect his early adherence to the thesis of original monstrosity. (shrink)

The research format of the open state-social-personal system presents the results of the analysis of higher education conditions for the socialization of students. The definition of the important role of the spatial factor - research sociological education reveals the need to introduce a multifunctional management mechanism of the educational subsystem of society. The project features sociological intervention of processes at all levels of the system, which provides functional flexibility and gives focus on the goal-attainment. The possibility of introducing sociological support (...) for the co-management of the system processes of the institutional environment for other institutions of society is demonstrated. (shrink)

The article considers the possibilities of the function and constitution of aesthetic value in the contemporary, ambivalent notion of landscape. It begins with a preliminary analysis of three key concepts central to current discussions – namely, nature, landscape, and environment. It presents one of the dominant models of contemporary ideas about the aesthetics of landscape – the natural environmental model –, and in particular its ambition to accommodate both the true character of today’s relationship between man and his habitat and (...) our aesthetic experience and understanding of it. Mainly, the essay points out the theoretical difficulties implied in this. In conclusion, the article suggests the hidden ethical dimension of our possible relationship to our environment. (shrink)

Domination is a structural complexity of chemical molecular graphs. A dominating set in a graphG=V,Eis a subsetS⊆Vsuch that each vertex inV\Sis adjacent to at least one vertex inS. The domination numberγGof a graphGis the minimum size of a dominating set inG. In this paper, computer-aided approaches for obtaining bounds for domination number on torus graphs are here considered, and many new exact values and bounds are obtained.

Much of Western metaphysics has been shaped by the Parmenidian problem of being, as differentiated into the problem of the one and the many and its correlated problem of change; or more precisely, the problem of making sense of any change from not-being to being. The epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem may well be posed as that of how to make sense of any change from not-knowing to knowing. Plato recognized this as an orienting problem for philosophy and posed (...) it as a famous dilemma in the Meno: how can anyone inquire into that which one does not know? A long-standing modern move for handling this problem is to make a basic distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. Armed with this distinction, one delimits the proper domain of epistemology to issues of justification and simply skirts the epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem by relegating questions of the discovery or genesis of knowledge to psychology, history, or other social sciences. In this approach, epistemology, like ethics, presupposes an is/ought distinction, and any attempt to include questions of the genesis of knowledge, even partially, in the context of justification commits a genetic fallacy. And though Karl Popper acknowledged the problem of the growth of knowledge as being at the heart of epistemology’s task, he still insisted on the justification/ discovery distinction. Notwithstanding Popper, the work of W. V. O. Quine, N. R. Hanson, and most notably Thomas Kuhn has seriously undermined the distinction, and renewed the challenge of the Meno for epistemology and for philosophy of science in particular. (shrink)

The ?values of sport? is a concept that is often used to justify actions and policies by a range of agents and agencies from coaches and teachers to governing bodies and educational institutions. From a philosophical point of view, these values deserve to be analysed with great care to make sure we understand their nature and reach. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the values carried by the educational conception of sport that Pierre de Coubertin developed and (...) to see how they relate to certain values in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. To be able to understand in depth the moral construct of de Coubertin's system, it is essential to delve into the entire system he builds in order to develop athletic participants closer to his ideal of what a human should be. This in turn rests on his conception of Man, which is comprised of body, spirit and character. An understanding of his structure opens the way to a broader awareness of de Coubertin's educational system, of which sport was only part. We will then see that the values are a consequence of this pedagogical search for the ideal human. It is argued that this ideal of a human is similar to the one described by Nietzsche as the Übermensch . A philosophical case study is conducted, taking as its object the story of the first recipient of the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which rewards fair play among Olympic competitors. Judging the story through Nietzschean eyes allows for his thoughts to be put into practice. His lesser-known texts such as Homer and Competition on the emulation of creative powers shed light on today's sports. Concepts such as guilt, excellence, will to power and effectiveness help us compare these two authors and understand that competition is not necessarily about dominating others, but more about generating human excellence. (shrink)

We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over finite domains that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This relation between quantifiers, which is referred to as scope dominance, is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1–V–NP2. Simple numerical or set-theoretical considerations that follow from our main result are used for characterizing such relations. The variety of examples in which they hold are (...) shown to go far beyond the familiar existential-universal type. (shrink)

In this article we address the question of individual identity and its place – or rather omission – in contemporary discussions about the cosmopolitan extension of liberalism as the dominant political theory. The article is divided into two parts. In the first part we show that if we consistently emphasise the complementarity of the “inner” and “outer” identity of a person, which is essential to liberalism from its very beginnings, then a fundamental flaw in the liberal cosmopolitan project becomes apparent. (...) This is the underestimation of the indispensability of an unambiguously determined public framework which will fix and enforce liberal principles and values in a comprehensible way. Such a framework for liberalism was always the political community and then, above all, the modern state, in which the liberal identity could then be realised. The discussion in this part of the article prepares the ground for an examination, in the second part, of a dilemma which cosmopolitan liberalism must face. In the second part we argue that the attempt to tackle the given problem presents liberals with the following dilemma: either it is necessary to plead for the institution of a global political authority (a “world state”), or to give up the belief that fundamental liberal principles and values can be realised to a global extent. We show, at the same time, that because of the character and ambitions of the cosmopolitan project, the promise of plural identities and multi­centred law cannot be relied upon. By way of conclusion we then ask what is the price of the realisation of cosmopolitan liberal ideals. -/- NOTE: This is a two-part article (in Czech). For download here is the first part; please see the link below for the second part as well. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe jurist A. V. Dicey’s study of the Law of the Constitution has been since its publication the dominant analysis of the British constitution and the source of orthodoxy on such subjects as parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. This canonical status has obscured the originality of Dicey’s ideas in the history of legal and political thought. Dicey reworked the traditional idea of sovereignty into two separate concepts – legal and political sovereignty – in order to square the common (...) law notion of the sovereignty of parliament with the democratic idea of the sovereignty of the people. He forged a new concept – ‘the rule of law’ – to explain the legal basis of liberty in common law countries in a manner that was both Benthamite and constitutionalist. Finally, he provided a democratic and anti-federalist rationale for maintaining the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. This majoritarian, centralist and utilitarian constitutionalism has been one of the most enduring products of Victorian scholarship. This article seeks to recover it in its original context and, in so doing, to show the value of reintegrating legal thought into the mainstream of modern British history and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens (SASH) is a result of the integration in the three-module fractal adaptations based on three independent processes of generation, replication, and the implementation of adaptations — genetic, socio-cultural and symbolic ones. The evolutionary landscape SASH is a topos of several evolutionary multi-dimensional vectors: 1) extraversional projective-activity behavioral intention (adaptive inversion 1), 2) mimesis (socio-cultural inheritance), 3) social (Machiavellian) intelligence, 4) the extension of inter-individual communication beyond their own social groups and their own species in (...) the rest of the world, 5) the symbolic system of communication (symbolic inheritance), 6) spiritualistic trans- formation of emotionally-shaped components of mentality, 7) the dominance of the rationalist thought mentality (enhancer of adaptive inverse 1), 8) a recursive distribution of projective-activity intentions on the man himself his genome, psyche and culture (Adaptive Inversion 2), 9) introversional reorientation of the vector of cognitive activity (adaptive inversion 3). (shrink)

An extended polemic, couched in familiar and fairly naive terms, against "faith, myth and superstition." Chance, the author argues, and the physical processes of which it is the dominant feature, form "the guiding principle for our lives."--V. C. C.

Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long-standing puzzle, (...) arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object. So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing each other: they are parts of a unified history of substance. (shrink)

I had intended this review not specifically as a criticism of Skinner's speculations regarding language, but rather as a more general critique of behaviorist (I would now prefer to say "empiricist") speculation as to the nature of higher mental processes. My reason for discussing Skinner's book in such detail was that it was the most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such speculations, an evaluation that I feel is still accurate. Therefore, if the conclusions I attempted to substantiate in the review (...) are correct, as I believe they are, then Skinner's work can be regarded as, in effect, a reductio ad absurdum of behaviorist assumptions. My personal view is that it is a definite merit, not a defect, of Skinner's work that it can be used for this purpose, and it was for this reason that I tried to deal with it fairly exhaustively. I do not see how his proposals can be improved upon, aside from occasional details and oversights, within the framework of the general assumptions that he accepts. I do not, in other words, see any way in which his proposals can be substantially improved within the general framework of behaviorist or neobehaviorist, or, more generally, empiricist ideas that has dominated much of modern linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. The conclusion that I hoped to establish in the review, by discussing these speculations in their most explicit and detailed form, was that the general point of view was largely mythology, and that its widespread acceptance is not the result of empirical support, persuasive reasoning, or the absence of a plausible alternative. (shrink)

The author of this study in intellectual history, an economist, tries to analyze the arguments presented in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in favor of a commercially oriented society. But he makes it clear at the end of this book, that his study has uncovered a new reason for the emergence of capitalism. This reason is different from the Weberian argument, which it complements. Weber had presented a psychological thesis, i.e., the search for a criterion for individual salvation led to (...) the "Protestant" work-ethic. Hirschman studies a sociological problem. He shows that men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were desperately looking for a new model to organize society in order to end the ruinous wars of that time. Thus when the Weberian man appeared on the scene, society was ready to see in him the carrier of the new order. Society was ready to be dominated by commerce and not the chivalric passions and the wars it had led to. (shrink)

GALIMBERTI, Umberto. Rastros do Sagrado: o Cristianismo e a dessacralização do Sagrado. Wander Moreira da Costa KONINGS, Johan S. J. Ser cristão: fé e prática. Paulo Agostinho Nogueira Baptista KONINGS, Johan S. J. Liturgia dominical: mistério de Cristo e formação dos fiéis (anos A-B-C) Victor René Villavicencio Matienzo.

Purpose. To analyse the philosophical and psychological contexts of social expectations of personality, to form general scientific provisions, to reveal the properties, patterns of formation, development and functioning of social expectations as a process, result of reflection and construction of social reality. Theoretical basis of the study is based on the phenomenology of E. Husserl, the social constructivism philosophy of L. S. Vygotskiy, P. Berger, T. Luckmann, K. J. Gergen, ideas of constructive alternativeism of G. Kelly, psychology of social expectations (...) of a personality as the unity of the mental process, mental state and properties of expectations. Originality. Social expectations of personality are considered as philosophical and psychological dimensions of the study, presented by analysing expectations in social constructivism, externalizing, building a model of the expected future. The authors clarified some theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of patterns of social expectations in the reflection and construction of social reality. The role of social institutions in the formation of expectations is outlined. The poly-aspect of the investigated problems is shown. It is substantiated that formation, realization of social expectations in organization of interaction of personality and social environment is possible in the presence of subject, object and content of activity. Conclusions. Social expectations influence social behaviour and determine the behaviour of an individual, small contact group, community, or large mass of people. Social expectations are able to set specific requirements, norms, sanctions, ideals that participants of the process must follow or must not violate. The philosophical dimension of the study integrates the ontological, epistemological, axiological preconditions for the formation and realization of the social ideal, represented by the study of the expected future in the forms of utopia, eschatology and thanatology. Psychological dimension of the study has a sufficiently developed content orientation from the psychological content parameters of social expectations to the role of expectations in social institutions and various spheres of human life. Systematic, actionable, self-regulatory, and subjective approaches have constituted a verified system of interpreting the social expectations of personality as a process, a result of the reflection and construction of social reality. The topic of social expectations of personality is far from being completed, in our opinion it is promising to create a deeper philosophical concept of social expectations of the personality. The specific topics are of particular relevance in the context of socio-political uncertainty, domination of the mass consciousness, loss of national and cultural identity. (shrink)

Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long-standing puzzle, (...) arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object. So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing each other: they are parts of a unified history of substance. (shrink)

The relevance of the study is that the analysis of education as a factor in the formation and development of a creative personality and the conditions conducive to the emergence of a "new creative class" is done. Formulation of the problem - the conceptualization of education as a factor in the formation and development of a creative personality, its main categories in terms of "creativity" and the demand of man as a creator of an innovative environment, based on a new (...) level of interaction "man-society-education", changing the model of sociality. Analysis of recent research and publications. In the study, we rely on the phenomenon of creativity, which is studied in the works of V. Andruschenko, V. Beh, V. Voronkova, A. Kravchenko, S. Kutsepal, O. Kivlyuk, R. Olexenko. The main focus is on Richard Florida's work "Homo creatives: How the New Class Conquers the World". The matrix of education as a factor in the formation and development of a creative personality focuses attention on the discourse thinking of the relationship "creative personality-education" and the influence of the information society on these relationships. Exemption of unexplored parts of the general problem - conceptualization of the concept of "creative personality" and its role in modern information society. At the heart of the study - the conceptualization of the basic schemes of creativity and this is a scientific novelty. The epistemological character of the statement and the praxeological solution of this problem in favor of a creative person and education show that the society must have the necessary and sufficient resources for the reproduction of a creative person and its effective development that affects the social sphere of man. The basic material. The analysis of formation and development of the creative person as the main factor of education is carried out; the definition of "creative personality" is presented; it is proved that the creative component is the dominant factor necessary for solving problems of efficiency of all spheres of activity, including economic ones; conditions that contribute to the growth of the creative component in the future are analyzed ; It was found that it is a "creative social class" as a new class of information society. The object of research is the concept of a creative personality as a new social and cultural phenomenon. The subject of research is the influence of the information society on the formation and development of a creative personality. Methodology is a method of cultural creation, which provides an opportunity for the formation and development of a creative personality. Conclusions - the concept of education as a factor in the formation and development of a creative personality in the conditions of the information society is formed. (shrink)

At present, as the paper states, social philosophy and philosophy of history – are generally considered to be independent domains. This is evidenced by the fact that each of the above‐named domains has to be discussed in a separate congress section, the practice which was common for previous congresses as well. It is argued in the paper, that social philosophy and philosophy of history are the two most important aspects of the integral philosophical study of society. It is impossible to (...) say which aspect is dominating. The report contains a number of arguments to support this point of view. Possible reasons for such a “division of labor” in European philosophical thought and its consequences are exposed. The question arises: why are social philosophers incline to discuss a correlation between social philosophy and theoretical sociology and don’t like to discuss a correlation between social philosophy and philosophy of history? And why are philosophers of history so reluctant to discuss ontological issues of society? (shrink)

The purpose is to identify common and distinctive features of concepts and methodology of the problem of subject within different discourses, implicitly or explicitly relevant to the definition of "clinical" mode of human existence. The research methodology combines techniques of discourse analysis and basic principles of historical and philosophical studies. Originality of the research lies in definition of the clinical philosophical discourse as a special communicative process, where utterances not only focus on disease syndromes, and reveal phenomenology of inner experience (...) of a pathological self, but also structure a certain type of sociality. Clinical discourse represents the space where the patient is treated not as a subject but as an object of disease. Ontology of clinical discourse prevails over ontology of disease, since its structures determine the notion of disease as such. Categorization of the disease, the idea of disease as a phenomenon subdued to professional authority leads to the idea of the need for patient’s isolation from the natural environment and removing him to special social institutions. The clinicist doctrines share the intention to reduce the patient’s self to its bodily dimension, while ignoring social determinants of psychological deviations. Conclusions of the study are summarized in the following positions: the current clinical discourse is based on the positivist-biological trend in humanitarian knowledge and it is the basis for the production and reproduction of medical and pharmaceutical repressive ideology; criticism of philosophical clinical discourse opens the possibility of overcoming the dominance of purely clinicist discourse; such a transformation is possible only after a paradigm shift in understanding the category of subject. (shrink)

Volume V of Analecta Husserliana consists of papers and discussions at the Third International Conference held by the International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, who is the President of the Society, has edited the papers and discussions of this volume and has provided a keynote inaugural lecture in which the dominant and unifying themes of the Conference are delineated. The general title, which binds the papers and discussions in the volume into a thematic unity, is "The Crisis of (...) Culture." The sub-title, "Steps to Reopen the Phenomenological Investigation of Man," provides further clarification of the direction of questioning that is illustrated throughout. Both the diagnosis and cure for the crisis of contemporary culture is sought through ruminations on the procedures and goals of phenomenological analysis. Ms. Tymieniecka, however, makes it abundantly clear in her inaugural lecture that if phenomenology is to lead us to a comprehension of the concrete modalities of human life, with their irreducible value predicates, then it will need to proceed along different lines from those laid out by Husserl in his program of transcendental, intentional analysis. What is recommended is a shift of inquiry-standpoint, enabling one to recover the initial spontaneity of concrete, lived-experience. This shift of standpoint enjoins a substitution of creativity for constitution as the guiding thematic, and a move from logos to ethos as the proper dimension in which to search for the dynamics and meaning of human action. Creativity rather than constitution points to the primordial function of consciousness, and the appeal to ethos makes possible the retrieval of lived-experiences that antedate the apriori possibilities of theoretical intentionality. (shrink)

Much of Western metaphysics has been shaped by the Parmenidian problem of being, as differentiated into the problem of the one and the many and its correlated problem of change; or more precisely, the problem of making sense of any change from not-being to being. The epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem may well be posed as that of how to make sense of any change from not-knowing to knowing. Plato recognized this as an orienting problem for philosophy and posed (...) it as a famous dilemma in the Meno: how can anyone inquire into that which one does not know? A long-standing modern move for handling this problem is to make a basic distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. Armed with this distinction, one delimits the proper domain of epistemology to issues of justification and simply skirts the epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem by relegating questions of the discovery or genesis of knowledge to psychology, history, or other social sciences. In this approach, epistemology, like ethics, presupposes an is/ought distinction, and any attempt to include questions of the genesis of knowledge, even partially, in the context of justification commits a genetic fallacy. And though Karl Popper acknowledged the problem of the growth of knowledge as being at the heart of epistemology’s task, he still insisted on the justification/ discovery distinction. Notwithstanding Popper, the work of W. V. O. Quine, N. R. Hanson, and most notably Thomas Kuhn has seriously undermined the distinction, and renewed the challenge of the Meno for epistemology and for philosophy of science in particular. (shrink)

In Inhabiting the Earth Foltz undertakes the first sustained analysis of how Heidegger's thought can contribute to environmental ethics and to the more broadly conceived field of environmental philosophy. Through a comprehensive study of the status of "nature" and related concepts such as "earth" in the thought of Martin Heidegger, Foltz attempts to show how Heidegger's understanding of the natural environment and our relation to it offer a more promising basis for environmental philosophy than others that have so far been (...) put forward. Indeed, Dr. Foltz finds that to ecofeminism and social ecology, whose prescriptions are based on historically oriented etiologies of domination and oppression, Heidegger's work offers what is arguably the first comprehensive and nonreductive philosophy of history since Hegel that can embrace both nature and humanity in one narrative, and the first since Augustine that can do this while granting to nature a messure of selfstanding. But it is probably for the environmental philosophies of deep ecology, bioregionalism, and ecological holism that Heidegger's work has the most immediate, as well as the most extensive implications, because it is to them that it has the most affinity. Finally, as a corrective and a major challenge to deep ecology, which has tended to valorize the scientific approach to nature, Heidegger's work provides a sophisticated basis for showing the primacy of the poetic in the task of learning to inhabit the earth rightly. (shrink)

For 30 years, Quine, a dominant figure in logical theory and philosophy of logic, has combined insights in methodology, language, epistemology, and ontology, to blur the boundaries of speculative metaphysics and natural sciences. This revised text contains two new essays with replies from Quine.

Much of Western metaphysics has been shaped by the Parmenidian problem of being, as differentiated into the problem of the one and the many and its correlated problem of change; or more precisely, the problem of making sense of any change from not-being to being. The epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem may well be posed as that of how to make sense of any change from not-knowing to knowing. Plato recognized this as an orienting problem for philosophy and posed (...) it as a famous dilemma in the Meno: how can anyone inquire into that which one does not know? A long-standing modern move for handling this problem is to make a basic distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. Armed with this distinction, one delimits the proper domain of epistemology to issues of justification and simply skirts the epistemological side of the Parmenidian problem by relegating questions of the discovery or genesis of knowledge to psychology, history, or other social sciences. In this approach, epistemology, like ethics, presupposes an is/ought distinction, and any attempt to include questions of the genesis of knowledge, even partially, in the context of justification commits a genetic fallacy. And though Karl Popper acknowledged the problem of the growth of knowledge as being at the heart of epistemology’s task, he still insisted on the justification/ discovery distinction. Notwithstanding Popper, the work of W. V. O. Quine, N. R. Hanson, and most notably Thomas Kuhn has seriously undermined the distinction, and renewed the challenge of the Meno for epistemology and for philosophy of science in particular. (shrink)

Millions of people in various parts of the world and within each country are presently surviving in categories described as “mere”, “miserable”, “idealistic”, “irresponsible”, and “acceptable”. The term “acceptable survival” is proposed as a bioethical goal of global survival, looking beyond the 21st century to the year 3000 and beyond. The frequently used alternative term is “sustainable development”, but in most contexts this is an economic concept and does not imply any moral or ethical constraints, except where these are spelled (...) out. Acceptable survival, broadly defined, means acceptable to a universal sense of what is morally right and good and what will continue in the long term. The expanding dominant, but irresponsible, world culture is not an acceptable type of development because it cannot survive in the long term. [M&GS 1995:185–191]. (shrink)

The transition of various countries to socialism is giving birth to a constantly increasing diversity of concrete forms of implementation of the functions of the socialist revolution. At the same time, historical experience shows that the socialist revolution is characterized by certain universal regularities, so that it is a matter of principle, of vital importance, that a revolutionary Marxist party allow for them. Among these, above all, is the need for power to be in the hands of the working class (...) in alliance with all others who labor, the need for abolishing the socio-economic dominance of the capitalist class, and for the new authority to have the capacity to overcome any form of resistance by the class opponents of socialism while uniting the masses of the workers at large in the struggle for the building of the new society. Without the organization and cohesion of the laboring masses headed by the working class, and without converting them into the determining political force, a transition to socialism is impossible: this is the most important conclusion of Marxism-Leninism. This conclusion has found precise expression, with room for all possibilities, in the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the political essence of the transition from capitalism to socialism. (shrink)

Two fundamentally different perspectives on knowledge diffusion dominate debates about academic disciplines. On the one hand, critics of disciplinary research and education have argued that disciplines are isolated silos, within which specialists pursue inward-looking and increasingly narrow research agendas. On the other hand, critics of the silo argument have demonstrated that researchers constantly import and export ideas across disciplinary boundaries. These perspectives have different implications for how knowledge diffuses, how intellectuals gain and lose status within their disciplines, and how intellectual (...) reputations evolve within and across disciplines. We argue that highly general claims about the nature of disciplinary boundaries are counterproductive, and that research on the nature of specific disciplinary boundaries is more useful. To that end, this paper uses a novel publication and citation network dataset and statistical models of citation networks to test hypotheses about the boundaries between philosophy of science and 11 disciplinary clusters. Specifically, we test hypotheses about whether engaging with and being cited by scientific communities outside philosophy of science has an impact on one’s position within philosophy of science. Our results suggest that philosophers of science produce interdisciplinary scholarship, but they tend not to cite work by other philosophers when it is published in journals outside of their discipline. Furthermore, net of other factors, receiving citations from other disciplines has no meaningful impact—positive or negative—on citations within philosophy of science. We conclude by considering this evidence for simultaneous interdisciplinarity and insularity in terms of scientific trading theory and other work on disciplinary boundaries and communication. (shrink)