Explores "why we find spontaneity so elusive and shows how early Chinese philosophy points the way to happier, more authentic lives"--Dust jacket flap.

In this paper I am going to try to indicate my notion concerning the nature and subject-matter of psychology. I am a behaviorist. I hold that psychology does not seek descriptions and intercommunications concerning immediate experience per se. Such descriptions and attempts at direct intercommunications may be left to the arts and to metaphysics. Psychology seeks, rather, the objectively stateable laws and processes governing behavior. Organisms, human and sub-human, come up against environmental stimulus situations and to these stimulus situations they, (...) after longer or shorter intervals of time, behave. The laws and processes determining this their behavior are stateable in objective terms. Even in the cases where the organism is oneself, these determining causal factors can and must—for the purposes of psychology—be stated objectively. It is true that in these latter instances, in which the animal in question is oneself, one may in one's rôle, not of a psychologist, but of an artist or a metaphysician, attempt to describe and convey to another man one's own facts of immediate experience. But such a description and report of immediate experiences, except in so far as this report is itself a form of behavior and therefore like all other behaviors the basis for an investigation of the objective laws and processes underlying it, essentially new to the picture. Experience qua experience, while of concern and interest to the man in the street, the philosopher and the poet, does not enter as such into the laws and equations of psychology,—in so far, at any rate, as psychology is to be considered as a science. (shrink)

Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, (...) from the new mathematical science of nature, and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience, an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by his religious faith. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics. It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground, one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The book takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thought-provoking interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy. (shrink)

This special issue presents developments in research on the cognitive mechanisms and consequences of surprise. Amidst much progress, surprise research has often been siloed, so, as editors, we have sought to juxtapose insights, theories, and findings, to support cross‐fertilization in future research. The present paper sets the stage by presenting a historical summary, highlighting contrasts in definitions, and tracing major threads running through this issue and the larger surprise literature.

Aiming to circumvent metaphor-prone properties of natural language, Chapman, Kim, Susskind, and Anderson (2009) recently reported evidence for morally induced activation of the levator labii region (manifest as an upper lip raise and a nose wrinkle), also implicated in responding to bad tastes and contaminants. Here we point out that the probative value of this type of evidence rests on a particular (and heavily contested) account of facial movements, one which holds them to be “expressions” or automatic read-outs of internal (...) states. We also observe a largely neglected difference between morally induced disgust and moral disgust proper, arguing that data such as Chapman et al.’s (2009) provide evidence only for the former. (shrink)

An assurance theory of trust begins from the act of assurance – whether testimonial, advisorial or promissory – and explains trust as a cognate stance of resting assured. My version emphasizes the risks and rewards of trust. On trust’s rewards, I show how an assurance can give a reason to the addressee through a twofold exercise of ‘normative powers’: (i) the speaker thereby incurs an obligation to be sincere; (ii) if the speaker is trustworthy, she thereby gives her addressee the (...) reason. Each claim is controversial; my contribution lies in how I defend them together, linking the sincerity obligation to the provision of reasons. On trust’s risks, I defend a popular thesis about the nature of trust – that trust differs from mere reliance in how it risks betrayal – against the objection that the thesis ‘moralizes’ trust. Such betrayal need not be moral, I argue, because it may derive entirely from how the assurance purports to provide a reason. (shrink)

In the course of his long development, Kant's concept of matter changed somewhat, while his concept of scientific explanation changed considerably. Both developments achieved a coherent integration in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Using this developmental background, the present paper argues that the Foundations should be interpreted as an attempted rational reconstruction of the mechanics of Newton and Euler. Kant attempted to do this by constructing a concept of matter that would confer a Leibnizian intelligibility on Newtonian mechanics, and (...) also accord with Kant's theories on the nature of concepts and their role in scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this brilliant analysis of mind-body problems Edward Pols adds new dimen­sions to the discussion of basic issues. The prisoner is Socrates, who, in a se­ries of actions involving moral decisions, finds himself under sentence of death, and who has now decided to undergo the sentence rather than accept the opportuni­ty to escape provided by powerful friends. Pols takes as his point of departure Socrates’ nai;ve statement of the contrast be­tween a scientific analysis of a moral action and the (...) point of view taken by the agent himself, and his rejection of the adequacy of the scientific analysis. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This case study examines five dimensions of the 2007–2009 financial crisis in the United States: the devastating effects of the financial crisis on the U.S. economy, including unparalleled unemployment, massive declines in gross domestic product, and the prolonged mortgage foreclosure crisis; the multiple causes of the financial crisis and panic, such as the housing and bond bubbles, excessive leverage, lax financial regulation, disgraceful banking practices, and abysmal rating agency performance; the extraordinary efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank (...) of New York, and the Department of the Treasury to stem the financial freefall triggered by the crisis and resuscitate financial institutions, the ethical implications of the unprecedented actions by government institutions to rescue financial institutions and drag the country back from the brink of global financial collapse, and the conduct of the various parties contributing to the financial crisis, such as the shoddy behavior of mortgage brokers, the massive securitization of mortgages into overly complex bonds, the excessive leverage of financial institutions, the disgraceful work of bond rating firms, the abysmal risk management systems employed by financial institutions, and the massive operations of the shadow banking and over-the-counter derivatives markets; and the major provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law to in response to the financial crisis and for the purpose of correcting the egregious conduct of major financial institutions. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: A NEW UNIVERSITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW SCIENCE Despite the recent and continuing controversy concerning the proper role of ...

This entry explains Frege's Theorem by using the modern notation of the predicate calculus. Frege's Theorem is that the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory are derivable from Hume's Principle, given the axioms and rules of second-order logic. Frege's methodology for defining the natural numbers and for the derivation of the Dedekind-Peano axioms are sketched in some detail.

How must you think about time when you form an intention? Obviously, you must think about the time of action. Must you frame the action in any broader prospect or retrospect? In this essay I argue that you must: you thereby commit yourself to a specific prospect of a future retrospect – a retrospect, indeed, on that very prospect. In forming an intention you project a future from which you will not ask regretfully, referring back to your follow-through on that (...) intention, “What on earth was I thinking?” I argue that this broader attitude expresses the self-accountability necessary for practical commitment. (shrink)

In this unique study of the process of filmmaking, director Edward Dmytryk blends abstract film theory and the practical realities of feature film production to provide an artful and elegant analysis of the conceptual foundations of filmmaking and film studies. Dmytryk explores the technical principles underlying the craft of filmmaking and how their use is effective in developing the viewer's involvement in the cinematic narrative. Originally published in 1988, this reissue of Dmytryk's classic book includes a new critical introduction (...) by Joe McElhaney. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be understood (...) as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

We illustrate a novel conception of linguistic invariant which applies to grammars of different natural languages even though they may use different categories and have difl'erent rules. We illustrate formally how semantically defined notions, such as "is an anaphor" may be invariant in all linguistically motivated grammars, and we show that individual morphemes, such as case markers, may be invariant in grammars that have them in exactly the same sense in which properties, such as "is a Verb Phrase" or relations (...) such as "is a constituent of". (shrink)

roots In the Lexicon of Malagasy we include an entry whose string part is vidy ('buy'). Its category is 'RT [AG, TH) ', indicating that it is a root and is associated with a two element set of theta roles, AGFNT and THEME. Semantically this entry is interpreted as a binary relation (= a two participant event), noted VIDY'.

a transitive verb, Lt b) is its minimal correspondent built with a reciprocal verb.* (I) a. m+aN+enjika (Manenjika) an-dRabe Rakoto. pREs+AcT+cltase Acc-Rabe Rakoto..

Philosophers of Capitalism provides an interdisciplinary approach, attempting to discover the feasibility of an integration of Austrian Economics and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Edward W. Younkins supplies essays presenting the essential ideas of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand, as well as scholarly essays discussing the theorists and the interaction of their theories.

At one point Fish says that a profession produces no “real” commodity but offers only a service. But surely the increasing reification of services and even of knowledge has made them a commodity as well. And indeed the logical extension of Fish’s position on professionalism is not that it is something done or lived but something produced and reproduced, albeit with redistributed and redeployed values. What those are, Fish doesn’t say. Then again he makes the rather telling remarks that he (...) is “turning everything into professionalism” —an instance of overstating and overinsisting at a moment when what he is really arguing for can neither be formulated nor defended clearly. To turn “everything” into professionalism is to strip professionalism of any meaning at all. For until one can define professionalism—and the particular values associated with it—there is very little value in going on about the incoherencies of antiprofessionalism. Fish resorts to the reductionist attitude of telling us that professionalism is what is, and whatever is, is more or less therefore right, which by only the slightest extension of its logic is a view no less applicable to antiprofessionalism.On the other hand, Fish does say that the profession has changed, that new ways of doing things have emerged, that values are contested within and without the profession. Those kinds of observations, however, have to be pursued, made me more concrete, put in specific historical contexts, one of which is the fact that professions are not natural objects but concrete, political, economic, and social formations playing very defined, although sometimes barely visible, roles. Unfortunately, Fish commits the lobbyist-s error by obscuring and being blind to the sociopolitical actualities of what he lobbies for even as he defends its existence. Thus when Fish alleges that the reason most literary professionals “exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors” is because of their damaging antiprofessionalism , he is making an observation whose form is assertive but whose sense is tautological since he neither defines the professional and professionalism nor specifies “machinery” and “labors” with any precision at all. For if you take the extraordinary step of reducing everything to professionalism and institutionalism as Fish does, then the very possibility of talking about the profession with any intelligibility is negated. Few would dispute Fish’s important point, that all interpretive and social situations are in fact already grounded in a context, in institutions, communities, and so forth. But there is a very great difference between making that claim and going on to say that so far as the literary profession is concerned, “the profession” is the context to which “everything” can be related. Edward W. Said’s most recent work is The World, the Text, and the Critic. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions” and “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community”. (shrink)

Media coverage of the recent explosion of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so thoroughly biased in favor of Israel, argues Edward Said, that Israel itself is made to appear as the victim, despite the fact that it is using missiles, tanks, and helicopter gunships against stone-throwing civilians rebelling, in their own towns, against their continued oppression. American Zionism is so successful, Said adds, that it has rendered impermissible any public discussion of Israeli policy, making this the last (...) taboo in American discourse, which allows for the burning of the American flag, but not for criticism of Israel. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat use does the jurist have for rules and principles? What relation does he or she have to the articulation of facts? This paper considers the position of facts and rules in the casuistry...