Interpreting the Miyashita et al. experiments in terms of a cellassembly representation does not adequately explain the performance of Miyashita's monkeys on novel stimuli. We will argue that the latter observations point to acompositionalrepresentation and suggest a dynamics involving rapid and reversible binding of distinct activity patterns.

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of (...) social and political practice. Science, Mind and Art, Volume III of Essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen focuses on issues in contemporary epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind as well as on the relations of science and human values in ethical and religious thought. It also has important new work in contemporary metaphysics, as well as in the history of philosophy, and on questions of multiculturalism in science education. Contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Adolf Grünbaum, Joseph Margolis, Joëlle Proust, Erazim Kohak, Elie Wiesel, Miriam Bienenstock, and John Silber, among others. (shrink)

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture of (...) mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations. (shrink)

Dass sich Hegel und Hermann Cohen trotz scheinbarer Gegensatze miteinander versohnen lassen, ist eine Grunduberzeugung des Werkes von Myriam Bienenstock, welches sich stets durch die doppelte Ausrichtung auf Hegel und das judische Denken auszeichnete. Mit diesem Band wird Myriam Bienenstock, seit 1997 Professorin fur Philosophie an der Universitat Francois Rabelais in Tours, anlasslich ihres 70. Geburtstages geehrt. Mit Beitragen von Dominque Bourel, Bernard Bourgeois, Christophe Bouton, Pierfrancesco Fiorato, Jean-Francois Goubet, Dana Hollander, Helmut Holzhey, Gerhard Kurz, Claudia Melica, Wolfdietrich (...) Schmied-Kowarzik, Ludwig Siep, Guy Stroumsa und Norbert Waszek. (shrink)

Language -- Image -- Time -- Body -- Dream -- Myth -- Baudelaire -- Rescue -- Remembrance.

Mark Eli Kalderon argues that morality is a fiction by means of which our emotional attitudes are conveyed. This is an improvement on the standard noncognitivist view, which denies that moral judgement is belief but claims instead that it is the expression of an emotional attitude. Noncognitivists tend to deny that moral sentences even purport to represent moral reality, and so they have developed non-standard semantics for moral discourse. Kalderon's fictionalism shows that noncognitivism can manage without such controversial semantics. His (...) book will be essential reading for anyone working in moral philosophy, and for many others working on meaning and knowledge. (shrink)

Anyone familiar with contemporary French culture could not fail to notice that, in the field of ideas, history and the philosophy of history occupy in France a more central place than in England or North America. The work and concerns—including the methodological concerns—of historians like Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and the Annalistes, Georges Lefebvre, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff and Francois Furet, are known, discussed and taken on board by most French intellectuals and academics.

In 1986, Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his victory over “the powers of death and degradation, and to support the struggle of good against evil in the world.” Soon after, he and his wife, Marion, created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. A project at the heart of the Foundation’s mission is its Ethics Prize—a remarkable essay-writing contest through which thousands of students from colleges across the country are encouraged to confront ethical issues (...) of personal significance. The Ethics Prize has grown exponentially over the past twenty years. “Of all the projects our Foundation has been involved in, none has been more exciting than this opportunity to inspire young students to examine the ethical aspect of what they have learned in their personal lives and from their teachers in the classroom,” writes Elie Wiesel. Readers will find essays on Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, sweatshops and globalization, and the political obligations of the mothers of Argentina’s Disappeared. Other essays tell of a white student who joins a black gospel choir, a young woman who learns to share in Ladakh, and the outsize implications of reporting on something as small as a cracked windshield. Readers will be fascinated by the ways in which essays on conflict, conscience, memory, illness, and God overlap and resonate with one another. These essays reflect those who are “sensitive to the sufferings and defects that confront a society yearning for guidance and eager to hear ethical voices,” writes Elie Wiesel. “And they are a beacon for what our schools must realize as an essential component of a true education.”. (shrink)

In seinem Hauptwerk Totalität und Unendlichkeit räumte Levinas der von Alexandre Kojève ab 1933 in Paris vorgetragenen und schon seinerzeit gängigen Auffassung eines ‚Kampfs um Anerkennung‘ einen begrenzten Platz ein. Die Grundbegriffe dieser Auffassung kritisierte er, um eine Konzeption des Verhältnisses zum ‚Anderen‘ zu entwickeln, die eher Franz Rosenzweig verpflichtet war und nicht so sehr als Dialog-, sondern richtiger als Offenbarungsdenken beschrieben wird, denn Levinas fasste den Dialog mit anderen immer asymmetrisch. In seinem späteren Werk ging er sogar so weit (...) zu behaupten, dass die Verantwortung, die jedem Ich zugewiesen ist, bis zur „Stellvertretung“ gehen soll: „Ich bin du, wenn ich ich bin“. (shrink)

Abstract At the beginning of his best seller Meaning in History , Karl Löwith launches a violent attack against Jewish prophetism, using the philosophy of history of Hermann Cohen as his first and foremost example. This article purports to show that Löwith misinterpreted the thought of Hermann Cohen. It also reclaims Cohen's own position on history and on the philosophy of history by identifying the questions Cohen himself had asked in his time. At the end of the article, some paths (...) of research are indicated that might prove themselves fruitful today, in a further study of Cohen's thought. (shrink)

L'Essai sur l'être, traduit ci-dessous pour la première fois en français, fut rédigé par Herder en 1763-1764, pendant ses années d'études à Königsberg, à l'écoute de Kant. Reprenant et discutant certains des arguments développés par Kant dans ses conférences et écrits précritiques consacrés à la métaphysique, Herder pose les bases philosophiques de son œuvre future. L'étude du texte permet de réévaluer la thèse, jadis avancée par Dilthey, selon laquelle le futur protagoniste de Jacobi dans le débat sur le spinozisme infléchit (...) alors la pensée vers un « panthéisme esthétique » dont Hölderlin, Schelling et Hegel se feront plus tard les hérauts: le chemin suivi par la philosophie en Allemagne, après Kant, fut d'abord, effectivement, celui de l'esthétique — mais seulement parce que et dans la mesure où cette discipline fut comprise comme la « science du mode de connaissance et d'exposition sensible » (A. G. Baumgarten). Der Versuch über das Sein, hier erstmals in französischer Übersetzung vorgelegt, wurde von Herder in den Jahren 1763-1764 verfaßt, also während seiner Königsberger Studienjahre, als er regelmäßig die Vorlesungen Kants hörte. In der Aufnahme und in der Auseinandersetzung mit bestimmten Argumenten, die Kant in denjenigen seiner vorkritischen Vorlesungen und Schriften entwickelte, die der Metaphysik gewidmet sind, schuf Herder die philosophischen Grundlagen seines zukünftigen Werkes. Die vorliegende Deutung des herderschen Textes führt zu einer Neubewertung der seinerzeit von Dilthey vorgetragenen These, derzufolge dieser (neben Jacobi) zukünftige Hauptakteur im Pantheismusstreit das philosophische Denken in Richtung auf einen « ästhetischen Pantheismus » gebeugt habe, dessen Herolde später Hölderlin, Schelling und Hegel geworden wären. Der Weg der deutschen Philosophie nach Kant war tatsächlich derjenige der Ästhetik — allerdings nur dann, wenn diese Disziplin als die Wissenschaft, die das Sinnliche wahrnimmt und darstellt (A. G. Baumgarten), verstanden wird. (shrink)

In this book, Eli Hirsch focuses on identity through time, first with respect to ordinary bodies, then underlying matter, and eventually persons.

C’est par le moyen d’une réflexion sur le langage que Franz Rosenzweig élabore sa lecture du « Cantique des cantiques » dans L’Étoile de la Rédemption (1921), son chef d’œuvre. Il explique dans la section centrale de cette œuvre que le langage est « plus qu’un simple parallèle » ( Vergleich : « comparaison ») ; qu’il est « vraiment parabole – et donc plus que parabole » ( Gleichnis : paraballein ). Cet article entreprend de clarifier le sens de (...) cette thèse. Il établit que Rosenzweig voulut (a) s’opposer aux approches pseudo-scientifiques de beaucoup de ses contemporains, qui se montraient très critiques de l’allégorie ; (b) réhabiliter des pratiques exégétiques de lecture des textes bibliques plus traditionnelles, parmi lesquelles (c) en tout premier lieu, la lecture « à la lettre » du texte, elle aussi traditionnelle, dont il avait déjà fort bien compris la complexité. (shrink)

Selon Hegel,« la philosophie ne fait rien d'autre que changer les représentations en pensées » et, ultérieurement, « la simple pensée en concept ». La philosophie politique ne doit rien faire d’autre non plus : elle doit changer en « pensées » les représentations que nous nous faisons de nos institutions sociales et politiques, mais aussi les représentations que nous adoptons comme buts de nos actions. Elle doit montrer qu’un «concept» ou, en fin de compte, une Idée est comprise en (...) elles: l’idée de liberté. Tel est le sens de cet idéalisme politique, clarifié ici à partir de l’analyse de la distinction fondamentale établie par Hegel entre une philosophie de la subjectivité ou de la conscience, et un idéalisme de l’esprit. (shrink)

Consacré à la section de L’Étoile intitulée « Le nom propre », cet article fait aussi ressortir l’influence sur Rosenzweig, à côté de Luther, de Samson Rafael Hirsch, dans sa traduction et son commentaire du Pentateuque. « L’appel du nom propre » de Rosenzweig sert ensuite de base à une réflexion sur la notion de « devoir de mémoire » : toujours adressé à quelqu’un, jamais abstraitement universel, ce devoir est également de nature éthique, c’est-à-dire politique.Un devoir de mémoire : (...) les nomsCentered upon the section of The Star... entitled « The proper name », this paper also brings out the influence upon Rosenzweig of Samson Rafael Hirsch, in his translation and commentary of the Pentateuch. Rosenzweig’s « Call of the proper name » is then used as a point of departure for reflecting upon the « duty to remember » : this duty, which is always turned towards a singularity and never abstractly universal, also is ethical in nature, i.e., political. (shrink)

A sense of unity -- Basic objects : a reply to Xu -- Objectivity without objects -- The vagueness of identity -- Quantifier variance and realism -- Against revisionary ontology -- Comments on Theodore Sider's four dimensionalism -- Sosa's existential relativism -- Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sense -- Ontological arguments : interpretive charity and quantifier variance -- Language, ontology, and structure -- Ontology and alternative languages.

Stoffregen & Bardy's target article is based on the assumption that our senses' ultimate purpose is to provide us with perfect information about the outside world. We argue that it is often more important that information be available quickly than that it be perfect. Consequently our nervous system processes different aspects of information about our surrounding as separately as possible. The separation is not between the senses, but between separate aspects of our surrounding. This results in inconsistencies between judgments: sometimes (...) because different frames of reference are used. Such inconsistencies are fundamental to the way the information is picked up, however, and hence cannot be avoided with clearer instructions to the subjects. (shrink)

Background In February, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the ban on medical assistance in dying. In June, 2016, the federal government passed Bill C-14, permitting MAiD. Current medical students will be the first physician cohort to enter a system permissive of MAiD, and may help to ensure equitable access to care. This study assessed medical student views on MAiD, factors influencing these views, and opportunities for medical education. Methods An exploratory cross-sectional survey was developed and distributed to (...) medical students across all years of a three-year Canadian undergraduate medical program. The investigators administered the survey to participants during academic sessions from November to December, 2015. Analysis of the results included summary descriptive statistics, Pearson’s chi-square test of independence to identify differences between participants by year of study, logistic regression to identify factors that influence students’ stances on MAiD, and Wilcoxon signed rank test to measure changes in student support for MAiD and comfort discussing MAiD. Results There were 405 participants for a response rate of 87%. The majority of students supported the Supreme Court’s decision, 61% would provide the means for a patient to end their life, and 38% would personally administer a lethal medication. Students who were more willing to provide the means for MAiD found medical education/clinical experience and patient autonomy to be important contributors to their stances on MAiD. Those students who were less willing to provide the means for MAiD found religious/spiritual beliefs and teachings, as well as concern about potential negative consequences, to be important contributors to their stances on MAiD. Educational training desired by participants included medicolegal, communication skills, technical skills, and religious. Conclusions Medical students generally supported and would provide the means for MAiD to patients. They also indicated a desire for directed medical education on MAiD. (shrink)

Throughout his life, Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) wondered at the role fulfilled by myth in the course of history. He also questioned the relationship of myth to religion. His masterpiece, The Star of Redemption (1921), purported to give an answer to his questioning. This article endeavours to shed light upon Rosenzweig’s answer by focussing upon the Star, and also by recurring to one of his earlier articles, “Atheistic Theology” (1914).

In the following article, I shall focus upon Franz Rosenzweig’s brilliant doctoral dissertation, Hegel und der Staat, and will show that this book, whose impact upon the scholarship of Hegel’s political philosophy was and remains considerable, embodies an understanding of political and historical life which departs quite significantly from Hegel’s own conception. I will also show that some of the ideas Rosenzweig ascribes to Hegel in Hegel und der Staat recur, almost word for word, in his later masterpiece of Jewish (...) philosophy, The Star of Redemption; and I shall contend that this recurrence sheds light upon Rosenzweig’s later attitude toward history and politics and also, perhaps, upon the way in which he turned to religion. (shrink)

This article concerns the ways in which authors from various fields conceptualise the ethical issues arising in the conduct of research. We reviewed critically and systematically the literature concerning the ethics of conducting research in order to engage in a reflection about the vocabulary and conceptual categories used in the publications reviewed. To understand better how the ethical issues involved in conducting research are conceptualised in the publications reviewed, we 1) established an inventory of the conceptualisations reviewed, and 2) we (...) critically assessed them. We found that the publications reviewed mostly showed examples of descriptive ethics, in that most authors describe ethical issues without reflecting much on them, which could be explained both by 1) a lack of ethical education in research contexts, and 2) by the fact that we do not know what researchers know (or do not) about ethical issues. Additionally, the definitions identified in the publications are scarce and at times imprecise, but this seems more to point out the ethical vocabulary’s difficulties in certain contexts. Further, very few authors offer proper conceptualisations of the ethical issues arising in conducting research. When dealing with vast arrays of ethical issues to conceptualise, perhaps one ought to remember that some typologies already exist that could guide further reflection and help understand other realities for which the current ethical vocabulary may be lacking. We believe that combining the reviewed typologies, both with other well-developed typologies and critical reflection, could help support better ethical practice in conducting research. (shrink)

Eli Alshanetsky considers how we make our thoughts clear to ourselves in the process of putting them into words and examines the paradox of those difficult cases where we do not already know what we are struggling to articulate.

In this paper, I address a fundamental challenge in the philosophy of trust: how to account for trustee discretion in scenarios that fall outside explicitly defined expectations. I argue that this challenge reveals vagueness as an inherent feature of trusting relationships, often leading to disagreements between trustors and trustees. To resolve this, I propose a novel account of trust grounded in rule-following, shifting the object of trust from particular actions to adherence to rules constitutive of relationships. By focusing on relationships (...) and their constitutive rules, I provide here a framework for understanding and minimizing disagreements through communication and engaged practice. Furthermore, I argue this framework sheds light on the dynamics of trust-related reactive attitudes, in particular, distinguishing between betrayal and mere disappointment. (shrink)

Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and another community that makes Lewis's four-dimensionalist (...) assertions, the members of each community speak the truth in their respective languages. This follows from an application of the principle of interpretive charity to the two communities. (shrink)

Eli Maor examines the role of infinity in mathematics and geometry and its cultural impact on the arts and sciences. He evokes the profound intellectual impact the infinite has exercised on the human mind--from the "horror infiniti" of the Greeks to the works of M. C. Escher from the ornamental designs of the Moslems, to the sage Giordano Bruno, whose belief in an infinite universe led to his death at the hands of the Inquisition. But above all, the book describes (...) the mathematician's fascination with infinity--a fascination mingled with puzzlement. "Maor explores the idea of infinity in mathematics and in art and argues that this is the point of contact between the two, best exemplified by the work of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, six of whose works are shown here in beautiful color plates."--Los Angeles Times "[Eli Maor's] enthusiasm for the topic carries the reader through a rich panorama."--Choice "Fascinating and enjoyable.... places the ideas of infinity in a cultural context and shows how they have been espoused and molded by mathematics."--Science. (shrink)

Nair-Collins and Joffe (2023) rightly call attention to an incompatibility between brain-based criteria for death, as defined by the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), and what the current...

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a Kantian framework for moral trust—trust in another person to only act with us in morally permissible ways. First, I derive an understanding of trustworthiness from Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. I argue that trustworthiness embodies a moral imperative, guiding us to act in ways that are reliable and recognizable as conducive to engaging in trusting relations. However, this alone is not enough, as it doesn't provide a means to assess whether someone is (...) truly committed to the moral law and thus morally trustworthy. Therefore, in the second part, I explore a basis for assessing their moral conduct found in a local version of the Kingdom of Ends: given an ideal or archetype of a morally perfect interpersonal relationship, an archetype of the morally trustworthy agent allows us to comparatively assess the moral disposition of fellow agents. (shrink)

We often get clear on our thoughts in the process of putting them into words. I investigate the nature of this process by posing the question, “Do you know which thought you are trying to articulate, before successfully articulating it?” and rejecting two answers to the dilemma it yields. The first is that the answer is yes, and that articulation is either the recollection of prior knowledge or the mere acquisition of a skill or ability rather than of propositional knowledge. (...) The second is that the answer is no, and that your thought is unknown in that it is not yet fully realized. Clarity, according to this response, is a metaphysical property of the thought rather than the thinker’s epistemic relation to it. I offer a third solution: you start out with implicit knowledge of your thought but lack explicit knowledge of it. The process of articulation moves you from implicit to explicit knowledge. (shrink)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

The central question in this book is why it seems reasonable for the words of our language to divide up the world in ordinary ways rather than other imaginable ways. Hirsch calls this the division problem. His book aims to bring this problem into sharp focus, to distinguish it from various related problems, and to consider the best prospects for solving it. In exploring various possible responses to the division problem, Hirsch examines series of "division principles" which purport to express (...) rational constraints on how our words ought to classify and individuate. The ensuing discussion deals with a wide range of metaphysical and epistemological topics, including projectibility and similarity, alternative analyses of natural properties and things, the inscrutability of reference, and the relevance of such pragmatic notions as salience and economy. The final chapters of the book develop what Hirsch contends is the most promising response to the division problem: a theory in which constraints on classification and individuation are seen to derive from the necessary structure of "fine-grained" propositions and the necessary dependence of some concepts on others. (shrink)