The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō) is the masterwork of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist sect in Kamakura-era Japan. It is one of the most important Zen Buddhist collections, composed during a period of remarkable religious diversity and experimentation. The text is complex and compelling, famed for its eloquent yet perplexing manner of expressing the core precepts of Zen teachings and practice. This book is a comprehensive introduction to this essential Zen text, offering a textual, (...) historical, literary, and philosophical examination of Dōgen’s treatise. Steven Heine explores the religious and cultural context in which the Treasury was composed and provides a detailed study of the various versions of the medieval text that have been compiled over the centuries. He includes nuanced readings of Dōgen’s use of inventive rhetorical flourishes and the range of East Asian Buddhist textual and cultural influences that shaped the work. Heine explicates the philosophical implications of Dōgen’s views on contemplative experience and attaining and sustaining enlightenment, showing the depth of his distinctive understanding of spiritual awakening. Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye will give students and other readers a full understanding of this fundamental work of world religious literature. (shrink)

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

"A first-rate introduction to the field, accessible to scholars working from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Highly recommended... " —Choice "... offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors.... [an] outstanding volume."—Philosophy and Literature "... this volume represents an eloquent and enlightened attempt to reconceptualize the field of aesthetic theory by encouraging its tendencies toward openness, self-reflexivity and plurality." —Discourse & Society "All of the authors challenge (...) the traditional notion of a pure and disinterested observer that does not allow for questions of race/ethnicity, class, sexual preference, or gender." —Signs These essays examine the intellectual traditions of the philosophy of art and aesthetics. Containing essays by scholars and by the writer Marilyn French, the collection ranges from the history of aesthetic theory to a philosophical reflection on fashion. The contributions are unified by a sustained scrutiny of the nature of "feminist," "feminine," or "female" art, creativity, and interpretation. (shrink)

This book provides an innovative, critical textual and literary analysis, in light of Song dynasty (960-11279) Chinese cultural and intellectual historical trends, of the Blue Cliff Record, the seminal Chan/Zen Buddhist collection of commentaries on one hundred gongan/koan cases long celebrated for its intricate and articulate interpretative methods.

A comprehensive treatment of the shared traditions of Chan, Sŏn, and Zen in dynamic interaction across East Asia, acknowledging the changing and growing parameters of the field of Zen studies.

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

Martin Heidegger regnes som den mest innflytelsesrike filosofen i det 20. århundre. Det er også kjent at han hadde nazistiske sympatier og var medlem av NSDAP i perioden 1933-1945. Utgivelsen av Svarte hefter (Schwarze Hefte) - hans filosofiske dagbøker skrevet i perioden fra 1931-1975 - gir et mer detaljert bilde av Heideggers nazisme. Vi får en tydelig dokumentasjon ikke bare av hans dyrking av Hitler og nasjonalsosialismen, men også av et verdenssyn preget av antisemittisme. I heftene kan vi lese flere (...) konspiratoriske passasjer om en ±metafysisk jødedom?, der jødene er representanter for en verdensomspennende instrumentell rasjonalitet som har banet vei for materialisme og kapitalisme.I lys av dette må vi revurdere vårt forhold til Heidegger som filosof og stille oss følgende spørsmål: Skal vi lese alt Heidegger skrev, i lys av hans tid som nazist? Eller er tenkningen av et slikt format at den uansett går fri fra Heideggers politiske engasjement?Denne antologien er et forsøk på å gå inn på disse spørsmålene. Foruten oversettelser av blant annet deler av Svarte hefter fra tysk til norsk, får vi perspektiver fra en rekke internasjonalt anerkjente Heidegger-forskere som analyserer Heideggers politiske engasjement, antisemittisme, sivilisasjonskritikk og religionskritikk. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A new approach to Hume's problem of induction that justifies the optimality of induction at the level of meta-induction. Hume's problem of justifying induction has been among epistemology's greatest challenges for centuries. In this book, Gerhard Schurz proposes a new approach to Hume's problem. Acknowledging the force of Hume's arguments against the possibility of a noncircular justification of the reliability of induction, Schurz demonstrates instead the possibility of a noncircular justification of the optimality of induction, or, more precisely, of (...) meta-induction (the application of induction to competing prediction models). Drawing on discoveries in computational learning theory, Schurz demonstrates that a regret-based learning strategy, attractivity-weighted meta-induction, is predictively optimal in all possible worlds among all prediction methods accessible to the epistemic agent. Moreover, the a priori justification of meta-induction generates a noncircular a posteriori justification of object induction. Taken together, these two results provide a noncircular solution to Hume's problem. Schurz discusses the philosophical debate on the problem of induction, addressing all major attempts at a solution to Hume's problem and describing their shortcomings; presents a series of theorems, accompanied by a description of computer simulations illustrating the content of these theorems (with proofs presented in a mathematical appendix); and defends, refines, and applies core insights regarding the optimality of meta-induction, explaining applications in neighboring disciplines including forecasting sciences, cognitive science, social epistemology, and generalized evolution theory. Finally, Schurz generalizes the method of optimality-based justification to a new strategy of justification in epistemology, arguing that optimality justifications can avoid the problems of justificatory circularity and regress. (shrink)

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

Medieval philosophers had a predilection for using the correlative pair father and son as an illustrative example in their discussions of relations. The use of this example has sometimes led to charges of confusion on the grounds that fatherhood and sonship are not proper converses. The present article shows how a group of twelfth-century philosophers from the milieu around the logician Alberic of Paris handled the problems arising from the use of this illustrative example which they had inherited from their (...) ancient and late-ancient predecessors. (shrink)

Do responsibility voids exist? That is, are there situations in which the group is collectively morally responsible for some outcome although no member can be held individually morally responsible for it? To answer these questions, I draw a distinction between competitive and cooperative decision contexts based on the team-reasoning account of cooperation. Accordingly, I provide a reasoning-based analysis of cooperation, competition, moral responsibility, and, last, potential responsibility voids. I then argue that competitive decision contexts are free of responsibility voids. The (...) conditions for the existence of responsibility voids in cooperative decision contexts depend on the type of uncertainty the group faces, either external or coordination uncertainty. (shrink)

During a conference entitled “Un logicien consciencieux. La philosophie de Evert Willem Beth,” held in Nancy in 1998 and published in this journal, volume 3, cahier 4 [Barth, Heinzmann et al. 1998-1999], the participants regretted that a reasoned biography of Beth was not available. In view of the efforts made since then in this direction, in particular by Paul van Ulsen in his PhD thesis in Dutch [2000], this article attempts to provide an overview of Beth’s work for a broader (...) community of philosophers of science. However, my focus is not so much on Beth’s widely discussed and important contributions to mathematical logic, where his most creative merits reside. My aim is to emphasize Beth’s philosophical and cultural background. Both are also discussed in the first two chapters of Ulsen’s thesis, which globally focuses on Beth’s work in logic. Of course, philosophical and scientific aspects cannot be systematically separated, but Beth’s influence on the philosophy of mathematics between the 1950s and 1960s seems to me large enough to highlight it here. Beth is one of the very few philosophers who also presented highly technically relevant results in logic, or one of the few logicians who also wrote philosophical papers, not only in his youth or old age, but throughout his career. In his 741-page magnum opus The Foundations of Mathematics [1959], he combines the treatment of philosophical and logico-mathematical problems under the perspective that the traditional deductive procedure is an essential and not merely incidental element in mathematical proof so that “logic must play the principal role in a philosophical examination of mathematical thought” [1959, XI]. By 1937, Beth was “convinced that the only possibility of founding mathematics in a truly satisfactory way is to apply intuitive and formal methods simultaneously in such a way that they can control and verify each other” (“L’évidence intuitive dans les mathématiques modernes” [1937, 165]). In 1956, he still justified the emphasis on the intuitive element of proof by “certain complications that the development of these [formalist] tendencies would later give rise to” (“Poincaré et la philosophie” [1956b, 238, transl. G. H.]). (shrink)

Should one trust experts? My answer to this question is a qualified ‘no’. In this paper I explore the conditions under which it is rational to trust and defer to experts, and those under which it may be rational to refrain from doing so. I draw on two important factors for an actor’s trust in a partner: trust depends on the partner’s competence and on the partner’s interests. I propose that the conditions under which it is rational to trust and (...) defer to experts depend on the competences of the layperson and the expert, and the degree of interest alignment. I present a model that demonstrates that it can be practically infeasible and even logically impossible to determine the expert’s level of competence and the degree of interest alignment. Although it may sound pessimistic that one can rationally refrain from trusting experts, I will also explore some more optimistic conclusions. (shrink)

Historically, blatantly untrue and defamatory conspiracy theories had disastrous consequences for those who were portrayed in them as evil-doers. At the same time, conspiratorial agreements at the expense of the common good between powerful groups in society do exist and have occasionally been uncovered. Against this background, the article describes different ways in which critical theory has looked at conspiracies. First, an attempt is made to show that Max Horkheimer's notes on `rackets' are an ambitious but flawed attempt to theorize (...) conspiracy. It is argued that Horkheimer's theory is imbued by the very conspiracy thinking that he proposed to criticize. Second, the author suggests recovering Franz Neumann's concept of `political alienation' as a more appropriate starting point to think critically about the ethical and epistemological questions raised by conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Can machine intelligence do clinical ethics? And if so, would applying it to actual medical cases be desirable? In a recent target article (Meier et al. 2022), we described the piloting of our advisory algorithm METHAD. Here, we reply to commentaries published in response to our project. The commentaries fall into two broad categories: concrete criticism that concerns the development of METHAD; and the more general question as to whether one should employ decision-support systems of this kind—the debate we set (...) out to ignite with our target article. (shrink)

Gerhard Preyer rekonstruiert in diesem essential den harten Kern von Shmuel N. Eisenstadts allgemeiner Soziologie, wie Eisenstadt sie in der Untersuchung der Beziehung zwischen Handeln (Kreativität) und Struktur sowie zwischen Kultur und Sozialstruktur durchgeführt hat. Preyer ordnet seine Untersuchung in dem von ihm sogenannten „semantischen Map“ als eine evolutionäre Universalie des „konstitutiven basalen Bezugsrahmens“ der Erforschung der sozio-strukturellen Evolution an. Aus Eisenstadts Sicht legen die grundlegenden semantischen Maps das zentrale Problem der menschlichen und der sozialen Existenz, die Spezifikation ihrer (...) Lösungen und die Beziehung zu den grundlegenden Annahmen über die soziale Ordnung fest. Das Semantic Map und der Kampf um die Verteilung von Ressourcen ist der forschungsprogrammatische Bezugsrahmen seiner Reformulierung der Modernisierungstheorie, der Kritik an der klassischen Modernisierungstheorie als einer Konvergenztheorie und seiner Fassung des Problems der sozialen Ordnung. Die Studie wird mit einer Modifikation von Eisenstadts Ansatz einer mitgliedschaftstheoretischen Reinterpretation abgeschlossen. (shrink)

This article explores Professor T.F.J. Dreyer's definition for preaching that he developed for preaching in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NRCA) three decades ago. Dreyer's own homiletical perspective towards preaching developed continuously through numerous philosophical paradigm shifts since 1989. His basis theory plays an important role in the theological training of the church's students today. The aim of the research is to reflect on the changes, following Dreyer's homiletical development over three decades. The research discovers a strong prophetical character (...) in the homiletical approach of Dreyer and concludes by asking how a kairos moment of prophetical speech can benefit the NRCA. CONTRIBUTION: This research hopes to contribute to the existing research that was done in the homiletical field of traditional Afrikaans-speaking churches in South Africa. The research also contributes by identifying some homiletical perspectives that can help the church to proclaim the gospel in times of transition. (shrink)

This volume offers a reappraisal of Donald Davidson's influential philosophy of thought, meaning, and language, Twelve specially written essays by leading philosophers in the field illuminate a range of themes and problems relating to these ...

Inheriting Benjamin otherwise -- Erbsünde: a note on paradoxical inheritance in Benjamin's Kafka essay -- Benjamin's blotting paper: writing and erasing a theological figure of thought -- Critique and the thing: Benjamin and Heidegger -- The work of art and its formal and genealogical determinations: Benjamin's cool place between Kant and Nietzsche -- Going with time: a miniature on time and photography after Benjamin.

Alle Ideologie beruht auf Verdrängung der Gewalt; noch dort, wo sie Gewalt fetischisiert, bildet der blinde Fleck des Souveräns den Ursprung. Denn ausgeblendet wird ja nicht Gewalt als solche, sondern dass durch sie die Einheit der Gesellschaft erst Bestand hat. An diesem blinden Fleck tritt im Politischen selbst zutage, wie Aufklärung sich weigert, ihre eigenen Bedingungen zu begreifen – darin ist sie zunächst nichts anderes als die frühe Gestalt des Engagements. In dieser ›Dialektik des Leviathan‹, wie sie der erste Teil (...) des Buchs im Anschluss an die Dialektik der Aufklärung zu umreißen versucht, erhält die Gegenüberstellung von Hobbes und Spinoza eine Schlüsselrolle. Die These lautet, dass ein kritischer Begriff des Staats ohne die Kritik der spinozistischen Auffassung von Substanz nicht zu haben sei, deren problematische Aspekte nicht zufällig in der französischen (und italienischen) Linken (Althusser, Deleuze, Negri…) wiederkehrten. Umgekehrt war es gerade die Problematik dieses Substanzbegriffs, die es Marx erst ermöglichte – zusammen mit der Hegelschen Dialektik und zugleich gegen sie gerichtet – die Kritik der politischen Ökonomie zu entfalten. Wenn die neueste Ideologie der Linken wie der Rechten, in Frankreich wie in Deutschland, vielfach das Heideggersche »Sein« und den Carl Schmitt’schen »Begriff des Politischen« an die Stelle von Substanz und Souveränität setzt (Agamben, Badiou, Mouffe…), ist es mit jener ›Dialektik des Politischen‹ auf dem Boden der klassischen Metaphysik und Aufklärung nicht mehr getan. Dem heutigen Triumph Heideggers und Schmitts zu widersprechen, geht es im zweiten Teil des Buchs: Jean-Paul Sartres »Engagement gegen den Tod« und Jean Amérys Appell, den Leib zu »substantiieren« (wie das Manfred Dahlmann jüngst ausgedrückt hat), bedeuten einerseits Annäherung an die entscheidenden Fragen einer Philosophie nach Auschwitz – gerade auch, was die Frage des Souveräns betrifft. Andererseits verkehrte sich bei beiden regelmäßig die kritische Intention, sobald man den Gegenstand des Engagements mit der politischen Linken teilen und also Politik machen wollte. Dass sie vielmehr zu sabotieren sei, hat allerdings Améry – ohne sich dessen unbedingt bewusst zu sein – in seiner Parteinahme für Israel vorgeführt wie kaum ein anderer. Der von Adorno formulierte kategorische Imperativ, der zugleich das Politische als »Stand der Unfreiheit« begreift, erweist sich als die einzige Möglichkeit, dieser Sabotage auf den Grund zu gehen. Hier spannt sich aber auch der Bogen zum ersten Teil des Buchs zurück: Aus der Kritik an Spinozas Substanzbegriff lässt sich keine Kritik an Heideggers Sein zum Tode entwickeln, so wie auch der Gegensatz zwischen der Vernunft als Selbsterhaltung, die in der Dialektik der Aufklärung kritisiert wird, und der Vernichtung um der Vernichtung willen, die das Selbstopfer einschließt, dialektischer Vermittlung nicht mehr zugänglich ist, sondern zur Intervention nötigt. Davon legt jener Imperativ Zeugnis ab. Nur wer sich dabei jedoch die eigene Ohnmacht immer wieder eingesteht, die im notwendigen Engagement gegen den Antisemitismus so fatal wie nirgendwo hervortritt – spätestens dann, wenn der eben erst bezwungene Antisemit in neuer Gestalt wiederaufersteht –, wird auch die antisemitische bzw. antizionistische Gewalt nicht unterschätzen. (Diese Unterschätzung ist das Merkmal aller liberalen Anstrengungen, die Antisemiten zurückzudrängen.) Der dritte Teil schließlich versammelt – in Anlehnung an Adornos Engagement-Essay – Einzelstudien zur Kritik des politischen Engagements, wie sie sich an und in den Werken von Literatur und Essay, Musik und Film erschließt (Thomas Bernhard, Berthold Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Jean-Luc Godard, Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertész, Claude Lanzmann, Georg Lukács…). (shrink)

Max Weber ist ein Klassiker der Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Sein Werk gehört weltweit zum Kernbestand von Forschung und Lehre, und dies gilt besonders für seine methodologischen Schriften, denen auch 100 Jahre nach ihrer Publikation nachhaltige Aufmerksamkeit beschieden ist. Allerdings gibt es immer noch kein einvernehmliches Verständnis von Webers Position. Der Grund dafür liegt in der mangelnden Aufarbeitung der Quellen. Viele wichtige Autoren, deren Werke Weber rezipierte, sind in Vergessenheit geraten. Sie in Erinnerung zu rufen, ist dringend notwendig, um seine Wissenschaftslehre (...) in ihrer ganzen Komplexität zu verstehen. 0Das vorliegende Sammelwerk leistet einen Beitrag zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke. Es rekonstruiert den Denkraum des späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, in dem sich Weber bewegte, und zeigt anhand von Studien zu ausgewählten Autoren, wie umfassend und interdisziplinär sein Denken tatsächlich war. Dabei werden nicht nur Autoren aus den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften berücksichtigt, sondern auch solche aus den Naturwissenschaften, denn Weber war mit dem Fortschritt dieser Disziplinen ebenfalls vertraut. (shrink)

This paper examines two strands of literature regarding economic models of cooperation. First, payoff transformation theories assume that people may not be exclusively motivated by self-interest, but also care about equality and fairness. Second, team reasoning theorists assume that people might reason from the perspective of the team, rather than an individualistic perspective. Can these two theories be unified? In contrast to the consensus among team reasoning theorists, I argue that team reasoning can be viewed as a particular type of (...) payoff transformation. However, I also demonstrate that many payoff transformations yield actions that team reasoning rules out. (shrink)

Kant is well known for his restrictive conception of proper science. In the present paper I will try to explain why Kant adopted this conception. I will identify three core conditions which Kant thinks a proper science must satisfy: systematicity, objective grounding, and apodictic certainty. These conditions conform to conditions codified in the Classical Model of Science. Kant’s infamous claim that any proper natural science must be mathematical should be understood on the basis of these conditions. In order to substantiate (...) this reading, I will show that only in this way it can be explained why Kant thought (1) that mathematics has a particular foundational function with respect to the natural sciences and (2) as such secures their scientific status. (shrink)

The account of meta-induction (G. Schurz, Hume’s problem solved: the optimality of meta-induction, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2019) proposes a two-step solution to the problem of induction. Step 1 consists in a mathematical a priori justification of the predictive optimality of meta-induction, upon which step 2 builds a meta-inductive a posteriori justification of object-induction based on its superior track record (Sect. 1). Sterkenburg (Br J Philos Sci, forthcoming. 10.1086/717068/) challenged this account by arguing that meta-induction can only provide a (non-circular) justification (...) of inductive predictions for now and for the next future, but not a justification of inductive generalizations (Sect. 2). This paper develops a meta-inductive method that does provide an a posteriori justification of inductive generalizations, in the form of exchangeability conditions (Sect. 3). In Sect. 4, a limitation of the proposed method is worked out: while the method can justify weakly lawlike generalizations, the justification of strongly lawlike generalizations (claimed to hold for all eternity) requires epistemic principles going beyond meta-induction based on predictive success. (shrink)