Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious, and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient philosophy and underestimate its significance to the Enlightenment? Through a pan-European analysis of Enlightenment centres from Scotland to Russia via the Netherlands, France and Germany, contributors argue that elements of classical Epicureanism were appropriated by radical and conservative writers alike. They move beyond literature and political theory to examine the application of Epicurean ideas in domains as diverse as physics, natural (...) law, and the philosophy of language, drawing on the work of both major figures (Diderot, Helvétius, Smith and Hume) and of lesser-known but important thinkers (Johann Jacob Schmauss and Dmitrii Anichkov). -/- Table of Contents -/- Neven Leddy and Avi S. Lifschitz, Epicurus in the Enlightenment: an introduction -/- Elodie Argaud, Bayle’s defence of Epicurus: the use and abuse of Malebranche’s Méditations chrétiennes -/- Hans W. Blom, The Epicurean motif in Dutch notions of sociability in the seventeenth century -/- Thomas Ahnert, Epicureanism and the transformation of natural law in the early German Enlightenment -/- Charles T. Wolfe, A happiness fit for organic bodies: La Mettrie’s medical Epicureanism -/- Natania Meeker, Sexing Epicurean materialism in Diderot -/- Pierre Force, Helvétius as an Epicurean political theorist -/- Andrew Kahn, Epicureanism in the Russian Enlightenment: Dmitrii Anichkov and atomic theory -/- Matthew Niblett, Man, morals and matter: Epicurus and materialist thought in England from John Toland to Joseph Priestley -/- James A. Harris, The Epicurean in Hume -/- Neven Leddy, Adam Smith’s critique of Enlightenment Epicureanism -/- Avi S. Lifschitz, The Enlightenment revival of the Epicurean history of language and civilisation -/- Bibliography -/- Index. (shrink)

The article focuses on prosecutor's fallacy and interrogator's fallacy, the two kinds of reasoning in inferring a suspect's guilt. The prosecutor's fallacy is a combination of two conditional probabilities that lead to unfortunate commission of error in the process due to the inclination of the prosecutor in the establishment of strong evidence that will indict the defendant. It provides a comprehensive discussion of Gerd Gigerenzer's discourse on a criminal case in Germany explaining the perils of prosecutor's fallacy in his application (...) of probability to practical problems. It also discusses the interrogator's fallacy which was introduced by Robert A. J. Matthews as the error on the assumption that confessional evidence can never reduce the probability of guilt. (shrink)

This chapter appeared in: G. J. van Nes et al. (eds.), Relational Anthropology for Contemporary Economics. Dordrecht: Springer, 121-132. -/- Abstract: This chapter is a comment on the contribution of Rebecca Klein in this volume, preceded by a conceptual analysis of the argument that is developed in the Homo Amans position paper. The main question that is raised is twofold and concerns the relation between science and worldview on the one hand, and between science and economic life on the other. (...) With respect to the science – worldview relationship, it is doubted that science can play the role the authors of the Homo Amans project expect it can have. What they have in mind is that science helps in validating and legitimizing a biblically informed concept of love. This author disagrees, to a large extent. Science can indeed orient itself on ideas and intuitions that are based on one’s worldview. But it cannot prove the truth of these intuitions and ideas. To think so, is to commit a naturalistic fallacy. With respect to the relationship between science and economic life, the author is also not convinced that science and philosophy as academic disciplines will by themselves be able (and should be expected to be able) to transform deeply ingrained, institutionally anchored economic practices. New theories, concepts, and paradigms are a precondition for change, but they do not bring about change by themselves. What is needed is a change in the practices themselves, a change that is both personal and comprehensive. What is needed is a clear, succinct, and encompassing view on the intrinsic normativity of economic interactions between relevant stakeholders in what we call ‘the’ economy. This is a huge undertaking, that requires painstaking ‘phenomenological’ analyses of a wide variety of economic practices. The chapter agrees with most of Klein’s observations and concerns with respect to the position paper. These observations and concerns gain even more depth and relief given the conceptual distinctions that are made in the chapter. (shrink)

Der Einladung von Bernard Tschumi folgend kommt es in den Jahren 1985 bis 1987 zu einer engen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Jacques Derrida und Peter Eisenman für ein Teilareal des Parc de la Villette in Paris. Wenige Jahre später gilt Derrida als meistzitierter Philosoph in der Architektur. Dieser hohen Präsenz im allgemeinen Diskurs steht die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung bislang nach. Der vorliegende Band zum Philosophischen Entwerfen setzt sich zum Ziel, die Bedeutung der Architektur in Derridas Schriften systematisch aufzuarbeiten. Ausgangspunkt hierfür bildet die eingehende (...) Lektüre der Gesamtheit dieser Schriften. Darauf aufbauend wird nachgezeichnet, inwieweit Derrida sich der Architektur annähert, sich mit dieser auseinandersetzt und davon ausgehend Möglichkeiten eines Weiterdenkens aufzeigt. Fordert Derrida gegenüber Eisenman bisweilen eine Rückbesinnung auf ein grundlegendes Denken ein, wie er es beispielhaft bei Vitruv aufgreift, wendet er seinen Blick zugleich voraus und formuliert den Anspruch, nicht mehr allein konzeptuell, sondern im Stein zu denken: ohne Nostalgie, der lebendigste Gedächtnisakt! (shrink)

Analytic philosophers usually emphasize the importance of logic, clarity and reason. Therefore when they address political issues one would expect that they would usually inject a dose of rationality in these discussions. But this book gives a lot of examples showing the unexpected level of political irrationality among leading contemporary philosophers.

The development and management of the Covid-19 outbreak in the Netherlands is described. The “intelligent lockdown” was aimed at minimizing new infections and limiting the number of deaths, while keeping the economy running as much as possible. Changes in consumer behavior, exit strategy, and lessons learned are considered.

1. Cornelius Valerius en Sebastianus Foxius Morzillus als bronnen van Coornhert.

This article traces the institutional context for the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith in the 1960s and 1970s. It explores the origins of the stoicization thesis advanced by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie in their introductory essay to the TMS. Using the correspondence between the editors held at Glasgow University Special Collections, this article presents the development of editorial positions that would shape the twentieth-century reception of Smith's works.

Understanding a sentence and integrating it into the discourse depends upon the identification of its focus, which, in spoken German, is marked by accentuation. In the case of written language, which lacks explicit cues to accent, readers have to draw on other kinds of information to determine the focus. We study the joint or interactive effects of two kinds of information that have no direct representation in print but have each been shown to be influential in the reader’s text comprehension: (...) i. the (low-level) rhythmic-prosodic structure that is based on the distribution of lexically stressed syllables, and ii. the (high-level) discourse context that is grounded in the memory of previous linguistic content. Systematically manipulating these factors, we examine the way readers resolve a syntactic ambiguity involving the scopally ambiguous focus operator auch (engl. `too') in both oral (Experiment 1) and silent reading (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments attest that discourse context and local linguistic rhythm conspire to guide the syntactic and, concomitantly, the focus-structural analysis of ambiguous sentences. We argue that reading comprehension requires the (implicit) assignment of accents according to the focus structure and that, by establishing a prominence profile, the implicit prosodic rhythm directly affects accent assignment. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise an objection to Philip Goff’s “Revelation Thesis” as articulated in his Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. In Sect. 1 I present the Revelation Thesis in the context of Goff’s broader defence of pan-psychism. In Sect. 2 I argue that the Revelation Thesis entails the identity of indiscriminable phenomenal properties. In Sect. 3 I argue that the identity of indiscriminable phenomenal properties is false. The upshot is that the Revelation Thesis is false.

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox and the correlated states it introduced comprise one of the central interpretive problems of quantum mechanics. Because of the apparent nonlocal character of this paradox, it should be given a relativistic treatment. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a treatment.

Enactive approaches to emotion are rare and to anxiety and anxiety disorder even more. This article aims to show how an enactive paradigm might be helpful in solving some problems in the clinical and scientific understanding of anxiety and anxiety disorder. I begin by pointing at a number of relevant clinical features of anxiety and anxiety disorder and by sketching how and why anxiety theories have difficulties with doing justice to these features. I specifically focus on two themes: a) how (...) to conceptualize anxiety as the expression of a dynamical interaction with the environment instead of as just a reaction to the environment (or to... (shrink)

This book focuses on two important, interlinked themes in psychiatry, i.e., the relation between self (or: person), context and psychopathology; and the intrinsic value-ladenness of psychiatry as a practice. -/- Written against the background of scientistic tendencies in today’s psychiatry, it is argued in Part I that psychiatry needs a clinical conception of psychopathology alongside more traditional scientific conceptions; that this clinical conception of psychopathology must be based on a fundamental rethinking of the interaction between illness manifestations, contextual influences and (...) the patient as person, such that psychopathology is conceived as the product of this interaction rather than as the outward manifestation of a broken mechanism within the patient. -/- In Part II, it is shown that self- and context-related factors have a large impact on who one is as a professional. I argue that an analysis is needed of the normative aspects of the relations that sustain and frame professional role-fulfilment. This analysis culminates into a so-called normative practice model (NPM) which distinguishes between qualifying, conditioning and foundational principles (or: rules, norms). The normative practice model helps to locate and resist scientistic defenses of the legitimacy of psychiatry and to replace them by a positive account that provides clinicians (and scientists) the conceptual tools they need to justify what they do in broader contexts. The main thrust of the argument is to show that psychiatry needs a value-sensitive account of its legitimacy, in which other normative dimensions are recognized than those that sustain the expert role. Psychiatrists should in other words not defend the legitimacy of their profession by referring to the expert role solely but provide a broader account in which justice is done to the broader social, legal, and economic contexts of professional activity. The analysis of this inherent normativity begins within clinical practice, it extends to the concept of disease as well as to wider domains of psychiatric care and the sociology of professions, and, finally, amounts into an analysis of the value-ladenness of interactions between healthcare institutions, the government, professional organizations and patient groups. (shrink)

It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthropology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way “race” was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely (...) regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading contemporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation. (shrink)

One of the central theses of egalitarian liberals in the domain of distributive justice is that talented individuals should not be allowed to keep their entire market-income even if it flows solely from their greater abilities. This claim is usually supported by one of several arguments or some mixture of them, but in the present paper, I want to concentrate on the version that invokes equality of opportunity as its starting point. Namely, it is claimed that every human being should (...) enjoy an equal starting point in the life-race but that this is not secured insofar as some have greater natural talents than others. Therefore, egalitarians hold that results that arise from such an unfair situation are unjust and should be corrected by a redistributive taxation. I want to criticize this argument by hoping to show that it presupposes an untenable view about identity of persons. (shrink)

Old age is not normally associated with innovativeness and technical prowess. To the contrary, when treating age as a distinct category, policy makers, innovation scholars, and companies typically regard younger people as drivers of innovation, and the early adoption of new technology. In this paper, we critically investigate this link between age, ineptness, and technology adoption using a case study of the diffusion of electric bikes in the Netherlands. We demonstrate how, during the first wave of e-bike acceptance, old age (...) was constructed as an arena in which important learning processes took place, and where older persons became early adopters of e-bikes. Theoretically, this paper speaks critically to the prolific literature on innovation diffusion and its treatment of adopter categories as generic concepts. Using age as a central dimension, our research highlights the situated and constructed nature of adopter categories, and thus challenges age-based assumptions about innovation and technology use by younger and older persons. These insights about what we term the rejuvenation of e-bikes help us rectify existing biases of older persons as an inherently problematic group of technology users. (shrink)

Rad se bavi umiješanošću promatrača kao ograničenjem u racionalnom spoznavanju svijeta i otvaranjem prostora za druge oblike spoznaje. U velikoj mjeri ta se problematika tiče odnosa znanosti i vjere, pa se u uvodnom dijelu rada polazi od odnosa vjere i znanosti, a koji je kroz povijest prolazio kroz različite faze. U prvom poglavlju analiziraju se upravo etape kroz koje je prolazio odnos vjere, odnosno religije i znanosti: jedinstvo u srednjovjekovnoj sintezi, razilaženje i sukob, dijalog i komplementarnost. Za ostvarenje dijaloga između (...) vjere i znanosti ponajprije je zaslužan papa Pio XII. svojom enciklikom Humani generis . Ipak, najveći doprinos dijaloškom odnosu vjere i znanosti dao je papa Ivan Pavao II. koji je smatrao da jedna drugoj može biti od velike koristi te da samo dinamički odnos između teologije i znanosti može otkriti granice koje čuvaju cjelovitost obiju disciplina. Na jednak način, veliki doprinos uspostavi dijaloga vjere i znanosti dali su i znanstvenici, kako sa strane teološko-filozofske misli, tako i sa strane prirodoslovnih znanosti, osobito fizičari.U ovom radu se čini jedan iskorak u pogledu određenosti i konkretnog sadržaja granice koju znanosti ne mogu prijeći i preko koje se nalazi prostor za druge oblike spoznaje i za vjeru. Polazi se od stava da je za proučavanje bilo koga predmeta taj predmet potrebno odvojiti od promatrača, kako bi ga ovaj mogao podvrgnuti objektivnom proučavanju. Sam po sebi, taj je stav opće prihvaćen u svim znanostima i filozofiji, ali je suviše uopćen da bi eliminirao sve oblike umiješanosti i rafinirane pogreške pri zaključivanju.Pokazuje se da se u termodinamici i u Newtonovoj mehanici može točno definirati takvo stajalište promatrača, kojim je on potpuno odvojen od pojave koju promatra i iz kojega je u stanju da promatranu pojavu objektivno ispita. Takvo se stajalište onda količinski razlikuje od drugih stajališta s kojima bi bio »umiješan« u pojavu koju proučava. U znanostima u kojima se to može učiniti eksperimentalno se osnivaju, nalaze i koriste zakoni koji se mogu zvati »objektivnima«. No i u takvim znanostima ima oblika umiješanosti koji mogu ostati skriveni desetljećima i duže. U radu se ukazuje na tri takva oblika diskretne umiješanosti u termodinamici i mehanici. Za znanosti u kojima se točno količinsko razdvajanje objektivnih i umiješanih stajališta promatrača nije moglo učiniti, ili se načelno ne može učiniti, ne može biti ni sigurnosti od umiješanosti i time od rafiniranih pogrešaka u racionalnom zaključivanju. Odatle se sa znatnom heurističkom snagom izvodi zaključak da se u područjima spoznaje kojima se bave znanosti i filozofija racionalnim zaključivanjem može učiniti rafinirana pogreška i da postoji prostor za druge oblike spoznaje i vjeru.The introductory part of the work deals with the relation between science and other forms of cognition which has undergone various phases throughout history. The first chapter analyses the stages through which the relation between faith, i.e. religion, and science has passed: unity in medieval synthesis, divergence and conflict, dialogue and complementarity. Much credit goes to Pope Pius XII with his encyclical Humani Generis for the development of dialogue between religion and science. However, Pope John Paul II made the greatest contribution to the dialogical relation between faith and science. He believed that their relation could be of great value and that only the dynamic relation between religion and science could discover the limits that hold the integrity of both disciplines. In the same way, scientists, those of the theological-philosophical thought as well as those of natural sciences, especially physicists, have made a great contribution to setting up a dialogue between religion and science.This work is a step forward regarding the determinateness and concrete content of the limit that sciences cannot cross and beyond which is a space for other forms of cognition and for faith. The starting point is a standpoint that if one wants to study a subject, that subject has to be set apart from the observer, so that it can be objectively studied. In itself, that standpoint has been universally accepted in all sciences and in philosophy too, but it is too generalized to eliminate all the forms of interference and refined errors when drawing conclusions.It is established that in thermodynamics and in Newton’s mechanics one can precisely define such a standpoint of the observer, by which he/she is completely detached from the phenomenon he/she is observing and from which he/she is able to research the observed phenomenon objectively. Such a standpoint quantitatively differs from other standpoints, by which he/she would be “involved” with the phenomenon he/she is investigating. In the sciences in which it is possible to do that, laws that can be called “objective” are experimentally passed and adopted. But even in such sciences there are forms of involvement that may remain hidden for decades and longer. This work points at such three forms of discrete involvement in thermodynamics and mechanics. For the sciences in which a precise quantitative separation between the observer’s objective and involved standpoints was not possible, or is not principally possible, there cannot be safety of involvement and consequently of refined errors in rational concluding. Hence, with considerable heuristic strength, the following conclusion is drawn: All sciences, including philosophy, should explicitly take and put forward a view that, by rational conclusions, it is possible to make a refined mistake in their areas of cognition and that there is room for other forms of cognition and for religion. (shrink)

The equivalence principle as well as the spin-two character of the weak gravitational field lead to difficulties in the measurability analysis of this field which are not encountered in Bohr and Rosenfeld's corresponding inquiry into the electromagnetic field. To meet these difficulties, atomic elastic structures are proposed as gravitational field detectors whose parameters (masses, total volumes, lattice and elastic constants) are adjustable. The limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle and by the radiation reaction of the detectors on the determination of (...) the amplitude, frequency, and direction of the field are then exhibited. Finally, the relevance of the present work to the investigation of DeWitt and to Einstein's full theory of gravitation is briefly considered. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity and moral reasoning are essential competencies biomedical researchers have to develop to make ethical decisions in their daily practices. Previous research has shown that these competencies can be developed through ethics education. However, it is unclear which underlying mechanisms best support the development of these competencies. In this article we argue that the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning can be fostered through teaching strategies that tap into students’ moral imagination. We describe how moral imagination can stimulate (...) the development of these competencies through three different merits of moral imagination. Moral imagination can help students to 1) transfer and apply abstract moral concepts to concrete situations and contexts, 2) explore the perspective of others, 3) explore and foresee the moral consequences of different decisions and actions. We explain these three merits of moral imagination in the context of biomedical research and present a theoretical model for how these merits can be used to stimulate the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning. Furthermore, we describe multiple teaching strategies for biomedical curricula that tap into the three merits of moral imagination. These teaching strategies can inspire teachers to design ethics education that activates students’ moral imagination for the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning. (shrink)

Does preaching bring God on stage? Protestants assume an intimate relationship between the ‘Word of God’ and preaching. However, the principle that ‘preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God’ caused intense debates about the status of God language. The author highlights the classic disputes of the 19th and 20th centuries and argues that the old dilemma must be overcome. Sermons address the subjective-contextual conditions of the listeners, and this in no way precludes the attention for divine (...) disclosure. On the contrary, there is a true reciprocity between personal spirituality and the sense of God as really other. The author defends the thesis that the renewed attention for the human condition in the theological debates of the last decades should also include a positive stand towards the believer’s spiritual awareness of God’s real existence and presence. (shrink)

The sixteenth-century Dutch spiritualist and controversialist, Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, is increasingly recognized as a pivotal figure in the cultural and political life of the early Dutch Republic. With the appearance of Henk Bonger’s widely acclaimed biography, the first complete account of Coornhert’s life became available in the Dutch language. Today this biography is still the starting point of any serious research on Coornhert and his circle. This translation now makes this standard biography available in English for the first time. The (...) translator profited from Henk Bonger’s comments on the translated chapters, and the author approved of adaptations and changes where these were deemed necessary. The structure and most of the chapters of the book are as they were in the original. The chief changes are: the abridgment and combination into one chapter of the two original chapters on Coornhert’s creative work and his translations. The ample quotes from Coornhert contained in the text enable the reader to attain a first hand acquaintance with Coornhert’s profound thought and inimitable style. References have been updated and some explanatory remarks intended for a non-Dutch readership were added. The translation is complemented with a full bibliography of Coornhert’s writings, as well as an up-to-date bibliography of the secondary literature; with 25 illustrations. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the acceleration of the history we are witnessing in our time, which is evident in a series of events and crises that mark the world we live in, especially after the start of the war in Ukraine, which have not occurred in such significant intensity and frequency since the end of the Second World War. Considering these events and crises, the paper discusses the thesis of a historian Eric Hobsbawm that the “short” 20th century that had lasted (...) as “the age of extremes” since the First World War ended with the fall of “communism” and the Berlin Wall, after which we in fact entered the 21st century. Contrary to this thesis and to the well-known thesis on the “end of history”, our paper presents the view that we are still “politically” in the 20th century, because in our time there are similar tensions between the great powers that marked the 20th century and which in general mark the modern world since Westphalian peace in the 17th century. This general thesis is explained by the observation of the most basic lines of the dialectics of modern European and world history. The paper concludes that we are not only “politically” living in the “long” 20th century, but we are still “politically” living in the “longest” classical Westphalian age, which has been lasting for three and a half centuries in the same dialectical contradictions of world politics. Ultimately, the paper also discusses the task of philosophy in the times of the so-called “acceleration of history”, such as ours, and concludes that philosophy as a discipline in these times is obligated to offer, with theoretical creativity, a fresh philosophy of history, explaining in wider perspective a series of actual international occurrences. (shrink)

In this book, Neven Sesardic defends the view that it is both possible and useful to measure the separate contributions of heredity and environment to the explanation of human psychological differences. He critically examines the view - very widely accepted by scientists, social scientists and philosophers of science - that heritability estimates have no causal implications and are devoid of any interest. In a series of clearly written chapters he introduces the reader to the problems and subjects the arguments (...) to close philosophical scrutiny. His conclusion is that anti-heritability arguments are based on conceptual confusions and misunderstandings of behavioural genetics. His book is a fresh and compelling intervention in a very contentious debate. (shrink)

Over the last years, self-management has become a central value in the practice of mental health care. Patients are positioned as expertclients who are actively involved in the management of their disease. Some of the ideas that are implied in the concept of self-management may raise important and intriguing questions. For instance, in the context of psychiatry impaired agency and altered self-experience are often part of the psychopathological process itself. The capacity to manage oneself may be impeded by the very (...) problem that needs to be managed. Therefore, how should self-management be conceived in... (shrink)

Retinoids play a critical role in patterning, segmentation, and neurogenesis of the posterior hindbrain and it has been proposed that they act as a posteriorising signal during hindbrain development. Until now, direct evidence that endogenous retinoid signalling acts through a gradient to specify cell fates along the anteroposterior axis has been missing. Two recent studies tested the requirement for retinoid signalling in the developing hindbrain through systematic application of a pan-retinoic acid receptor antagonist.(1,2) They demonstrate a stage-dependent requirement for increasing (...) retinoid signalling activity along the hindbrain that proceeds from anterior to posterior. Together these findings challenge the concept of a stable gradient of retinoic acid across the hindbrain and warrant a re-interpretation of the phenotypes obtained by genetic and nutritional disruption of retinoid signalling in the amniote embryo. BioEssays 23:981–986, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)