We prove that everyn-modal logic betweenKnandS5nis undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non-finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov–Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a reduction of the representation problem of finite relation (...) algebras. (shrink)

We prove that everyn-modal logic betweenKnandS5nis undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non-finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov–Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a reduction of the representation problem of finite relation (...) algebras. (shrink)

We prove that everyn-modal logic betweenKnandS5nis undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non-finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov–Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a reduction of the (undecidable) representation problem of finite (...) relation algebras. (shrink)

We prove that every n-modal logic between K n and S5 n is undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non- finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov-Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a (...) reduction of the (undecidable) representation problem of finite relation algebras. (shrink)

The decline of the rehabilitative ethos in sentencing theory in the post_1960's is a story that has been told often , and need not be rehearsed here. Penal treatment programs, once tested for their effectiveness, showed scant success _ or at most, succeeded only in limited categories of cases. Doubts grew also about the fairness of making the severity of a person's sentence depend upon his responsiveness to treatment. As penal rehabilitation diminished in influence, the key question for penologists and (...) reformers became: what conception of sentencing should follow it? My article, as well as Michael Tonry's and John Donahue's in the present volume, is devoted to this question, of the choice of sentencing rationale.I will focus, particularly, on a sentencing theory that became influential in the late 1970's and 1980's in this country and western Europe , and continues to have considerable influence today : namely, the proportionalist or 'desert' model for sentencing. I shall address briefly what this theory's main tenets are and how it differs from traditional retributivism; what has made it attractive to liberal criminologists and penal reformers during the last three decades; and whether and to what degree it has continued value and usefulness for the future. (shrink)

The decline of the rehabilitative ethos in sentencing theory in the post_1960's is a story that has been told often, and need not be rehearsed here. Penal treatment programs, once tested for their effectiveness, showed scant success _ or at most, succeeded only in limited categories of cases. Doubts grew also about the fairness of making the severity of a person's sentence depend upon his responsiveness to treatment. As penal rehabilitation diminished in influence, the key question for penologists and reformers (...) became: what conception of sentencing should follow it? My article, as well as Michael Tonry's and John Donahue's in the present volume, is devoted to this question, of the choice of sentencing rationale.I will focus, particularly, on a sentencing theory that became influential in the late 1970's and 1980's in this country and western Europe, and continues to have considerable influence today : namely, the proportionalist or 'desert' model for sentencing. I shall address briefly what this theory's main tenets are and how it differs from traditional retributivism; what has made it attractive to liberal criminologists and penal reformers during the last three decades; and whether and to what degree it has continued value and usefulness for the future. (shrink)

In the work of both Matti Eklund and John Hawthorne there is an influential semantic argument for a maximally expansive ontology that is thought to undermine even modest forms of quantifier variance. The crucial premise of the argument holds that it is impossible for an ontologically "smaller" language to give a Tarskian semantics for an ontologically "bigger" language. After explaining the Eklund-Hawthorne argument (in section I), we show this crucial premise to be mistaken (in section II) by developing a Tarskian (...) semantics for a mereological universalist language within a mereological nihilist language (a case which we, and Eklund and Hawthorne, take as representative). After developing this semantics we step back (in section III) to discuss the philosophical motivations behind the Eklund- Hawthorne argument’s demand for a semantics. We ultimately conclude that quantifier variantists can meet any demand for a semantics that might reasonably be imposed upon them. (shrink)

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic valuesEpistemic values, such as empirical accuracyAccuracy and coherence with background knowledgeBackground knowledge, have the role to assess the credibilityCredibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive valuesCognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual modelConceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness (...) of a model for investigating a hypothesisHypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cognitive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social valuesSocial values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreementAgreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

We characterise the class S Ra CA n of subalgebras of relation algebra reducts of n -dimensional cylindric algebras by the notion of a ‘hyperbasis’, analogous to the cylindric basis of Maddux, and by representations. We outline a game–theoretic approximation to the existence of a representation, and how to use it to obtain a recursive axiomatisation of S Ra CA n.

The Evans-Salmon position on vague identity has deservedly elicited a large response in the literature. I think it is in fact among the most provocative metaphysical ideas to appear in recent years. I will try to show in this paper, however, that the position is vulnerable to a fundamental criticism that seems to have been virtually ignored in the many discussions of it. I take the Evans-Salmon position to consist of the following two theses: Thesis I. There cannot be objects (...) x and y such that it is indeterminate whether x is (identical with) y. Thesis II. The only way for an identity sentence to be indeterminate in truth-value is if one of the expressions flanking the identity symbol is referentially ambiguous.] The argument for Thesis I is essentially as follows. We are assuming that the sense of identity under discussion satisfies the standard formal logic of identity including Leibniz's Law. Suppose, now, that it is indeterminate whether x is y. Since it is determinate that x is x, x differs from y with respect to the property of being determinately x, from which it follows by Leibniz's Law that x is not y. Since the supposition that it is indeterminate whether x is y leads to the conclusion that x is not y, this supposition is incoherent. (shrink)

Cognitive values like simplicity, broad scope, and easy handling are properties of a scientific representation that result from the idealization which is involved in the construction of a representation. These properties may facilitate the application of epistemic values to credibility assessments, which provides a rationale for assigning an auxiliary function to cognitive values. In this paper, I defend a further rationale for cognitive values which consists in the assessment of the usefulness of a representation. Usefulness includes the relevance of a (...) representation regarding the investigation of a given problem and its practicability for the users. This rationale builds on the claim that any evaluation of scientific representations should pursue two aims: providing information about their credibility and providing information about their usefulness. Cognitive values relating to the usefulness of a representation and epistemic values relating to its credibility both perform a first-order function. Cognitive values are abstract, and several values with first-order functions may conflict in their application. Thus, in order for cognitive values to account for the sort of problem that is to be investigated by means of a representation, they need to be appropriately specified and weighed. Comprehensiveness, complexity, high resolution, and easy handling, for instance, may be required in a first-order function for model-based prediction of regional climate impacts but not for explaining how the global climate system works. Specifying and weighing cognitive and epistemic values relative to a given problem is a legitimate second-order function of social values. (shrink)

Science-based methods for assessing the practical rationality of a proposed public policy typically represent assumed future outcomes of policies and values attributed to these outcomes in an idealized, that is, intentionally distorted way and abstracted from aspects that are deemed irrelevant. Different types of methods do so in different ways. As a consequence, they instantiate the properties that result from abstraction and idealization such as conceptual simplicity versus complexity, or comprehensiveness versus selectivity of the values under consideration to different degrees. (...) I hold that none of these methods is best in general. Instead, I opt for the valuation method that is useful for the policy issue in question both in terms of its relevance and in terms of its practicability. Relevance requires that the method can represent and account for what is at stake in the policy issue. Practicability refers to aspects such as easy versus difficult handling of the method. To argue for the claim, I evaluate three types of valuation methods: cost–benefit analysis that rests on unidimensional measurement and ranking, multi-criteria decision analysis that applies multi-dimensional measurement but unidimensional ranking, and non-aggregate indicator systems that operate with multi-dimensional measurement and sometimes also multi-dimensional ranking. Second-order justification indicating whether and how the valuation method chosen is capable of accounting for the substantive value considerations that constitute the real-world policy issue in question renders the conditions on which the results of a proposed policy evaluation rest transparent. (shrink)

Some people have found my distinction between meaning and significance useful. In the following revision of that distinction, I hope to improve its accuracy and perhaps, therefore, its utility as well. My impulse for making the revision has been my realization, very gradually achieved, that meaning is not simply an affair of consciousness and unconsciousness. In 1967, in Validity in Interpretation, I roundly asserted that “there is no magic land of meanings outside human consciousness.” 1 That assertion would be true (...) if, godlike, we could oversee the whole of human consciousness, past, present, and future. But we language users, being limited creatures, intend our verbal meanings to go beyond what we can pay attention to at any moment. We intend our meanings to transcend our momentary limitations of attention and knowledge. Hence there is a land of meanings beyond past and present human consciousness—the land of the future. What I should have said originally is that there is no magic lance of meanings beyond the whole extent of human consciousness, past, present, and future. This correction of my original statements leads to a deepening of the concept of meaning.In 1960 I first proposed the analytical distinction between two aspects of textual interpretation. One of them, meaning, was fixed and immutable; the other, significance, was open to change.2 I acknowledged that significance, changeable or not, is the more valuable object of interpretation, because it typically embraces the present use of texts, and present use is present value. But I argued that, in academic criticism, the significance and use of a text ought to be rooted in its fixed meaning, since otherwise criticism would lack a stable object of inquiry and would merely float on tides of preference. The claim that one reader’s opinion is as valid as another’s would then be right, despite any indignant protest to the contrary. I did not wish to dissuade people from floating on the tides of preference if that was what they wished to do. I intended to provide a firm justification for those who wished to pursue historical scholarship. 3 I also assumed that even those who did not pursue historical scholarship might sometimes wish to exploit the possibility of historically fixed meaning. In my experience, even antiauthorial theorists sometimes with to regard their own texts as having a historically fixed meaning and will complain if someone misunderstands that meaning. 1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation, p. 4.2. See my “Objective Interpretation,” PMLA 75 : 463-79.3. See, for instance, W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” in Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, which ends:We submit that this is the true and objective way of criticism, as contrasted to what the very uncertainty of exegesis might tempt a second kind of critic to undertake: the way of biographical or genetic inquiry …. Our point is that such an answer to such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the poem “Prufrock”; it would not be a critical inquiry. Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle. [P. 18] E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of numerous works, including Validity in Interpretation and The Aims of Interpretation. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Against Interpretation?”, “The Politics of Theories of Interpretation, and “Stylistics and Synonymity”. (shrink)

This paper explores the Offence Principle. It discusses whether two constraints, additional to the criteria stated in conventional analysis, ought to be met before the Offense Principle can be satisfied: (i) that offensive conduct must be a wrong, and (ii) that the conduct must also lead to harm. The nature of the Harm Principle, and its relationship to the Offense Principle, are also considered. The paper suggests that, even if all cases in which offense should be criminalized also involve harm, (...) nonetheless there may be good reasons to retain a separate Offense Principle. (shrink)

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic values, such as empirical accuracy and coherence with background knowledge, have the role to assess the credibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness of a model for (...) investigating a hypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cogni¬tive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

Quantifier variance is a well-known view in contemporary metaontology, but it remains very widely misunderstood by critics. Here we briefly and clearly explain the metasemantics of quantifier variance and distinguish between modest and strong forms of variance (Section I), explain some key applications (Section II), clear up some misunderstandings and address objections (Section III), and point the way toward future directions of quantifier-variance-related research (Section IV).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 327 Callie Danae Hirsch pandemic daydreams Artist’s Statement I am a painter who works in oils and acrylics on canvas and found objects. I am also a photographer as part of my daily practice. My work is an exploration of everything that surrounds me in my daily life, observing the overlooked, honing in and reimagining it. I (...) seek out discarded items on the streets, in parks, and on the beaches around the five boroughs of New York City and imagine their reincarnation. This series, pandemic daydreams, explores my subconscious in a time of profound anxiety. I sometimes drift off into sleep and, upon waking, remember clearly for a moment the scenario the dreamlet contained. A dream fragment during the day, or as I reframe it here as a daydream, allows my subconscious to float to the surface of consciousness. What is revealed is not always easily understood, but now it is the plague that plagues my sleeping life. Strange ideas emerge; comical, nightmarish, filled with chaos and disruption, the invisible made visible, interpreted from brush to canvas. The paintings serve as a visual diary of my psyche during the coronavirus outbreak, created using acrylic on canvas, measuring from 24 by 20 inches to 44 by 36 inches. My quarantine cocoon strolls include Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where newly dug soil can be seen on numerous fresh graves as I make my way through the hills seeking fresh air and exercise. Rising smoke from the crematorium is a constant reminder of those we have lost. Migrating birdsong fills my ears, but death hovers in the whirlwind 328 Callie Danae Hirsch around us. Who are we losing today? What will remain of our pre-COVID life and society when this is over? When can we hug each other again? As the pandemic hit, I felt the desire to connect and reflect with others about what we are all losing: our elders, our community members, our friends, our family, and our “IRL” connections with each other. I look forward to the day when this chapter is a distant memory, but for now I will investigate the discomfort of our present moment.  All images shown in this art essay courtesy of Callie Danae Hirsch: Pandemic daydreams i– xvii, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, variable dimensions.  Pandemic daydreams vii, 24 × 36 × 1 inches. left to right  Pandemic daydreams i, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams xvii, 20 × 24 × ½ inches. this page, top to bottom  Pandemic daydreams xiii, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams xvi, 20 × 24 × ½ inches. opposite, top to bottom  Pandemic daydreams v, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams xv, 44 × 36 × 1 ½ inches. left to right  Pandemic daydreams ix, 16 × 20 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams xii, 20 × 30 × 1 ½ inches. left to right  Pandemic daydreams xi, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams ii, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams viii, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams xiv, 20 × 24 × ½ inches. previous page  Pandemic daydreams vi, 20 × 28 × 1 ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams iii, 20 × 24 × ½ inches.  Pandemic daydreams x, 48 × 36 × 1 ½ inches.... (shrink)

Among philosophers as well as linguists the battle is still joined between those who view the correlation between meaning and linguistic form as strictly determined by convention and those who argue for the essential indeterminacy of the relationship between meaning and form.1 Plato's Cratylus aside, the philosphical dialogue that forms the locus classicus of this debate is the following: "You're holding it upside down!" Alice interrupted. "To be sure I was!" Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for (...) him. "I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying. that seems to be done right - though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now - and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents -" "Certainly," said Alice. "And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!" "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."2 · 1. This should not be taken as an argument for the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning itself. Quite the contrary; it is because meaning can be stable and determinate despite variations in mental acts and linguistic forms that the relation between form and meaning must be indeterminate on the basis merely of rules and conventions.· 2. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, chap. 6. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is Kenan Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Validity in Interpretation and Wordsworth and Schelling: A Typological Study of Romanticism. A second edition of his book on Blake, Innocence and Experience, will appear next year, as will a new book on critical theory. (shrink)

I would expect many readers of my book to want to agree with either Mark Heller or Alan Sidelle. The very idea of “rational constraints on lexicons” will immediately suggest to many people that either the constraints are of a purely pragmatic nature or there really are no such constraints. I can take some cold comfort in the fact that many philosophers will join me in rejecting, and many others will join me in rejecting, but since I have nothing to (...) offer in place of these positions—except mystification—I’m afraid that few will join me in rejecting both of them. (shrink)

Most contemporary political theories of sovereignty – from Giorgio Agamben to Achille Mbembe – have argued that the emergency powers claimed by the Bush administration under the auspices of the War on Terror epitomized what Carl Schmitt calls a state of exception. If so, I argue, perhaps it is time for new visions of sovereignty to emerge, ones attendant to the eccentricities of the present conjuncture. Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring are but two obvious examples of counterpublics that (...) seem to have presented new modalities of sovereign life worth reflecting upon. Hardly states of exception, these are scenes of sovereignty that are more fraught and precarious, more democratic. I argue that the theories of sovereignty of George Bataille and Frantz Fanon may hold clues for coming to terms with these new sovereign scenes. Though often under-emphasized in the scholarly literature on Bataille and Fanon, for both thinkers sovereignty is a condition of existence, an expression of a surreal mode of esthetic experience and poetic beauty. I argue that drawing attention to the comparison of the political thought of Bataille and Fanon, and especially to the value of surrealism for contemporary political theory generally, holds promise for those of us interested in challenging the Schmittian consensus. At stake is a refreshed understanding of sovereignty, not as norm or exception, but as a condition of political life lived by everyday subjects caught in a surreal state in-between. (shrink)

Patients are usually granted autonomy rights, including the right to consent to or refuse treatment. These rights are commonly attributed to patients if they fulfil certain conditions. For example, a patient must sufficiently understand the information given to them before making a treatment decision. On the one hand, there is a large group of patients who meet these conditions. On the other hand, there is a group that clearly does not meet these conditions, including comatose patients or patients in the (...) late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Then there is a group of patients who fall into the range in between. At the lower end of this range are so-called ‘marginal agents,’ which include young children and patients in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. They also do not meet the typical requirements for autonomy, which is why they are usually granted fewer autonomy rights. However, some of them are capable of ‘pre-forms’ of autonomy that express what is important to them. These pre-forms differ from mere desires and reflect the identification/authenticity condition of autonomy. They have something in common with autonomous attitudes, choices, and actions – namely, they express the _value_ of autonomy. As I will argue, autonomy is a value worthy of protection and promotion – even in its non-reflexive forms. Against this background, it becomes clear _why_ we have autonomy duties, more precisely positive, autonomy-enabling duties, towards marginal agents and why we should give them as much attention as autonomy duties towards competent patients. (shrink)

Traditionally, transitional justice has referred to that field of theoretical scholarship that proffers recuperative strategies for political societies divided by a history of violence. Through the establishment of truth commissions, public confessionals and reparative measures, transitional justice regimes have sought to establish restorative conditions that might help reconcile historical antagonists both to each other and to the trauma of their shared past. Because of some of the theoretical lapses in this scholarship some have turned recently to the field of radical (...) democratic and ‘new pluralist’ thought – and especially to agonistic literature – to foreground a theory of post-conflict reconciliation based not on the principles of the sublimation of difference, but rather the perpetual deferral of accord. This essay works both to underscore that effort, as well as to problematize it. Through unorthodox readings of Giorgio Agamben, Jean Améry and Sheldon Wolin, the essay argues that an emphasis on messianicity as the temporal mode of political repair is ultimately less productive for what I call an agonistics of reconciliation than a more nuanced approach to what Wolin calls ‘fugitive democracy’. Where the former is allied with a problematic politics of mutual respect, the latter affirms a more germane politics of abiding resentment. In the end, a startling conclusion is drawn from reading agonistic reconciliation through Wolin: democracy may be a political experience reserved for scenes of transitional justice alone. (shrink)

Professors Battersby and Phelan have presented a lively challenge. They urge readers to reject the later, fuzzy Hirsch, in favor of an earlier, truer Hirsch.Their first objection is that Hirsch 2 has mistaken the nature of literary meaning. Battersby and Phelan reject the view that a literary work carries a general meaning analogous to the concept of “bicycle” that can be exemplified by all bicycles. They propose that a literary work is “more appropriately conceived as … a (...) Schwinn or even a red Schwinn three-speed with a blue seat and two flat tires”. They object to my adoption of Sir Philip Sidney’s claim that literature provides both the general concept and the particular example simultaneously. By saying that literature does both things at once I conflate and confuse, they say, two different intentions, because, as they aver, an exemplified concept cannot be further exemplified”.This claim reinstates the familiar New Critical doctrine that a literary concept is unique among concepts in that it can never be dissevered from its particular embodiment. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of numerous works including Validity in Interpretation and The Aims of Interpretation. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Against Interpretation?” and “The Politics of Theories of Interpretation”. His most recent contributions is “Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted”. (shrink)

How can we find any satisfying assignment for a Boolean formula that has many satisfying assignments? There exists an obvious randomized algorithm for solving this problem: one can just pick an assignment at random and check the truth value of the formula for this assignment, this is iterated until a satisfying assignment occurs. Does there exist a polynomial-time deterministic algorithm that solves the same problem? This paper presents such an algorithm and shows that its worst-case running time is linear when (...) input formulas are in k-CNF and a fraction of satisfying assignments is greater than a constant. This algorithm is almost the same as the algorithm proposed by Monien and Speckenmeyer in the early 1980s for less than 2n steps 3-SAT decision.Another result of this paper is that if a formula in k-CNF has many satisfying assignments, then there exists a short satisfying assignment, i.e. an assignment of truth values to a small number of variables. The proposed algorithm yields just such a short satisfying assignment. We also show that there exist formulas in general CNF having many satisfying assignments, that have no short satisfying assignments. (shrink)

Am 26. Juni 1956 wiederholte sich zum hundertsten Male der Todestag Max Stirners. Durch das Erscheinen seines Werkes "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum", in dem er seine Zeit, die nachhegelianische Epoche, schonungslos kritisierte, war er bei den einen berühmt, bei anderen berüchtigt geworden. In neuerer Zeit lenkte er die allgemeine Aufmerksamkeit vor allem durch Nietzsche und durch die posthum erschienene Kritik Marxens an seinem Werk wieder auf sich, die letzterer 1845/46 gemeinsam mit Engels verfaßte, der Zeitumstände wegen aber "der nagenden (...) Kritik der Mäuse überlassen" mußte. Sie erschien erstmals unter dem Titel "Die deutsche Ideologie" in der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, 1932, I. Abt., 5. Band. (shrink)

When historians, archivists, and museologists turn to Eastern European photos from family albums or collections—for example, photos from the decades preceding the Holocaust and the early years of the Second World War—they seek visual evidence or illustrations of the past. But photographs may refuse to fit expected narratives and interpretations, revealing both more and less than we expect. Focusing on photos of Jews taken on the main avenues of Cerna˘u?i, Romania, before the Second World War and during the city’s occupation (...) by Fascist Romanians and their Nazi-German allies, this essay shows how a close reading of these vernacular images, both for what they show and what they are unable to show, can challenge the “before, during, and after” timeline that, in Holocaust historiography, we have come to accept as a given. (shrink)

Climate model projections are used to inform policy decisions and constitute a major focus of climate research. Confidence in climate projections relies on the adequacy of climate models for those projections. The question of how to argue for the adequacy of models for climate projections has not gotten sufficient attention in the climate modelling community. The most common way to evaluate a climate model is to assess in a quantitative way degrees of “model fit”; i.e., how well model results fit (...) observation-based data (empirical accuracy) and agree with other models or model versions (robustness). However, such assessments are largely silent about what those degrees of fit imply for a model’s adequacy for projecting future climate. We provide a conceptual framework for discussing the evaluation of the adequacy of models for climate projections. Drawing on literature from philosophy of science and climate science, we discuss the potential and limits of inferences from model fit. We suggest that support of a model by background knowledge is an additional consideration that can be appealed to in arguments for a model’s adequacy for long-term projections, and that this should explicitly be spelled out. Empirical accuracy, robustness and support by background knowledge neither individually nor collectively constitute sufficient conditions in a strict sense for a model’s adequacy for long-term projections. However, they provide reasons that can be strengthened by additional information and thus contribute to a complex non-deductive argument for the adequacy of a climate model or a family of models for long-term climate projections. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s work on violence is bedeviled by a series of paradoxes. On the one hand, Arendt is clear in arguing that violence is utterly powerless and yet, on the other hand, she is equally clear in her portrayal of beginnings as necessarily violent. These two positions conflict insofar as Arendt holds beginnings to be the source of all power. Thus power and violence are at once opposed and yet alloyed. This tension is deepened by yet another. For Arendt, action, (...) of which power is composed, would not be possible without the twofold human faculties of promising and forgiveness. Promising undoes the hold of the future on the present by pacifying its unpredictability, while forgiveness loosens the grip of the past by alleviating its irreversibility. The trouble, however, is that Arendt argues that the power of forgiveness stems from its unpredictability, and unpredictability is precisely that which promising is meant to thwart. Taking these two paradoxes together one might say that Arendt, however unwittingly, leaves us promising never to forgive. This article works to flesh these paradoxes out. It also contextualizes Arendt’s paradoxes in terms of the literature that claims democratic political life is beset by tragedy. In the end, I argue that, following Arendt, democracy is ultimately about learning to live with the vivid disquiet of the miracle of paradox. (shrink)

What I call the Similarity Principle says that a word ought to denote a class of things that are more similar to each other than to other things. A closely related formulation, which I’ll here take to be equivalent, is that a word ought to denote a class of things having something in common with each other that they don’t have in common with other things. The Similarity Principle is an example of an intuitively rational constraint on the lexicon of (...) a language. If we imagine such strange words as “gricular” or “carple”, we feel intuitively that there would be something absurd about having such words in our language, and one explanation of this—indeed the explanation that is likely first to come to a person’s mind in some rudimentary form—is that these words violate the Similarity Principle. (shrink)

Eli Hirsch has argued in many places that non-commonsensical ontological claims just couldn't be true, since there is strong metasemantic pressure to charitably interpret natural language---correct interpretations must, unless all else is highly unequal, count a sentence (especially a perceptual sentence) as true if ordinary speakers regard it as being obviously true. In previous work I replied that ontologists can stipulatively introduce a new language, "Ontologese", that is exempt from this pressure toward charity. Hirsch has recently objected to (...) this proposal; this paper is my reply. (shrink)

Marianne Hirsch’s influential concept of postmemory articulates the ethical significance of representing trauma in art and literature. Postmemory, for Hirsch, “describes the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they ‘remember’ only as the narratives and images with which they grew up, but that are so powerful, so monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right”. Through appeal to recent philosophical work on memory, the ethics of (...) remembering, and Peter Goldie’s discussion of empathy, I explore the virtues and limitations of Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. I take particular issue with her recent attempt to place author W.G. Sebald in league with the postmemory generation. (shrink)

Hirsch advocates a certain kind of metaontological deflationism. He believes that, sometimes, metaphysicians are talking past each other. In his opinion, the debate between compositional organicists and compositional universalists is a prototypical verbal dispute. I argue that his diagnosis is wrong especially with regard to this central case. My argument also weakens his deflationist position in general.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SENOR HIRSCH AS SACRIFICIAL VICTIM AND THE MODERNISM OF CONRAD'S NOSTROMO Andrew Bartlett University ofBritish Columbia One of René Girard's more pithy definitions of mimetic desire reads: "The model designates the desirable while at the same time desiring it. Desire is always imitation ofanother desire, desire for the same object, and, therefore, an inexhaustible source of conflicts and rivalries" {Double Business Bound 39). The notation that desire is (...) an "inexhaustible" source of conflicts hints at the political pessimism expressed more openly elsewhere in Girard's writing. In 1961, he said it like this: "Whatever political or social system is somehow imposed on them, men will never achieve the peace and happiness of which the revolutionaries dream, nor the bleating harmony which so scares the reactionaries. They will always get on togetherjust enough to enable them never to agree" (Deceit 110-11). This is a Girard who, suspicious of political rhetoric, speaks with audacious cynicism even of democracy: "Who is there left to imitate after the tyrant? Henceforth men shall copy each other... Democracy is one vast middle-class court where the courtiers are everywhere and the king is nowhere" (Deceit 119). This Girard has remained consistent in his thematization of the impurity of all political compromises: "men are only capable ofreconciling their differences at the expense of a third party. The best men can hope for in their quest for nonviolence is the unanimity-minus-one ofthe surrogate victim" (Violence 259). Girard's political skepticism seems to be a result of his conviction that arbitrary victims ofviolent unanimity are the "ingredient" in political thought that allows each community to be flattered by the illusion of its political innocence, the illusion of the justifiability of its violence. 48Andrew Bartlett Modem political thought cannot dispense with morals, but it cannot become purely moral without ceasing to be political. Another ingredient must therefore be mixed with morals. If we really tried to identify what this is we would inevitably end up with formulas like Caiaphas': "It is better that this man or those die so that the community may survive" (Scapegoat 116). Political institutions, in establishing power relations between dominant and subordinate people, always exercise force, violence (Beetham 47-48). A perfectly moral politics seems as impossible as a perfectly nonviolent politics. Girard's refusal to plant his feet in the wet cement of any single political party's rhetoric is the outcome, in part, of his preference for a religious perspective on human affairs. The religious is his fundamental category ofanalysis; and religion in Girard's view is not an unenlightened form of belief to be superseded by political wisdom, but rather the fundamental mode of human social organization, the political only a secular displacement of it. I hasten to add that Girard's pessimism about political arrangements arises not from any stoical indifference to their victims, but rather from his respect for victims—a respect that is finally religious in character. A related sub-clause of Girard's political pessimism is the incompatibility ofmimetic theory and "identity politics," broadly defined so as to include nationalist or ethnic politics based on historical grievances and desires for vengeance. I have in mind here Girard's idea that the distinct identity of the surrogate victim is not strictly relevant to the effects of collective violence. Violence belongs to all men, and thus to none in particular. It is futile to look for the secret ofthe redemptive process in distinctions between the surrogate victim and other members of the community. The crucial fact is that the choice ofthe victim is arbitrary (Violence 257). The stabilizing effects of political scapegoating thus depend on the degree of unanimity in the community's violence, not on the identity ofthe victim. The identity of the sacrificial victim is not essential in scapegoating; the essential in scapegoating is the unanimity ofthe collective violence itself (cf. Violence 84, 150). Perhaps because of this priority of violent unanimity over victim identity, Girard has measured his distance from specific political causes (Scapegoat 19-20). We must confront what I would call the formal equivalence of scapegoats. The arbitrary victim of a sacrificial political process may be anyone: scandalously rich or scandalously... (shrink)

There is currently debate between deflationists and anti-deflationists about the ontology of persisting objects. Some deflationists think that disputes between, for example, four-dimensionalists (e.g. Ted Sider and David Lewis) and quasi-nihilists (e.g. Peter Van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks) are merely verbal disputes. Anti-deflationists deny this. Eli Hirsch is a deflationist who maintains that many ontological disputes are merely verbal. Theodore Sider maintains that the disputes are not merely verbal. Hirsch and Sider are thus engaged in a metaontological dispute. (...) In this paper, I argue that Hirsch's metaontological dispute with Sider is, by Hirsch's own lights, itself merely verbal. I conclude that the mere verbalness of his metaontological dispute with Sider suggests that Hirsch's account of what makes a dispute merely verbal may be problematic. (shrink)

Review of Tehilim.. Tehilim - Psalms. Commentary by Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch. Kyiv: Duh i Litera.

I thank my commentators for their kind words, and for their close reading and challenging criticisms of my book. I have chosen selective and substantive replies. Those criticisms I ignore, I ignore because I have little more to say, not because they are unworthy of discussion.

Eli Hirsch argues that certain ontological disputes involve a conflict between “equivalent” languages, and that the principle of charity compels each disputant to interpret the other as speaking truly in their own language. For Hirsch, a language’s semantics maps sentences (in context) onto sets of possible worlds but assigns no role to reference. I argue that this method leads to an overly uncharitable portrayal of the disputes at issue – whereby ontologists who speak “equivalent” languages can only argue (...) about syntax. Lack of charity stems from the fact that this portrayal likely fails to uphold the self-conception of the disputants – and particularly what I will call “the weak self-conception”. As a result, Hirsch’s deflationism falls victim of the same principle of charity that informs it. (shrink)

The Oxford Monographs On Criminal Law And Justice series aims to cover all aspects of criminal law and procedure including criminal evidence. the scope of the series is wide, encompassing both practical and theoretical works. Series Editor: Professor Andrew Ashworth, Vinerian Professor of English Law, All Souls College, Oxford. This volume is a thematic collection of essays on sentencing theory by leading writers. The essays fall into three groups. Part I considers the underlying justifications for the imposition of punishment by (...) the State, and examines the relationship between victims, offenders and the State. Part II addresses a number of areas of sentencing policy that have given rise to particular difficulty, such as the sentencing of drug offenders, the rationale for discounting sentences for multiple offenders, the existence of special sentencing for young offenders, and cases where the injury done to the victim is of a different magnitude from what might have been expected. Part III raises various questions about the unequal impact on offenders of different sentencing measures, and examines the extent to which sentences should be adjusted to take account of these different impacts and of broader social inequalities. This volume is dedicated to Professor Andrew von Hirsch, whose continuing work on sentencing theory provided the stimulus for the collection. (shrink)