Ian Hacking here presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about probability, induction and statistical inference and the growth of this new family of ...

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals, Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the importance (...) of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. (shrink)

Smith's experience at Balliol College was disappointing, since the dons he encountered were not interested in teaching, and their easy enjoyment of sinecures as Fellows did not encourage that competition for students, and therefore revenue, prevalent among the Glasgow professors, which kept them abreast of their subjects and in touch with the advances of Enlightenment thought, especially the New Philosophy of Locke and the New Science of Newton. Smith read widely on his own, in politics and modern languages, but with (...) no one to supervise him, he seems to have overdone study and suffered a kind of nervous breakdown. He may have started reading Hume at this time, and been punished for doing so; certainly the religious orthodoxy of Balliol and the Jacobitism there, perhaps inflamed by the ’45 Rising’, must have repelled him, and he is reported to have left Oxford in 1746 ‘in disgust.’. (shrink)

Smith expressed regret in 1780 that his Custom‐house duties held up ‘Several Works’ he had projected. One of these was on the subject of the ‘Imitative Arts,’ presumably his mimetic aesthetic philosophy. This was very likely connected with the two ‘Great Works’ he had ‘on the anvil’ on 1785. He described the first one as a ‘sort of Philosophical History of all the different branches of Literature, of Philosophy, Poetry, and Eloquence.’ The second he described as a ‘sort of theory (...) and History of Law and Government,’ which presumably would have included the ‘system of jurisprudence’, Smith promised his readers at the conclusion of TMS in 1759. He reported in 1785 that the materials collected were in tolerably good order, but he doubted whether the onset of old age would allow him to finish either work. Parts of the first project were published after his death in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, the only book of his that was not a commercial success. His major efforts of the end of his life went into further editions of TMS and WN, which he had in hand by 1783, in part responding to his critics. (shrink)

Smith's last illness is described, along with his final order to have his unfinished manuscripts burned shortly before he died on 17 July 1790. His character is summed up as two‐sided: benevolent yet prudent, also firm and decisive, from one point of view; but from another darker one, that of a melancholy or, at times, volatile personality, subject to psychosomatic illness arising from his intense concentration on chains of abstract ideas. Nevertheless, he remained a tireless inquirer into human nature, particularly (...) its emotional range, and into its expressive forms and institutions. His free‐market system showed, he believed, how people in a relatively early phase of commerce and manufacturing might prosper within a framework of justice and equality before the law. He thought that self‐interest was centrally involved in economic transactions, but also held that the happiness of others is necessary to us, and he devoted his last years to moral philosophy, believing that he might help us aspire for virtue rather than wealth, and so become members of a truly civil society. (shrink)

In the face of declining strength in the 1780s and grief over the death of his nearest relatives, his mother and his cousin Janet Douglas, Smith strove to leave behind him the works he had already published in the ‘best and most perfect state.’ It fell out that he completed the additions that went into the standard third edition of WN in a time of political distress. These included the rise and fall of Shelburne as the Prime Minister whose drive (...) to make peace with the Americans was based in part on Smith's free trade teaching; the subsequent collapse of the Fox–North coalition over efforts to reform the East India Company, which is severely criticized in the third edition of WN; and the onset of the administration of Pitt the Younger, who heeded WN's policy advice with regard to smuggling and trade with France. Smith also intensified his fight against the absurdity of the government's mercantile system of encouragements and prohibitions, which thwarted competition in the market place and favoured clamorous producers over consumers. (shrink)

From April to July, 1787 Smith was in London receiving medical attention and conferring with the government about fiscal and commercial reforms that allowed Britain to recover from the strains of the American war. On his return to Edinburgh in somewhat restored health, he set about preparing a greatly expanded sixth edition of TMS. This developed further the concept of the impartial spectator, and included an entirely new part VI, focused on moral theory applicable to such crucial issues as new‐modelling (...) a political constitution, highly relevant in view of the revolutions in America and France. He also added a chapter arguing that while our disposition to admire the rich and powerful is necessary to maintain the ‘order of society,’ it is the most universal cause of the ‘corruption of our moral sentiments.’ His Stoic outlook thus affords him a standpoint for criticism of the mechanisms of the acquisitive society analysed in WN, but at the same time, he suggests that the contemporary literature of sensibility dealing with love and friendship does more for us than the arguments for ‘stoical apathy.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I assume, perhaps controversially, that translation into a language of formal logic is not the method by which mathematicians assess mathematical reasoning. Instead, I argue that the actual practice of analyzing, evaluating and critiquing mathematical reasoning resembles, and perhaps equates with, the practice of informal logic or argumentation theory. It doesn’t matter whether the reasoning is a full-fledged mathematical proof or merely some non-deductive mathematical justification: in either case, the methodology of assessment overlaps to a large extent (...) with argument assessment in non-mathematical contexts. I demonstrate this claim by considering the assessment of axiomatic or deductive proofs, probabilistic evidence, computer-aided proofs, and the acceptance of axioms. I also consider Jody Azzouni’s ‘derivation indicator’ view of proofs because it places derivations—which may be thought to invoke formal logic—at the center of mathematical justificatory practice. However, when the notion of ‘derivation’ at work in Azzouni’s view is clarified, it is seen to accord with, rather than to count against, the informal logical view I support. Finally, I pose several open questions for the development of a theory of mathematical argument. (shrink)

Previous studies of auditory expectation have focused on the expectedness perceived by listeners retrospectively in response to events. In contrast, this research examines predictive uncertainty —a property of listeners' prospective state of expectation prior to the onset of an event. We examine the information-theoretic concept of Shannon entropy as a model of predictive uncertainty in music cognition. This is motivated by the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, which proposes that schematic expectations reflect probabilistic relationships between sensory events learned implicitly through exposure. Using (...) probability estimates from an unsupervised, variable-order Markov model, 12 melodic contexts high in entropy and 12 melodic contexts low in entropy were selected from two musical repertoires differing in structural complexity (simple and complex). Musicians and non-musicians listened to the stimuli and provided explicit judgments of perceived uncertainty (explicit uncertainty). We also examined an indirect measure of uncertainty computed as the entropy of expectedness distributions obtained using a classical probe-tone paradigm where listeners rated the perceived expectedness of the final note in a melodic sequence (inferred uncertainty). Finally, we simulate listeners' perception of expectedness and uncertainty using computational models of auditory expectation. A detailed model comparison indicates which model parameters maximize fit to the data and how they compare to existing models in the literature. The results show that listeners experience greater uncertainty in high-entropy musical contexts than low-entropy contexts. This effect is particularly apparent for inferred uncertainty and is stronger in musicians than non-musicians. Consistent with the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, the results suggest that increased domain-relevant training is associated with an increasingly accurate cognitive model of probabilistic structure in music. (shrink)

Psychology is meant to help people cope with the afflictions of modern society. But how useful is it? Ian Parker argues that current psychological practice has become part of the problem rather than the solution. Ideal for undergraduates, this book unravels the discipline to reveal the conformist assumptions that underlie its theory and practice. Psychology focuses on the happiness of "the individual." Yet it neglects the fact that personal experience depends on social and political surroundings. Parker argues that a new (...) approach to psychology is needed. He offers an alternative vision, outlining how debates in the discipline can be linked to political practice and how it can become part of a wider progressive agenda. Parker's groundbreaking book is at the cutting edge of current thinking on the discipline and should be required reading in all psychology courses. (shrink)

From the 1910s to the emergence of structuralism and post-structuralism in the 1960s, the writings of John Grierson, Siegfried Kracauer, Andre Bazin and Georg Lukacs dominated realist film theory. In this critical anthology, the first collection to address their work in one volume, a wide range of international scholars explore the interconnections between their ideas and help generate new understandings of this important, if neglected, field. Challenging preconceptions about 'classical' theory and the nature of realist representation, and in the process (...) demonstrating how this body of work can be seen as a cohesive theoretical model, this invaluable collection will help return the realist paradigm of film theory to the forefront of academic enquiry. ". (shrink)

Ian Adams; Kant, Pestalozzi and the Role of Ideology in Educational Thought, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 257–269.

The vast majority of experimental studies of music to date have explored music in terms of the processes involved in the perception and cognition of complex sonic patterns that can elicit emotion. This paper argues that this conception of music is at odds both with recent Western musical scholarship and with ethnomusicological models, and that it presents a partial and culture‐specific representation of what may be a generic human capacity. It argues that the cognitive sciences must actively engage with the (...) problems of exploring music as manifested and conceived in the broad spectrum of world cultures, not only to elucidate the diversity of music in mind but also to identify potential commonalities that could illuminate the relationships between music and other domains of thought and behavior. (shrink)

In an original and provocative study of suicide, Ian Marsh examines the historical and cultural forces that have influenced contemporary thought, practices and policy in relation to this serious public health problem. Drawing on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, the book tells the story of how suicide has come to be seen as first and foremost a matter of psychiatric concern. Marsh sets out to challenge the assumptions and certainties embedded in our beliefs, attitudes and practices concerning suicide (...) and the suicidal, and the resulting account unsettles and informs in equal measure. The book will be of particular interest to researchers, professionals and students in psychology, history, sociology and the health sciences. (shrink)

This discussion paper continues the debate over risk‐related standards of mental competence which appears in Bioethics 5. Dan Brock there defends an approach to mental competence in patients which defines it as being relative to differing standards, more or less rigorous depending on the degree of risk involved in proposed treatments. But Mark Wicclair raises a problem for this approach: if significantly different levels of risk attach, respectively, to accepting and refusing the same treatment, then it is possible, on this (...) account, for a patient to be considered competent to accept, but not refuse, the treatment, or vice versa. I argue that this puzzle does not constitute a genuine problem for a risk‐related standard. To this end I focus on the situation where, of two mutually exclusive options, one is riskier, but offering more pronounced benefit, while the other is safer, but offering less benefit. I argue for this proposition: it can take far less insight to know that the safe option is good than to know that the risky option is better. Now say one is actually informed enough to know that the safe option is good, but not enough to know whether the risky option is better; in such a case one is competent to say yes to that first option (the safe one), but not to say yes to the other. (I argue in passing that Pascal's Wager can be interpreted as having precisely this deliberative structure.) I thus conclude that cases do indeed exist where one can be competent to say yes but not no, or vice versa; and that it is thus not an anomaly in the risk‐related standard that it entails the existence of such cases. (shrink)