Logic-based approaches to legal problem solving model the rule-governed nature of legal argumentation, justification, and other legal discourse but suffer from two key obstacles: the absence of efficient, scalable techniques for creating authoritative representations of legal texts as logical expressions; and the difficulty of evaluating legal terms and concepts in terms of the language of ordinary discourse. Data-centric techniques can be used to finesse the challenges of formalizing legal rules and matching legal predicates with the language of ordinary parlance by (...) exploiting knowledge latent in legal corpora. However, these techniques typically are opaque and unable to support the rule-governed discourse needed for persuasive argumentation and justification. This paper distinguishes representative legal tasks to which each approach appears to be particularly well suited and proposes a hybrid model that exploits the complementarity of each. (shrink)

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater (...) specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism. (shrink)

Legal decision-support systems have the potential to improve access to justice, administrative efficiency, and judicial consistency, but broad adoption of such systems is contingent on development of technologies with low knowledge-engineering, validation, and maintenance costs. This paper describes two approaches to an important form of legal decision support—explainable outcome prediction—that obviate both annotation of an entire decision corpus and manual processing of new cases. The first approach, which uses an attention network for prediction and attention weights to highlight salient case (...) text, was shown to be capable of predicting decisions, but attention-weight-based text highlighting did not demonstrably improve human decision speed or accuracy in an evaluation with 61 human subjects. The second approach, termed semi-supervised case annotation for legal explanations, exploits structural and semantic regularities in case corpora to identify textual patterns that have both predictable relationships to case decisions and explanatory value. (shrink)

Self-compassion is a mechanism of symptom improvement in post-traumatic stress disorder, however, the underlying neurobiological processes are not well understood. High levels of self-compassion are associated with reduced activation of the threat response system. Physiological threat responses to trauma reminders and increased arousal are key symptoms which are maintained by negative appraisals of the self and self-blame. Moreover, PTSD has been consistently associated with functional changes implicated in the brain’s saliency and the default mode networks. In this paper, we explore (...) how trauma exposed individuals respond to a validated self-compassion exercise. We distinguish three groups using the PTSD checklist; those with full PTSD, those without PTSD, and those with subsyndromal PTSD. Subsyndromal PTSD is a clinically relevant subgroup in which individuals meet the criteria for reexperiencing along with one of either avoidance or hyperarousal. We use electroencephalography alpha-asymmetry and EEG microstate analysis to characterize brain activity time series during the self-compassion exercise in the three groups. We contextualize our results with concurrently recorded autonomic measures of physiological arousal, parasympathetic activation and self-reported changes in state mood and self-perception. We find that in all three groups directing self-compassion toward oneself activates the negative self and elicits a threat response during the SC exercise and that individuals with subsyndromal PTSD who have high levels of hyperarousal have the highest threat response. We find impaired activation of the EEG microstate associated with the saliency, attention and self-referential processing brain networks, distinguishes the three PTSD groups. Our findings provide evidence for potential neural biomarkers for quantitatively differentiating PTSD subgroups. (shrink)

Au sujet de la relation esprit-corps, Popper rejette le physicalisme, défini par le principe de clôture causale du domaine physique, et tente de construire une hypothèse interactionniste en accord avec la science contemporaine. Plus précisément, Popper reproche aux formes les plus élaborées du physicalisme d'entrer en contradiction avec la théorie de l'évolution, ainsi qu'avec le rationalisme. À l'opposé, il considère que l'hypothèse interactionniste peut se nourrir d'une comparaison minutieuse entre l'esprit et les forces physiques. Cette comparaison tend à rapprocher Popper (...) du panpsychisme. With respect to the mind-body relation, Popper rejects physicalism, as defined by the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, and attempts to build an interactionist hypothesis that would agree with the findings of contemporary science. More precisely, Popper criticizes the most elaborate forms of physicalism because they run counter to evolutionary theory and rationalism. By contrast, he thinks that the interactionist hypothesis can find support in a minute comparison of mind and physical forces. This comparison tends to draw Popper closer together with panpsychism. (shrink)

Throughout his writings, Karl Rahner remained open to the prospect that the process of cosmic evolution had yielded sentient life form in other galaxies. He argued against any theological veto on this notion, while also distinguishing the existential significance of such life forms from that of angles. Furthermore, the possibility of multiple incarnations is raised though not affirmed. With its Christological intensity, his theology seems to militate against any repetition of the incarnation. This essay examines some of the arguments (...) for and against the possibility of multiple incarnations, before assessing the current state of the extraterrestrial intelligence debate. In the light of inconclusive scientific findings, the cautionary position of Rahner is reaffirmed. (edited). (shrink)

‘Evolutionary epistemology’, of which Popper was one of the promoters, comprises two programmes : a ‘literal’ programme which consisted in recognising knowledge in terms of Darwinian adaptation, and a ‘analogical’ programme, which based itself on a comparison between scientific progress and the evolution of life-forms. Quine is credited with the ‘strong’ programme : the ‘naturalization’ of epistemology. Popper is supposedly responsible for the ‘weak’ programme. Why then draw inspiration from such an analogy to think about something as sophisticated as the (...) ‘growth of scientific knowledge’? Such an analogy might have heuristic value, but the differences between science and evolution are so apparent that this approach quickly shows its limits. But the Popperian philosophy of evolution does not reduce itself to an analogy.RésuméDeux programmes sont compris sous l’expression d’« épistémologie évolutionniste», dont Popper fut l’un des promoteurs : un programme « littéral», qui consisterait à rendre compte de la connaissance en termes d’adaptation darwinienne, et un programme « analogique», qui ferait fond sur une comparaison entre progrès scientifique et évolution du vivant. Quine est crédité du programme « fort» : la « naturalisation» de l’épistémologie. Popper est supposé être le responsable du « programme faible». Pourquoi donc s’inspirer d’une telle analogie pour penser quelque chose d’aussi sophistiqué que la « croissance de la connaissance scientifique » ? Une telle analogie peut avoir une valeur heuristique, mais les différences entre la science et l’évolution sont tellement évidentes qu’elle montre vite ses limites. Mais la philosophie poppérienne de l’évolution ne se réduit pas à une analogie. (shrink)

Johnson investigates Karl Barth's critical appropriation of the doctrine of divine simplicity. While Barth is critical of traditional formulations of the doctrine, he understands himself to be refining the doctrine rather than rejecting it. Barth notes that Scripture attributes a diverse set of perfections to God in describing his salvific actions. These diverse perfections, however, have a fundamental unity: God does not contradict himself, but rather his perfections describe his unified, trustworthy agency. For this reason, we can know that (...) in God's inmost being, God is not self‐contradictory but utterly unified or simple in his self‐fidelity. Johnson points out that a key element of Barth's doctrine of God is that it can never be the mere deduction of an abstract, transcendent entity; rather, it must begin with the transcendent God's relationship to creation, and therefore must begin with Jesus Christ, who reveals the true being of God. Johnson identifies three guidelines for speaking of Barth's doctrine: each one of God's perfections must be seen as perfections of his one divine being; God's one being does not exist above and behind his revealed perfections; and God's revealed perfections are essential to his divine nature. On this basis, Johnson explores what Barth has to say about the relationship between God's freedom and his self‐fidelity, including as this regards his freedom to live his one eternal life for us. (shrink)

The target article “Thinking Through Other Minds” offered an account of the distinctively human capacity to acquire cultural knowledge, norms, and practices. To this end, we leveraged recent ideas from theoretical neurobiology to understand the human mind in social and cultural contexts. Our aim was bothsynthetic– building an integrative model adequate to account for key features of cultural learning and adaptation; andprescriptive– showing how the tools developed to explain brain dynamics can be applied to the emergence of social and cultural (...) ecologies of mind. In this reply to commentators, we address key issues, including: refining the concept of culture to show how TTOM and the free-energy principle can capture essential elements of human adaptation and functioning; addressing cognition as an embodied, enactive, affective process involving cultural affordances; clarifying the significance of the FEP formalism related to entropy minimization, Bayesian inference, Markov blankets, and enactivist views; developing empirical tests and applications of the TTOM model; incorporating cultural diversity and context at the level of intra-cultural variation, individual differences, and the transition to digital niches; and considering some implications for psychiatry. The commentators’ critiques and suggestions point to useful refinements and applications of the model. In ongoing collaborations, we are exploring how to augment the theory with affective valence, take into account individual differences and historicity, and apply the model to specific domains including epistemic bias. (shrink)

Although there have been a number of important studies of Karl Jaspers by European scholars, until recently there were in English only the Schilpp volume on Jaspers, brief studies by Allen and Lichtigfield, and a few articles scattered in journals and books. In 1968 Eugene Long published Jaspers and Bultmann. This was followed by three studies published during 1970-71: Charles Wallraff, Karl Jaspers ; Oswald Schrag, Existence, Existenz and Transcendence ; and Sebastian Samay, Reason Revisited. Ehrlich’s book is (...) a welcome addition to the study of Jaspers. Ehrlich was a student of Jaspers in Basel and apparently is devoted to his thought. The book is characterized by a thorough knowledge of the sources. It is a clear-headed discussion of Jaspers’ understanding of faith which takes readers into the central spirit of Jaspers’ philosophy, a spirit characterized by combativeness and openness in communication with others in search for the meaning and truth of human existence. Jaspers’ position is developed in the context of political and religious orthodoxies showing clearly the spirit of freedom and openness which is characteristic of Jaspers’ work. This topic permits the author to explore in detail the themes of communication, authority and tradition, and cipher language which are at the heart of all of Jaspers’ work. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis was prepared in 1975-77 at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, under the supervision of Prof. Raymond ARON. It was submitted in 1977 in fulfilment of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree in Social Sciences (Doctorat de 3e cycle en sciences sociales). The oral examination (soutenance de thèse) was held in January 1978, with the examination committee consisting of Prof. Aron, Bartoli, Boudon and Brochier. This 250 page unpublished dissertation was the first study ever written (...) in French on Karl Marx's Grundrisse - a 1857-58 manuscript preparatory to Marx's main economic work, Capital. The dissertation reviews Marx's successive projects for his economic work since the 1844 Manuscripts and then proceeds to a presentation and critical discussion of Grundrisse. The proposed interpretation explains the linkage that Marx operated in 1857-58 between Ricardo's economics and Hegel's dialectics, and it emphasizes that Marx was at that time primarily trying to reconstruct the dynamics of capitalism, without going to the stage of developing a formal theory of value and exploitation, as he will eventually do in Capital. (shrink)

Cet article propose une relecture de l’œuvre de Karl Rahner à la lumière des développements successifs qu’il consacra à la relation entre philosophie et théologie, dégageant ainsi la force inspiratrice d’une réflexion qui n’a rien perdu de son actualité. Les sources auxquelles puise et se confronte K. Rahner sont diverses, mais toujours maîtrisées, au service d’une tâche dont il s’est inlassablement préoccupé : dégager l’espace où puisse être audible et dicible la manifestation du "libre Inconnu" se révélant et se (...) communiquant à l’homme.This article proposes a rereading of the work of Karl Rahner in the light of the successive analyses he developed of the relation between philosophy and theology, thus revealing the inspiring force of his reflection that remains quite topical. The sources K. Rahner utilizes and confronts are diverse, but always masterfully utilized in the service of a task which continuously preoccupied him: creating a space in which the manifestation of God, the “free Unknown”, could be heard and spoken of, thus revealing Himself and communicating with man. (shrink)

Studies of Reinhold have not paid sufficient attention to the systematic connection of the early Elementarphilosophie with the history of philosophy. Reinhold understands his own system as the last historical step of a purposive philosophizing activity of reason that ends the history of philosophy and enables the accomplishment of the true Copernican revolution. Reinhold discusses different aspects of this self-understanding in the writings of 1789–1791. Reinhold develops the core of this approach in a neglected and not republished essay from 1791: (...) “Ueber den Begrif der Geschichte der Philosophie: Eine akademische Vorlesung.” The complete picture of Reinhold’s approach emerges only after the respective arguments of the Versuchschrift, Beiträge vol. 1, Ueber das Fundament, and “Ueber den Begrif ” are methodically integrated. In addition, “Ueber den Begrif ” fulfils another unnoticed function; it reveals the role that Reinhold’s theory of representation plays in the systematic construction of the rational history of philosophy. (shrink)

The World of Parmenides is a unique collection of essays that not only explores the complexity of ancient Greek thought, but also reveals Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in reading Parmenides. It includes writings on Greek science, philosophy and history and demonstrates Popper's life-long fascination with the presocratic philosophers, in particular Parmenides, Xenophanes and Heraclitus.

ABSTRACT While Joseph Hooker was considering his upcoming presentation on the geographical distribution of species, he asked Charles Darwin for help with some references. During the ensuing exchange of correspondence, Darwin seems to have contradicted himself, regarding his being aware of Leopold von Buch’s observation that distributed varieties become species, prior to writing On the Origin of Species. Literalists and conspiracists have interpreted this apparent self-contradiction as a sign of duplicity and fraud. However, when the correspondence and Hooker’s address are (...) analysed in context, there is a more compelling explanation. Simply that, in response to direct questioning by Hooker, Darwin conflated the two names of Von Baer and Von Buch, and made an honest mistake. (shrink)

On the surface, this book is an interesting and well-written commentary on Marx’s thought, with the emphasis on the writings of the young Marx. It is much more than that, however, as it is clear that Axelos sees this study as a prologue for an attempt to transcend Marx by means of a correction of certain aspects of Marx’s thought.

Popper a passé sa licence sous la direction de Bühler en 1928. Affirmer que Popper a été profondément influencé, non seulement par la théorie du langage de Bühler, mais aussi par sa psychologie, ne correspond pas à l’opinion courante. Le deuxième chapitre de Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntis montre clairement que Karl Bühler a représenté l’un des points de départ les plus importants de la théorie de l’esprit de Popper. Selon Popper, dans l’épistémologie de Carnap, il y a un (...) « préjudice inductif » : afin de rétablir une opinion neutre et adopter une épistémologie qui soit indépendante de la psychologie, il est nécessaire de démontrer que, dans la psychologie aussi, le déductivisme est possible et concevable. Popper donne des exemples très clairs de psychologie déductive et cite la théorie de Kant, Johannes Mueller, l’École Wuerzburg et Ernst Mach. Le choix de tels exemples est significatif afin de comprendre la nature de la formation de Popper. En particulier, il est important de souligner l’absence de la « psychologie de la Gestalt » ou de ses penseurs, tels que Wertheimer, Koehler, Koffka, etc. En effet, Bühler s’opposait fortement à la psychologie de la Gestalt de l’École Wertheimer et, entre l’Institut Bühler de Vienne et les psychologues de la Gestalt à Berlin, il y avait une véritable rivalité. Popper — qui est normalement considéré, de façon simpliste, comme étant « un psychologue gestaltiste » — a tout à fait adopté l’idée de Bühler.Popper graduated under Bühler's direction in 1928. It's not part of the common view to say that Popper was strongly influenced, not only by Bühler's theory of language, but also by his psychology. The second chapter of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnis shows clearly that one of the fundamental starting points for Popper's theory of mind was Karl Bühler. According to Popper, an “inductive prejudice” is contained in Carnap's epistemology : to restore a neutral point of view and to adopt an epistemology independent of psychology, it is necessary to show that, within the psychology, the deductivism is also possible, or thinkable. Popper provides some clear examples of deductive psychology and cites Kant's outlook, Johannes Mueller, the Wuerzburg's school and Ernst Mach. The choice of such examples is very important for the understanding of the nature of Popper's training. It is significant, in particular, the absence of the Gestaltpsychology or of its exponents, such as Wertheimer, Koehler, Koffka etc. In fact, Bühler was in sharp contrast with the Gestaltpsychology of Wertheimer's school and between the Bühler's Vienna Institute and the Berlin Gestalt -psychologists there was a real rivalry. Popper — who by the standard view is simplistically considered “a gestaltist psychologist” — adopted completely the Bühler's point of view. (shrink)

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this second edition, Eight Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, the text examines the classic interpretations (...) of religion advanced by theorists who have left a major imprint on the intellectual culture of the twentieth century. The second edition features a new chapter on Max Weber, a revised introduction, and a revised, expanded conclusion that traces the paths of further inquiry and interpretation traveled by theorists in the most recent decades.Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, begins with Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer--two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It then considers the great "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of whom have exercised wide influence up to the present day. The discussion goes on to examine the leading challenges to reductionism as articulated by sociologist Max Weber and Romanian-American comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, it explores the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment. This common format allows for close comparison and careful evaluation throughout. Ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the central text in sociology of religion and courses centered on the explanation and interpretation of religion, Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, offers an illuminating treatment of this controversial and fascinating subject. (shrink)

Seven unknown letters from 1823 to 1831 are published. The famous discoverer of the mammal's egg and founder of the modern embryology Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), born as a German in Estonia and then anatomist and zoologist at Königsberg University, wrote them to his publisher Ludwig F. Froriep in Weimar and his son and successor. Robert F. Baer offered his co-work with a dictionary of natural history (which he criticized), he proposed a map of all research voyages everywhere (...) in the world, and he sent a few small papers about local birds. To Robert F. Baer gave some recommendations concerning his career; he asked for details of a death elephant, and he told that they were awaiting the cholera. (shrink)

L'article est une prise de position critique à propos du livre de Habermas Faktizität und Geltung (1992). Plus précisément, il s'agit d'une critique de l' « architectonique» de la différenciation discussionnelle, menée à propos du rapport entre principe de discussion, principe moral, principe du droit et principe démocratique. Mon point de vue résulte de la position de l'éthique de la discussion comme discipline de base de la philosophie pratique, dans la perspective d'une fondation pragmatique-transcendantale ultime. Une « architectonique » alternative (...) de la différenciation discussionnelle du point de vue de l'éthique de la discussion est proposée. The following essay takes a critical stand to Habermas' book Faktizität und Geltung of 1992; more precisely expressed: my stance is critical with regard to Habermas' new « architectonics » of discourse-differentiation concerning the relationship between « discourse-principle », « principle of morality », « principle of law », and « principle of democracy ». My critique represents the view of a « transcendentalpragmatic ultimate foundation of discourse-ethics » (this latter having been defended until then as basic disciplin of « practical philosophy » by Habermas and myself). An alternative « architectonics » of discourse differentiation in the sense of discourse-ethics is suggested. (shrink)

This book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th Century. It traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category inspired by Laurence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" and shows Sterne’s deep influence on German aesthetic theorists of this period. Through differentiating humor from comedy, the book suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Solger, and Jean Paul Richter. The book links Kant’s underdeveloped incongruity theory of laughter to Schopenhauer’s (...) more complete account and identifies humor’s place in the pessimistic philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. It considers how caricature functioned at the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and ethics in Karl Rosenkranz’s work, and how Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made humor central not only to their philosophical content but also to its style. The book concludes with an explication of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s claim that laughter is a response to mechanical inelasticity. (shrink)

We express here the statement » The probability of a given b equals r « symbolically by » p = r «. A formal axiomatic calculus can be constructed comprising all the well‐known laws of probability theory. This calculus can be interpreted in various ways. The present paper is a criticism of the subjective interpretation; that is to say, of any interpretation which assumes that probability expresses degrees of incomplete knowledge: a is the statement incompletely known, b is our total (...) knowledge, and p is the degree to which a is entailed by b. The subjective interpretation has often been proposed as an explanation and even a sharpening of the various objective theories . It is shown in the paper that this proposal cannot be realised because the subjective theory cannot lead to results which are compatible with the objective theory. This is due to various reasons, the most important of which is that the objective theory interprets » b « in » p « as a statement of the objective conditions of an experiment and » a « as one of its possible results. The subjective theory on the other hand interprets » b « as our total relevant knowledge which will in general include some knowledge of previous results of the experiment. It is shown that this must lead to incompatibility owing to the fact that this knowledge of previous results must influence the value of the probability.It is shown, in this way, that any probabilistic theory of the process of learning from experience—that is to say, any probabilistic theory of induction—must lead to contradictions.RésuméL'énoncé: » La probabilité de a, si b est donné, est égale à r « est ici exprimé symboliquement par » p = r «. On peut construire un système axiomatique formel qui contient toutes les règles bien connues du calcul des probabilités. Ce calcul formel peut ětre interprété de manières très différentes. L'article contient une critique des interprétations subjectives, c'est‐à‐dire des interprétations qui admettent que la probabilité exprime des degrés de connaissance incomplète: a est un énoncé qu'on ne connaǐt que partiellement, b est notre connaissance totale, et p exprime le degré auquel a est implicitement contenu dans b. L'interprétation subjective a souvent été proposée comme une explication et un renforcement des différentes théories objectives . Dans cet article, l'auteur montre que ce projet n'est pas réalisable, car la théorie subjective mène à des résultats qui contredisent la théorie objective. Plusieurs circonstances sont responsables de cette situation; la plus importante, c'est que la théorie interprète le » b « dans » p « comme une description des conditions objectives d'une expérience . D'autre part, la théorie subjective interprète » b « comme notre savoir total , et ce savoir inclura en général des informations sur les résultats obtenus antérieurement pour cette expérience. L'auteur montre que ce fait conduit à une contradiction entre les deux interprétations, car cette connaissance doit avoir une influence sur la valeur subjective de la probabilité.A l'aide de ce raisonnement, on peut montrer que la théorie des probabilités appliquée au processus inductif tirant une expérience du domaine expérimental conduit à des contradictions.ZusammenfassungDie Aussage » Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von a, wenn b gegeben ist, ist gleich r « wird hier symbolisch durch » p = r « ausgedrückt. Ein formales Axiomensystem kann konstruiert werden, das alle die wohlbekannten Regeln der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung enthält. Dieser formale Kalkül kann in sehr verschiedener Weise interpretiert werden. Der Artikel enthält eine Kritik der subjektiven Interpretationen; das heisst, jener Interpretationen die annehmen, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit Grade von unvollständigem Wissen ausdrückt: a ist ein Satz der unvollständig gewusst wird, b ist unser Gesamtwissen, und p drückt den Grad aus zu dem a in b implizit enthalten ist. Die subjektive Interpretation wurde oft als eine Erklärung und Verschärfung der verschiedenen objektiven Theorien vorgeschlagen. In dem Artikel wird gezeigt, dass der Vorschlag undurchführbar ist, da die subjektive Theorie zu Resultaten führt, die der objektiven Theorie widersprechen. Verschiedene Umstände tragen zu dieser Situation bei. Der wichtigste dieser Umstände ist, dass die objektive Theorie das » b « in » p « als eine Beschreibung der objektiven Bedingungen eines Experimentes interpretiert . Andererseits interpretiert die subjektive Theorie » b « als unser Gesamtwissen , und dieses wird im allgemeinen Informationen bezüglich früherer Resultate dieses Experiments einschliessen. Es wird gezeigt, dass das zu einem Widerspruch zwischen den Interpretationen führt, da dieses Wissen Einfluss auf den subjektiven Wahrscheinlichkeitswert haben muss.Mit Hilfe dieses Gedankenganges wird gezeigt, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie des induktiven Lernens aus der Erfahrung zu Widersprüchen führt. (shrink)

La « théorie » de la prédication de Barth comme « théologie de la Parole de Dieu » a été remise en question au début des années 60 alors qu’elle était constituée depuis les années 20. Qu’en est-il exactement de cette conception trop peu connue dans son exactitude, en France notamment ? Soucieux de pratique, Barth conçoit d’abord la prédication comme une Theologia viatorum et semble affirmer le caractère divin de la parole de la prédication. Or, la difficulté, voire l’échec, (...) de celle-ci en rappelle le caractère de terrible humanité. Ainsi passe-t-il « d’une attestation indirecte du Christ » dans la prédicaiton de l’église, à une « prédication, service de la parole de Dieu », compte tenu de ce que seul le Christ, en définitive, est Parole de Dieu, et que la charge de prédication appartient à toute la « communauté de témoins ».Barth's « theory » of preaching as « theology of the World of God » was put into question at the beginning of the 60's, although it goes back to the 20’s. What is it exactly about this conception, too little known in its details, especillaly in France ? Concerned with practice, Barth first conceived preaching as a Theologia viatorum and seems to have confirmed the divine character of the preached word. But the difficulty, indeed the failure, of the latter recalls the character of terrible humanity. Thus there evolves from « an indirect attestation of Christ « in the preaching of the Church, to a « preaching service of God’s word », taking into account that only Christ, finally is Word of God, and that the role of preaching belongs to all the « community of witnesses». (shrink)

L’article est une prise de position critique à propos du livre de Habermas Faktizität und Geltung . Plus précisément, il s’agit d’une critique de l’ « architectonique” de la différenciation discussionnelle, menée à propos du rapport entre principe de discussion, principe moral, principe du droit et principe démocratique. Mon point de vue résulte de la position de l’éthique de la discussion comme discipline de base de la philosophie pratique, dans la perspective d’une fondation pragmatique-transcendantale ultime. Une « architectonique » alternative (...) de la différenciation discussionnelle du point de vue de l’éthique de la discussion est proposée.The following essay takes a critical stand to Habermas’ book Faktizität und Geltung of 1992 ; more precisely expressed : my stance is critical with regard to Habermas’ new « architectonics » of discourse-differentiation concerning the relationship between « discourse-principle », « principle of morality », « principle of law », and « principle of democracy ». My critique represents the view of a « transcendentalpragmatic ultimate foundation of discourse-ethics » . An alternative « architectonics » of discourse differentiation in the sense of discourse-ethics is suggested. (shrink)

With the rise of analytical philosophy the criticism against Hegelianism has become increasingly shrill, and signs of an embarrassment that Hegel's philosophy should ever have arisen are noticeable in such inftuential works as those of Karl Popper and Hans Reichenbach, to mention but a few. However, many contemporary philosophers stress what is called subjectivity, conceiving reality as susceptible of methodical analysis only to the extent that it is in and for the subject. What is more, they not only insist (...) on the importance of the subject for philosophy, but maintain that the subject must be conceived as the principal determinative of true objectivity. Since knowledge depends for its possibility on the inseverable correlatives of consciousness and reality, they would grant that a proper importance must be given to both subject and object. Still, exemplifying the relational principle within the unity of a dual structure, the subject serves as an exclu sive agent that provides ingress into the meaning of the object. (shrink)

The prophet of social decadence, the theorist of violence and advocate of the general strike, the critic who stood Marx on his head, Georges Sorel was one of the foremost writers of this century to write extensively on the great importance of the moral aspects of social movements. His reconstruction of socialist ethics established him as one of the most remarkable critics of Marxist thought, and his writings in many aspects anticipated contemporary interpretations. From Georges Sorel, the first of two (...) volumes of Sorel's work, presents his major contributions to social thought--articles on Marxism, religion, syndicalism, social myths, the philosophy of history and science, as well as a large and newly translated segment of "Reflections on Violence." In his introduction, John Stanley disputes the frequently encountered view of Sorel as a reactionary or extreme rightist, and emphasizes Sorel's attempt to provide Western society with a morality based on labor, struggle, and family life. Contents: Editor's Introduction; The Trial of Socrates: The Greek Oligarchy; The Socialist Future of the Syndicates; The Ethics of Socialism; Critical Essays on Marxism: Necessity and Fatalism in Marxism, Is There a Utopia in Marxism, Polemics for the Interpretation of Marxism; The Illusions of Progress: First Ideologies of Progress; Reflections on Violence: Letter to Daniel Halevy, The Proletarian Strike, The Morality of the Producers; Materials for a Theory of the Proletariat: Introduction, The Organization of Democracy; The Utility of Pragmatism: On the Origin of Truth, A Critique of Creative Evolution; A Sorel Bibliography. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

From unemployment to Brexit to climate change, capitalism is in trouble and ill-prepared to cope with the challenges of the coming decades. How did we get here? While contemporary economists and policymakers tend to ignore the political and social dimensions of capitalism, some of the great economists of the past - Adam Smith, Friedrich List, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Polanyi and Albert Hirschman - did not make the same mistake. Leveraging their insights, sociologists John L. Campbell and (...) John A. Hall trace the historical development of capitalism as a social, political, and economic system throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They draw comparisons across eras and around the globe to show that there is no inevitable logic of capitalism. Rather, capitalism's performance depends on the strength of nation-states, the social cohesion of capitalist societies, and the stability of the international system - three things that are in short supply today. (shrink)

hope of obtaining a comprehensive and coherent understand ing of the human condition, we must somehow weave together the biological, sociological, and psychological components of human nature and experience. And this cannot be done indeed, it is difficult to even make sense of an attempt to do it-without first settling our accounts with Darwin, Marx, and Freud. The legacy of these three thinkers continues to haunt us in other ways as well. Whatever their substantive philosophical differences in other respects, Darwin, (...) Marx, and Freud shared a common, overriding intellectual orientation: they taught us to see human things in historical, developmental terms. Phil osophically, questions of being were displaced in their works by questions of becoming. Methodologically, genesis replaced teleological and essentialist considerations in the explanatory logic of their theories. Darwin, Marx, and Freud were, above all, theorists of conflict, dynamism, and change. They em phasized the fragility of order, and their abiding concern was always to discover and to explicate the myriad ways in which order grows out of disorder. For these reasons their theories constantly confront and challenge the cardinal tenet of our modern secular faith: the notion of progress. To be sure, their emphasis on conflict and the flux of change within the flow of time was not unprecedented; its origins in Western thought can be traced back at least as far as Heraclitus. (shrink)

Neurophysiological evidence consonant with F&L's lambda model is reviewed and results of additional experiments are presented. The evidence shows that there are neurons in the motor cortex that respond to selective band widths of passive sinusoidal movements; the additional data show how, with movement, directionally sensitive population vectors can be shown to emerge from the data.

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus (...) Conrad termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

One does not only talk about the length in inches of this sheet of paper but also about the length of this sheet, about length in inches and about length. A clarification of these and related concepts results from a combination of the theory of the length in a definite unit as a fluent, developed by one of the authors, with the other's concept of 2-place fluents. The length ratio L is defined by pairing a number L (α,β) to any (...) two objects of a certain kind, α,β (in a definite order). L thus may be described as the class of all pairs (α,β), L (α,β) for any objects α,β of the said kind. Length of this sheet and length in inches are specializations of this 2-place fluent. (shrink)

Balthasar a acquis la réputation d'un théologien de la Beauté du divin. C'est en phénoménologue qu'il conçoit l'expérience esthétique : comment réussit-il à en faire le fondement d'une théologie esthétique ? « Dieu par lui-rnême a pris une figure » : telle est l'expression centrale de cette esthétique. Elle est influencée au plan théologique par la conception de la Révélation chez Karl Barth : le croire est corrélatif au voir ; et d'autre part au plan philosophique, par le concept (...) de phénomène chez Martin Heidegger : le phénomène est ce qui se montre soi-même par soi-même. L'Écriture est traitée comme une figure, une image phénoménale, dont la médiation se poursuit dans l'Église pour désigner et attester la figure singulière de révélation qu'est le Christ. La difficulté de l'entreprise est de mettre en œuvre une médiation qui n'aboutisse pas à identifier figure du monde et figure de révélation, mais qui n'empêche pas non plus la manifestation de l'être divin en son apparaître sensible, car le mystère de la beauté consiste dans une telle donation de soi-même. Sur ce terrain, Balthasar prend congé d'Augustin et entre en débat avec Karl Rahner. Mais, dans la chair du Christ, Dieu se dévoile en se voilant suprêmement. La figure accède à sa vérité au prix d'une auto-dissimulation. La chair du Christ doit-elle parvenir à ce degré d'idéalité, finalement se « déhistoriser », pour laisser transparaître la vérité de l'Être qui s'offre en elle à notre perception sensible ? C'est la limite paradoxale d'une esthétique fondamentale qui paraît plus propre à inspirer une attitude confessante qu'à se définir conceptuellement.Balthasar acquired the reputation of a theologian of divine Beauty. It was as a phenomenologist that he conceived the aesthetic experience : how did he succeed in founding an aesthetic theology ? « God, of his own doing, took a countenance » : such is the main expression of this aesthetic. It is influenced on a theological level by the conception of Karl Barth’s Revelation : Believing is correlative to seeing ; and on the philosophical level, by the concept of phenomenon with Martin Heiddegger : the phenomenon is that which shows itself by itself. Writing is treated as a figure, a phenomenal image, of which the mediation is continued in the Church to designate and attest the unique figure of revelation, which is Christ. The problem with the undertaking is to put into effect a mediation that does not conclude in identifying the figure of the world and the figure of revelation. It does not prohibit the manifestation of the divine being in its sensitive apparition, for the mystery of beauty consists in the giving of oneself. In this light, Balthasar leaves Augustine and enters into discussion with Karl Rahner. In the flesh of Christ, however, God unveils himself by completely hiding himself. The figure approaches its truth at the price of a self-concealment. Must the flesh of Christ come to such a degree of idealization, finally to de-historicize itself, in order to allow the truth of Being to shine through, a truth that offers itself through that flesh to our sensitive perception ? This is the paradoxical limit of a fundamental aesthetic that seems to be more proper to inspire a confessing attitude than to define itself conceptually. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

Ariane Fischer, David Woodruff, and Johanna Bockman have translated Karl Polanyi’s “Sozialistische Rechnungslegung” [“Socialist Accounting”] from 1922. In this article, Polanyi laid out his model of a future socialism, a world in which the economy is subordinated to society. Polanyi described the nature of this society and a kind of socialism that he would remain committed to his entire life. Accompanying the translation is the preface titled “Socialism and the embedded economy.” In the preface, Bockman explains the historical context (...) of the article and its significance to the socialist calculation debate, the social sciences, and socialism more broadly. Based on her reading of the accounting and society that Polanyi offers here, Bockman argues that scholars have too narrowly used Polanyi’s work to support the Keynesian welfare state to the exclusion of other institutions, have too broadly used his work to study social institutions indiscriminately, and have not recognized that his work shares fundamental commonalities with and often unacknowledged distinctions from neoclassical economics. (shrink)

Dès le moment de la Réforme, l'Église protestante s'est constituée en une communauté plurielle, marquée par des sensibilités diverses. Cette diversité paraît justifier le constat de tendances plus libérales marquant une confiance plus optimiste dans les capacités d'action des hommes, tandis que des tendances plus doctrinales soulignent plus volontiers le poids du mal. Après le rappel des caractéristiques et développements d'une tradition libérale moderne au XIX° siècle, avec l'évocation de la figure d'Harnack, l'auteur soulève la question des rapports de cette (...) tradition avec le mouvement oecuménique, rapports marqués par les événements liés aux deux Guerres mondiales, ce qui lui fait évoquer en terminant la figure de Karl Barth.From the moment of the Reformation the Protestant Church constituted itself into a plural community, marked by diverse sensibilities. This diversity appears to justify the appearance of more liberal tendencies, which indicate a more optimistic confi­dence in the capacities of men's actions, while the more doctrinal tendencies readily underline the weight of evil. After recalling the characteristics and developments of the modern liberal tradition in the 19th century, evoking the personage of Harnack, the author raises the question of the relationships of this tradition with the ecumenical movement. These relationships were effected by the events related to the two World Wars, which leads the author to refer, at the end, to Karl Barth. (shrink)

Pour mettre en honneur la dimension relationnelle et dialogique de la personne humaine, beaucoup d’exégètes et de théologiens, surtout depuis Karl Barth, refusent une interprétation structurelle de l’imago Dei. Ma contribution propose plutôt de montrer qu’une interprétation relationnelle de l’image doit être articulée avec une interprétation structurelle et que toutes les deux sont marquées par une tension téléologique. Edith Stein concrétise cette thèse dans sa réflexion sur l’individualité de la personne humaine qui, dans sa perspective, est condition d’un enrichissement (...) mutuel qui ne concerne pas seulement la diversité des vécus, mais l’enrichissement par les personnes elles-mêmes. La thèse de Stein pourrait être énoncée de la manière suivante : pour valoriser une approche relationnelle et communionnelle, il faut en même temps valoriser une approche ontologique et structurelle de la personne humaine, plus particulièrement en ce qui concerne son individualité qualitative. English Title: Structural and Relational Interpretation of the imago Dei: A proposal of Articulation from Edith Stein and Her Conception of the Human Person’s Individuality English Abstract: To appreciate the relational and dialogical dimensions of the human person, many exegetes and theologians, especially after Karl Barth, have refused a structural interpretation of the imago Dei. My contribution proposes rather to show that a relational interpretation of the image must be articulated with a structural one and that both are marked by a teleological tension. Edith Stein concretises this thesis in her reflections on the individuality of the human person which, in her perspective, is a condition for the possibility of mutual enrichment, concerning not only the diversity of lived experiences, but also enrichment by other persons themselves. Stein’s thesis could be enunciated as follows: to valorise a relational and communal approach, one mustvalorise at the same time an ontological and structural approach to the human person, particularly with respect to qualitative individuality. (shrink)

L'interrogation s'impose, car Rahner n'a jamais systématisé ses vues sur une théologie esthétique. Mais plusieurs écrits et plusieurs facteurs font pressentir que l'esthétique ouvre un accès à sa pensée en ce qu'elle a de plus fondamental. Dans quelques écrits Rahner a formellement explicité le rapport entre la parole poétique et la Parole de Dieu, décelant dans la première des « mots originaires », qui sont l'expression de la grâce du Christ au principe même du langage humain, des symboles de la (...) détermination « christique » de l'existence humaine en tant que telle. Sa formation philosophique le préparait à une conception symbolique de la connaissance, apte à appréhender la totalité du réel en toute réalité singulière ; et sa pensée théologique s'orientait d'elle-même vers une théologie du symbole, fondée sur le Logos, symbole de la présence du Père dans le monde et du monde dans le corps du Christ. Ainsi concevait-il le poétique comme une « présupposition du christianisme », et cette intuition le portait à rechercher pour la théologie une nouvelle langue, qu'il est juste d'appeler « esthétique ». Pour aller plus loin dans cette voie, on serait amené à confronter la problématique de Rahner avec la méthodologie de Balthasar, chez qui l'esthétique théologique s'organise et se développe en symphonie grandiose. On est du même coup introduit au cœur du différend qui a opposé ces deux penseurs. Rahner se contentait, pour sa part, d'ébauches modestes, plus propres à évoquer le mystère de Dieu dans la banalité du quotidien qu'à le contempler dans l'éclat de sa Gloire.The question is essential, for Rahner never systematized his views on an aesthetic theology. Yet, several written works and several elements give the feeling that aesthetics leads to his most fundamental, thought. In some of his writings, Rahner clearly explained the link between the poetic word and the Word of God, detecting in the former one « original words » which are both the expression of Christ’s blessing at the very source of man’s language, and symbols of the christlike determination of man’s existence. His philosophical studies prepared him for a symbolical conception of knowledge, proper to apprehend the whole reality in its innermost singularity. His theological thought turned towards a theology of the symbol, based upon the Logos, the symbol of our Father’s presence in the world, and of that of the world in Christ's body. So did he conceive poetics as a « presupposition to Christianism », and this intuition would lead him to seek a new language for theology, which it is proper to call « aesthetics ». Upon further consideration, one might be induced to confront Rahner’s problematics with Balthasar’s methodology, in which theological aesthetics is organized and developed into a grandiose symphony. At the same time, one is introduced into the heart of the controversy between those two thinkers. As for Rahner, he was satisfied with rough outlines, more likely to evoke God’s mystery in the daily humdrum than to contemplate him in his shining Glory. (shrink)

The “concept of labour” has no bearing on the methodological premises of Marx’s “Critique of political economy.” In The German Ideology there is an attempt to abandon the field of philosophy to become a “real science”, i.e., a science capable of overcoming all the hypostases of “concepts” of “ideology”. From History and Class Consciousness onwards, Lukács continuously tackles the “concept of labour”. The late Lukács interprets the latter as the “Urphänomen” of human praxis. In actual fact this is an element (...) that follows on from the interpretation of Marxism as Weltanschauung initiated by Friedrich Engels. More precisely, the latter [interpretation] is behind the “Materialistic Conception of History” – an expression not used by Marx – and is instead the key concept in Marxism during the Second and the Third International period. Individuo, lavoro e storia. Il concetto di lavoro in Lukács meticulously explores the role played by the “concept of labour” in all of Lukács’ works. During the last fifty years of his life Lukács tries to achieve a dual goal: on the one hand he wants to maintain the Marxian methodological centrality of the category of totality, on the other hand he wants to combine the former with the “concept of labour”, i.e., the traditional basis of the “Materialistic Conception of History”. (shrink)

Paul Engelmann was Adolf Loos’s favorite pupil, private secretary to Karl Kraus and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most important interlocutor in the years between 1916 and 1928 as well as his partner in building the Stonborough House. Thus it was that the trenchant critique of modernity associated with Wittgenstein’s Vienna originated around Paul Engelmann. The present volume of essays from an international symposium in Aarhus, Denmark in 1999 offers an interdisciplinary perspective on issues bearing upon architecture, language and cultural criticism as (...) they relate to the life’s work of Paul Engelmann. (shrink)

A referência central do presente artigo é a fenomenologia material da vida de Michel Henry (1922-2002), fenomenologia essa mediante a qual se evidencia o quanto Karl Marx (1818-1893) merece ser reconhecido como o pensador de uma subjectividade radical em processo de realização mediante uma praxis imanente dos indivíduos, anterior a toda a abstracção política, económica ou institucional Assim, para o autor do artigo, a aplicação desta fenomenologia à economia mostra até que ponto esta última, com as suas equivalências de (...) mercado e capital, não constitui nem uma realidade nem uma teoria autónomas. Por outro lado, o artigo salienta também a enorme importância que para as nossas vidas reais e concretas pode e deve ter uma verdadeira meta-genealogia do processo real da produção e do consumo, especialmente no contexto de uma mundialização cada vez mais objectivista, baseada na aliança entre a ciência e a técnica. Com efeito, o perigo da alienação não é permanente apenas no contexto de uma tal evolução, pois, segundo Michel Henry, o cienti-fismo moderno, ao evacuar a vida subjectiva dos indivíduos, constitui também meio propício para o desenvolvimento de um fascismo latente baseado na negação "metafísica" da individualidade, assim como na "morte" associada às abstracções vazias de uma economia que facilmente se dispensa do "factor humano" ao nível de uma racionalização metodológica sem limite. The central matter of this paper is the material phenomenology of life of Michel Henry (1922-2002), a phenomenology through which it becomes evident how much Karl Marx (1818-1893) deserves to be recognised as the thinker of a radical subjectivity in the process of realization through an immanent praxis of the individuals, prior to all political, economic or institutional abstraction. Therefore, to the paper's author, the application of this phenomenology to economics shows the measure in which the later, with its equivalences of market and capital, neither constitutes an autonomous reality nor an autonomous theory. On the other hand, the paper also underlines the enormous importance which, to our real and concrete lives, a true meta-genealogy of the real process of production and consumption can and should have, especially in the context of a more and more objectivistic globalization, based on the alliance between science and technology. Indeed, the danger of alienation is not only permanent in the context of such an evolution, then, according to Michel Henry, modern scientism, as much as it tends to empty the subjective life of the individuals, is also a propitious means to the development of a latent fascism based on the negation of the "metaphysics" of individuality and, also, on the "death" associated to the empty abstractions of an economics which easily discards the "human factor" at the level of a methodological rationalization without limit. (shrink)

Presque contemporains, Scholem et Barth ne se sont jamais rencontrés. S’ils avaient pu le faire, ils n’auraient sans doute pas été d’accord en tout point, mais on peut risquer l’hypothèse qu’ils se seraient entendus en profondeur. Ce qui fonde cette hypothèse, c’est la similitude du comportement de l’un et de l’autre à l’égard de leurs communautés religieuses respectives, qu’ils tenaient pour complices des aveuglements séculiers du monde où elles vivaient et coupables de ne pas élever les responsabilités séculières sur le (...) terrain de la liberté éthique. Les débats de l’un avec Rosenweig et de l’autre avec Troeltsch établissent Scholem et Barth dans un réel voisinage théologique, dans le même souci de la référence théologique de leurs communautés et de l’éthique des engagements séculiers. Dans ses recherches sur la Kabbale, Scholem veut réactiver la problématique de la création dans laquelle Dieu fait du néant son être. De façon semblable, Barth fonde sa Dogmatique sur la problématique de s. Anselme qui se refuse à penser Dieu dans un ordre du monde qui serait immuable. Dans des contextes différents, tous deux s’opposent à l’assimilation passive de leurs communautés au monde séculier, tout en soutenant leurs responsabilités éthiques à son égard. Un même message se dégage de leur rencontre posthume.Almost contemporaries, Scholem and Barth never met each other. If they had done so, they undoubtedly would have not agreed on everything, but the chances are that they would have had a fundamental understanding. This hypothesis is based on the similarity of each one’s attitude towards their respective religious communities, which they saw as accomplices of their world’s secular blindness, and its guilt in not raising secular responsibilities to the level of ethical freedom. Their debates – Scholem with Rosenweig and Barth with Troeltsch – made them theological neighbours, i.e., expressing identical concern for the theological implication of their communities and the ethics of secular committments. Scholem, in his research on the Cabala, wanted to revive the problem of God’s making his being from nothing. In the same fashion, Barth founded his Dogmatic on the problem of St. Anselm, who refused to think God in a world order that would be immutable. In different contexts, both were opposed to a passive assimilation of their communities to a secular world, while sustaining their ethical responsibilities to it. The same message comes out of their encounter. (shrink)

Cet article propose une relecture de l’œuvre de Karl Rahner à la lumière des développements successifs qu’il consacra à la relation entre philosophie et théologie, dégageant ainsi la force inspiratrice d’une réflexion qui n’a rien perdu de son actualité. Les sources auxquelles puise et se confronte K. Rahner sont diverses, mais toujours maîtrisées, au service d’une tâche dont il s’est inlassablement préoccupé : dégager l’espace où puisse être audible et dicible la manifestation du "libre Inconnu" se révélant et se (...) communiquant à l’homme.This article proposes a rereading of the work of Karl Rahner in the light of the successive analyses he developed of the relation between philosophy and theology, thus revealing the inspiring force of his reflection that remains quite topical. The sources K. Rahner utilizes and confronts are diverse, but always masterfully utilized in the service of a task which continuously preoccupied him: creating a space in which the manifestation of God, the “free Unknown”, could be heard and spoken of, thus revealing Himself and communicating with man. (shrink)

In 1934, Karl N. Llewellyn published a lively essay trumpeting the dawn of legal realism, "On Philosophy in American Law." The charm of his defective little piece is its style and audacity. A philosopher might be seduced into reading Llewellyn’s essay by its title; but one soon learns that by "philosophy" Llewellyn only meant "atmosphere". His concerns were the "general approaches" taken by practitioners, who may not even be aware of having general approaches. Llewellyn paired an anemic concept of (...) philosophy with a pumped-up conception of law. Llewellyn’s "law" included anything that reflects the "ways of the law guild at large" - judges, legislators, regulators, and enforcers. Llewellyn argued that the legal philosophies implicit in American legal practice had been natural law, positivism and realism, each adopted in response to felt needs of a time. We must reckon with many other implicit "philosophies" to understand the workings of the law guild, not the least of which has been racism. Others, maternalism and paternalism, my foci here, persist in American law, despite women’s progress toward equality. Both maternalism and paternalism were strikingly present in a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Gonzales v. Carhart, upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. (shrink)

Doubtless that which strongly links Karol Wojtyła’s Laborem exercens encyclical with Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 is not so much philosophy of work as the personalistic anti-feudalism that is equally alive in both works. The personalistic trait, in Marxism merely an (unpursued) option mentioned in the Manuscripts, was taken further—philosophically, and not just ethically—in Laborem exercens, where the person becomes an ontological category (in light both of the transcendent existence of a tri-personal God and the transcendence (...) of the communities created by human beings, who are only able to live in communities). Also, the person acquired an ontological-social dimension by determining the boundaries of humanity’s co-creative (also in the world-creating sense) communion with God as the ideal of community-based material and social existence. And this is also the guiding perspective of my initial analysis of the personalization process underway in Polish society and the post-Vatican-II Church. Both are gradually—if not without some difficulty—learning to part with the non-personalistic models characteristic for the previous, still considerably feudalism-influenced era, which manifested themselves as much in the institutionalismof official Marxism as the socially (not religiously!) motivated doctrines of the Church. (shrink)

Il saggio tratta della critica di Popper al concetto di utopia e dei limiti di tale critica. Le opere politiche del filosofo viennese rivelano come l’utopia costituisca una pericolosa modalità di ritorno a forme di società chiusa e di totalitarismo. Sennonché non è chiaro quale utopia venga criticata da Popper, l’utopia dei grandi movimenti totalitari del Novecento, oppure ogni forma di costruzione ideale di una società diversa e migliore. Il non aver chiarito a sufficienza tali aspetti indebolisce la portata delle (...) critiche di Popper e comporta, paradossalmente, che molti dei concetti filosofici da lui utilizzati ricadano in quelle forme di utopia che egli condanna.The paper deals with Popper’s criticism of the concept of utopia and the limits of such a criticism. The political works of Viennese philosopher reveal as utopia is a dangerous way of returning to forms of closed societies and totalitarianism. But it’s not clear which utopia is criticized by Popper whether the utopia of the big totalitarian movements of 20th century, or any form of any ideal construction of a different and better society. The lack of further explanations for such aspects weakens the range of Popper’s criticisms and involves, paradoxically, that many of his philosophical concepts fall upon those forms of utopia which he sentences. (shrink)

What is religion? How did it originate? How does it operate? How can it be explained? Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists presents the key writings of eleven theorists that explain the phenomenon of religion - its origin, historical growth, and world-wide variations - without relying on the authority of the Bible or the articles of dogma. With the hope of uncovering core principles, these influential theorists sought to understand and to discover what makes peoplefrom a variety of cultures (...) believe and behave as they do when it comes to religion. An ideal companion to Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, also by Daniel L. Pals, which shares its organization, Introducing Religion begins with a look at the ideas of Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer - two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It continues with the "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, still very much alive in current debates. Countering these approaches are the writings of philosopher-psychologist William James, theologian Rudolf Otto, sociologist Max Weber, and comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, the book ends with the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. (shrink)

McCarthy has undertaken an enterprise of enormous scope and considerable interest. One of the virtues of his study is its cross-disciplinary approach. McCarthy has advanced degrees in philosophy and sociology and has done research and lectured extensively in Germany as a guest professor. His book is divided into four major parts. Part 1, “In the Shadow of Ancient Parnassos: The Coming of the Cosmic Night,” has two chapters: “Children of Oedipus and the Tragedy of Modernity: Karl Marx and Friedrich (...) Nietzsche” and “Ancient Economy and Classical Tragedy: Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche.” From the discussion of Nietzsche in these two chapters, one gets a clear impression of McCarthy’s scholarly style. There is no postmodern critical gimmickry nor wild free-associationism. His approach is solid, clear, and heavily researched. He is obviously conversant with the major figures who influenced Nietzsche and familiar, as well, with the work of the key interpreters of Nietzsche. In fact, at times, one wishes that there was not quite such a catalogue of references to other figures and influences. Consider the following passage: “Though trained in the neoclassicism of eighteenthand nineteenth-century authors such as Gottsched, Lessing, Klopstock, Wieland, Voss, A.W. Schlegel, Kleist, Goethe, and Schiller, Nietzsche makes a dramatic break with their perspectives in The Birth of Tragedy. Following upon Winckelmann’s view of the beauty, simplicity, and nobility of the Greek spirit, Lessing’s expansion of the structure of tragedy from Aristotle’s Poetics, Goethe’s views on catharsis and reconciliation in Greek tragedy, and Schiller’s adaptation of tragedy in his Kantian aesthetics, Nietzsche develops a theory of tragedy that also incorporates Schopenhauer’s profound existential resignation in the face of the meaninglessness of the world”. (shrink)