This article outlines a theory of naive probability. According to the theory, individuals who are unfamiliar with the probability calculus can infer the probabilities of events in an extensional way: They construct mental models of what is true in the various possibilities. Each model represents an equiprobable alternative unless individuals have beliefs to the contrary, in which case some models will have higher probabilities than others. The probability of an event depends on the proportion of models (...) in which it occurs. The theory predicts several phenomena of reasoning about absolute probabilities, including typical biases. It correctly predicts certain cognitive illusions in inferences about relative probabilities. It accommodates reasoning based on numerical premises, and it explains how naive reasoners can infer posterior probabilities without relying on Bayes's theorem. Finally, it dispels some common misconceptions of probabilistic reasoning. (shrink)

We describe a dual-process theory of how individuals estimate the probabilities of unique events, such as Hillary Clinton becoming U.S. President. It postulates that uncertainty is a guide to improbability. In its computer implementation, an intuitive system 1 simulates evidence in mental models and forms analog non-numerical representations of the magnitude of degrees of belief. This system has minimal computational power and combines evidence using a small repertoire of primitive operations. It resolves the uncertainty of divergent evidence for single events, (...) for conjunctions of events, and for inclusive disjunctions of events, by taking a primitive average of non-numerical probabilities. It computes conditional probabilities in a tractable way, treating the given event as evidence that may be relevant to the probability of the dependent event. A deliberative system 2 maps the resulting representations into numerical probabilities. With access to working memory, it carries out arithmetical operations in combining numerical estimates. Experiments corroborated the theory's predictions. Participants concurred in estimates of real possibilities. They violated the complete joint probability distribution in the predicted ways, when they made estimates about conjunctions: P, P, P, disjunctions: P, P, P, and conditional probabilities P, P, P. They were faster to estimate the probabilities of compound propositions when they had already estimated the probabilities of each of their components. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of probabilistic reasoning. (shrink)

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a naive realism about operators. By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about measuring operators that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by measuring a quantum observable, such an expression can have no clear meaning. A definite specification is provided (...) by Bohmian mechanics, a theory that emerges from Schrödinger's equation for a system of particles when we merely insist that particles means particles. Bohmian mechanics clarifies the status and the role of operators as observables in quantum mechanics by providing the operational details absent from standard quantum mechanics. It thereby allows us to readily dismiss all the radical claims traditionally enveloping the transition from the classical to the quantum realm — for example, that we must abandon classical logic or classical probability. The moral is rather simple: Beware naive realism, especially about operators! (shrink)

Recognizing that probability (the Greek doxa) was understood in pre-modern theories as the polar opposite of certainty (episteme), the author of this study elaborates the forms which these polar opposites have taken in some twentieth century writers and then, in greater detail, in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Profiting from subsequent more sophisticated theories of probability, he examines how Aquinas’s judgments about everything from God to gossip depend on schematizations of the polarity between the systematic and the non-systematic: (...) revelation/reason, science/opinion, saints/philosophers, Aristotle/others. Post-medieval developments have provided the means to discern within Thomas’s thought both a logical theory and a kind of relative frequency theory of probability. The former depends on Aristotle’s theory of demonstration, the latter on his theory of an orderly cosmos; but each as used by Thomas lead to convictions that are sometimes naive, sometimes amusing or even terrifying. (shrink)

This paper mainly explores the effect of naive independent directors on firm performance. Using hand-collected data on Chinese listed companies, this study finds that the proportion of naive independent directors is positively associated with firm performance, and an increased proportion of naive independent directors reduce the probability of tunneling of controlling shareholders and financial distress. The findings are robust after using alternative explanatory variables and retro-causality tests. Furthermore, the relation between naive independent directors and firm (...) performance mainly existed in firms with lower shareholdings of the largest shareholder and firms with lower financial leverage. Moreover, this paper finds that firm size, corporate ownership type, and equity balance degree are important factors affecting the appointment of naive independent directors. This paper offers further empirical evidence to the existing research related to naive independent directors and provides an effective way to improve corporate board governance. (shrink)

If properties are to play a useful role in semantics, it is hard to avoid assuming the naïve theory of properties: for any predicate Θ(x), there is a property such that an object o has it if and only if Θ(o). Yet this appears to lead to various paradoxes. I show that no paradoxes arise as long as the logic is weakened appropriately; the main difficulty is finding a semantics that can handle a conditional obeying reasonable laws without engendering paradox. (...) I employ a semantics which is infinite-valued, with the values only partially ordered. Can the solution be adapted to naïve set theory? Probably not, but limiting naïve comprehension in set theory is perfectly satisfactory, whereas this is not so in a property theory used for semantics. (shrink)

Does postulating skeptical theism undermine the claim that evil strongly confirms atheism over theism? According to Perrine and Wykstra, it does undermine the claim, because evil is no more likely on atheism than on skeptical theism. According to Draper, it does not undermine the claim, because evil is much more likely on atheism than on theism in general. I show that the probability facts alone do not resolve their disagreement, which ultimately rests on which updating procedure – conditionalizing or (...) updating on a conditional – fits both the evidence and how we ought to take that evidence into account. (shrink)

Attempts are made to transform the basis of elementary probability theory into the logical calculus.We obtain the propositional calculus NP by a naive approach. As rules of transformation, NP has rules of the classical propositional logic (for events), rules of the ukasiewicz logic 0 (for probabilities) and axioms of probability theory, in the form of rules of inference. We prove equivalence of NP with a fragmentary probability theory, in which one may only add and subtract probabilities.

Numerous triviality results have been directed at a collection of views that tie the probability of a conditional sentence to the conditional probability of the consequent on its antecedent. -/- In this paper I argue that this identification makes little sense if conditional sentences are context sensitive. The best alternative, I argue, is a version of the thesis which states that if your total evidence is E then the evidential probability of a conditional evaluated in a context (...) where E is salient is the probability of the consequent given the antecedent. The biggest challenge to this thesis comes from the 'static' triviality arguments developed by Stalnaker, Hajek and Hall. It is argued that these arguments rely on invalid principles of conditional logic and that the thesis is consistent with a reasonably strong logic that does not include the principles in question. (shrink)

We present a semantics for a language that includes sentences that can talk about their own probabilities. This semantics applies a fixed point construction to possible world style structures. One feature of the construction is that some sentences only have their probability given as a range of values. We develop a corresponding axiomatic theory and show by a canonical model construction that it is complete in the presence of the ω-rule. By considering this semantics we argue that principles such (...) as introspection, which lead to paradoxical contradictions if naively formulated, should be expressed by using a truth predicate to do the job of quotation and disquotation and observe that in the case of introspection the principle is then consistent. (shrink)

It is a standard feature of modern philosophy, at least from Locke, to tie together the questions of how we perceive the world and what we have reason to think the world is like in itself. This is a natural connection, because the questions of how we perceive it, and what kind of conception of it we can best form on the basis of that mode of perception, are obviously intimately linked. Part I of this volume defends the sense-datum theory (...) of perception against its opponents, and argues that the sense-datum theory is much closer to a form of direct realism than is normally thought: we directly perceive the world in the form that it naturally manifests itself to creatures like us. This leaves open the question of what it is like in itself, and Part II tries to show that a Berkeleian interpretation—that the world is a nomological structure in the mind of God—is the most plausible option. Arguments with roots in Berkeley, in modern philosophers such as John Foster, and in modern science, are drawn on to support this conclusion. (shrink)

Up until recently social scientists took it for granted that their task was to account for the social world as objectively as possible: they were realists in practice if not always in their methodological sermons. This situation started to change in the 1960s, when a number of antirealist philosophies made inroads into social studies. -/- This paper examines critically the following kinds of antirealism: subjectivism, conventionalism, fictionism, social constructivism, relativism, and hermeneutics. An attempt is made to show that these philosophies (...) are false and are causing serious damage to social studies. -/- Next the subjective interpretation of probability is analyzed as a case of subjectivism. An approach to the subjective perception of justice is sketched as an example of the objective study of subjective experience. -/- Finally, the three main varieties of realism — naive, critical, and scientific — are outlined. It is argued that the scientific attitude involves scientific realism, which is put in practice even by scholars who, like Weber and Simmel, called themselves antirealists. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over (...) other methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

Naive versions of decision theory take probabilities and utilities as primitive and use expected value to give norms on rational decision. However, standard decision theory takes rational preference as primitive and uses it to construct probability and utility. This paper shows how to justify a version of the naive theory, by taking dominance as the most basic normatively required preference relation, and then extending it by various conditions under which agents should be indifferent between acts. The resulting (...) theory can make all the decisions of classical expected utility theory, plus more in cases where expected utilities are infinite or undefined. Although the theory requires similarly strong assumptions to classical expected utility theory, versions of the theory can be developed with slightly weaker assumptions, without having to prove a new representation theorem for the weaker theory. This alternate foundation is particularly useful if probability is prior to preference, as suggested by the recent program to base probabilism on accuracy and alethic considerations rather than pragmatic ones. (shrink)

Considers that intuitive predictions follow a judgmental heuristic-representativeness. By this heuristic, people predict the outcome that appears most representative of the evidence. Consequently, intuitive predictions are insensitive to the reliability of the evidence or to the prior probability of the outcome, in violation of the logic of statistical prediction. The hypothesis that people predict by representativeness was supported in a series of studies with both naive and sophisticated university students. The ranking of outcomes by likelihood coincided with the (...) ranking by representativeness, and Ss erroneously predicted rare events and extreme values if these happened to be representative. The experience of unjustified confidence in predictions and the prevalence of fallacious intuitions concerning statistical regression are traced to the representativeness heuristic. (shrink)

Choquet expected utility substitutes capacities for subjective probabilities to explain uncertainty aversion and related phenomena. This paper studies capacities as models of belief. The notions of inner and outer acceptance context are defined. These are shown to be the natural acceptance contexts when belief expansion is described by naïve Bayesian and Dempster–Shafer updating of capacities respectively. We also show that Eichberger and Kelsey's use of Dempster–Shafer updating as a model of belief revision may lead to violations of the AGM axioms (...) for rational belief change. (shrink)

The naïve see causal connections everywhere. Consider the fact that Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice. The naïve find it irresistible to think that this cannot be a coincidence. Maybe the lottery was rigged or perhaps some uncanny higher power placed its hand upon her brow. Sophisticates respond with an indulgent smile and ask the naïve to view Adams’ double win within a larger perspective. Given all the lotteries there have been, it isn’t at all surprising that (...) someone would win one of them twice. No need to invent conspiracy theories or invoke the paranormal – the double win was a mere coincidence. (shrink)

So simple and imperfect as it may appear this book has made use of knowledge on invention and discovery accumu lated during a lifetime. Those persons who would be tempted to emphasize only its imperfections should read the correspondence exchanged between Cantor and Dedekind at the end of the nineteenth century; they would then realize how difficult it was, even for an outstanding man, the creator of the set theory, to propose impeccable results in a completely new field. The field (...) I have chosen here is plausibility. I have proposed an intuitive, some would say a naive, presentation as I want to reach as large an audience as possible and because I personally believe that it is easier to axiomatize a mathematical theory precisely than to dis cover it and enunciate its key theorems. Professor Polya said: "The truly creative mathematician is a good guesser first and a good prover afterward. " For centuries a formalized generalized logic was found necessary and many attempts have been made to build it. vi Preface Mine is based on plausibility which covers with precision a wider field than probability and makes the formalization of analogy and generalization possible. As Laplace said: "Even in the mathematical sciences, our principal instru ments to discover the truth are induction and analogy. "* The examples of application I have chosen are not des cribed in detail. (shrink)

Intuitive judgments of probability are based on a limited number of heuristics that are usually effective but sometimes lead to severe and systematic errors. Research shows, for example, that people judge the probability of a hypothesis by the degree to which it represents the evidence, with little or no regard for its prior probability. Other heuristics lead to an overestimation of the probabilities of highly available or salient events, and to overconfidence in the assessment of subjective (...) class='Hi'>probability distributions. These biases are not readily corrected, and they are shared by both naive and statistically sophisticated subjects. The implications of the psychology of judgment to the analysis of rational behaviour are explored. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it 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. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. 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 a priori 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 carried out 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 basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to 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 Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. 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 a 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. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue 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. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given 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 unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-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 definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. 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 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 eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. 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. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as 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 central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, 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. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely 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 basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied 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. -/- . (shrink)

I’ve been both fascinated and distressed by the arguments raging over how best to respond to the covid-19 pandemic. In particular, I’ve been struck by the way people claim scientific authority for their confident assurances of what needs to be done. And I’m especially intrigued by the scorn they often lavish on those who hold differing views on what science is telling us. The heat generated by the resulting debates is strikingly similar to the heat generated by debates over the (...) science connected with human-caused climate change. And in both cases, the disputants too often presuppose indefensibly naïve views about scientific authority and certitude, apparently unaware that even the allegedly most obvious logical truths lack the certainty attributed to scientific authority in these debates. As a rule, I dislike re-circulating my Editorials, but I think it’s time to resurrect one (modestly tweaked) from a few years ago, addressing precisely this issue (Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 379–386, 2017). …………………………………… “Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” --Oscar Wilde I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally-charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.[1] [1] I’m indebted to Aune, 1970 for much of what follows. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (...) (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

In an April 2023 article in JAMA Pediatrics, ‘Life Support System for the Fetonate and the Ethics of Speculation’, authors De Bie, Flake and Feudtner critique bioethicists for practising what they call ‘speculative ethics’. The authors refer to a 2017 article that they published on the Extra-uterine Environment of Neonatal Development (EXTEND) system. This system was able to keep fetonatal (newborn, but in a fetal physiological state) lambs alive outside of the parent lamb’s womb for 4 weeks. The article has (...) been accessed almost 300 000 times and received significant media attention. It also resulted in an explosion in the bioethics literature about ‘the ethics of the artificial womb’. However, the authors bemoan, these ethics discussions focused largely on unrealistic use cases of the new technology—from elective shortening of pregnancies to complete ectogenesis. The authors dubbed these discussions as ‘a technically and developmentally naive, yet sensationally speculative, pipe dream’. The use case of the EXTEND technology that is most realistic involves supporting extremely premature newborns (23–24 weeks). Other probable uses include supporting infants in later gestational ages (25–28 weeks) with pathological conditions, potentially allowing for surgeries or other therapeutics to be delivered without imposing risks on pregnant patients. To …. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics is arguably the most naively obvious embedding imaginable of Schr¨ odinger’s equation into a completely coherent physical theory. It describes a world in which particles move in a highly non-Newtonian sort of way, one which may at first appear to have little to do with the spectrum of predictions of quantum mechanics. It turns out, however, that as a consequence of the defining dynamical equations of Bohmian mechanics, when a system has wave function ψ its configuration is typically (...) random, with probability density ρ given by |ψ|2, the quantum equilibrium distribution. It also turns out that the entire quantum formalism, operators as observables and all the rest, naturally emerges in Bohmian mechanics from the analysis of “measurements.” This analysis reveals the status of operators as observables in the description of quantum phenomena, and facilitates a clear view of the range of applicability of the usual quantum mechanical formulas. (shrink)

We illustrate the crucial role played by decoherence (consistency of quantum histories) in extracting consistent quantum probabilities for alternative histories in quantum cosmology. Specifically, within a Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological model sourced with a free massless scalar field, we calculate the probability that the universe is singular in the sense that it assumes zero volume. Classical solutions of this model are a disjoint set of expanding and contracting singular branches. A naive assessment of the behavior (...) of quantum states which are superpositions of expanding and contracting universes suggests that a “quantum bounce” is possible i.e. that the wave function of the universe may remain peaked on a non-singular classical solution throughout its history. However, a more careful consistent histories analysis shows that for arbitrary states in the physical Hilbert space the probability of this Wheeler-DeWitt quantum universe encountering the big bang/crunch singularity is equal to unity. A quantum Wheeler-DeWitt universe is inevitably singular, and a “quantum bounce” is thus not possible in these models. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Heidegger and RhetoricPhilippe-Joseph SalazarHeidegger and Rhetoric. Edited by Daniel M. Gross and Ansgar Kemmann. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. 195. $21.95, paperback.I have to confess to double ignorance. I have never paid much attention to/Heidegger and Rhetoric/ (let me use forward slashes to indicate a commonplace) because, in spite of all efforts of reconciliation between France and Germany, my knowledge of German is not (...) so adequate that I would ever contemplate reading Heidegger in his native tongue. As a rule I mistrust translations and rely on derivative knowledge only in cases of extreme urgency. This being said, I must add that such ignorance is somewhat informed by some knowing—where would French philosophy and French philosophy of rhetoric be without the long-standing and continuous dialogue between Heidegger and France, from Levinas’s seminal essay to today’s iterative debate on Heidegger’s so-called introduction of Nazism in philosophy? Be that as it may, I read the edited volume by Gross and Kemmann as a naive reader would, undisturbed by and unaware of intra-ecclesial wrangling. As it happened, as I was reading this book, I had advanced knowledge of a stunning little book byValerie Allen and Ares Axiotis (2007), on Heidegger’s plea for exoneration in July 1945. It was a numinous conjunction.Recalling Arendt’s distinction, in politics of course, among aim, end, and meaning, it is clear that Heidegger and Rhetoric has all three—the gesture [End Page 305] is indeed political, at least within our scholarly community. This book has a meaning—its elucidation imposes on readers to move from chapter to chapter, seriatim. It has an aim, the reality of which only comes to the fore as we close the book. It has an end, which, somehow, allows us to pass judgment with regard to the superior life of the discipline, if there is any.Back to the commonplace, which grounds all three. The difficulty with titles like this is that, more often than not, they promise more than they deliver. One asks oneself: Why not Rhetoric and Heidegger? Which leads to: What “rhetoric”? Aristotle’s? Rhetoric as attributed, by a growing population of ignoramuses, to “rhetoriticians”?The function of a commonplace is to evoke common ground, and in this instance, the common ground has a deep fault line. Indeed, as we read Gross’s erudite introductory essay (chapter 1), it is unclear whether the volume is dedicated to Heidegger’s Summer Seminar of 1924 devoted to Aristotle’s Rhetoric or to rhetoric in/around/about Heidegger. To compound it, we learn, in footnote 1 (41) that in one particular but revealing occurrence, Heideggerian scholars differ about the transcription: although the seminar was on the Rhetoric, does Heidegger refer to Rhetorik or to Logik when he defines “concrete function,” a highly operative definition indeed? Much of the volume hinges on how Heidegger defines the political function of rhetoric. Notwithstanding this casualty of scholarship, and Gross’s thoughtful transcription and explanation of key passages from the seminar, readers will wonder: “Where is the Urtext?” Unless one reads German and has at hand both volume 18 of the Collected Works and the rival transcript (pending, of course, the discovery of yet another transcript), one is reduced to rely on the authors’ word and view (an English translation is in preparation at Indiana University Press). This is the surface of the fault line.Below the surface of the text runs a deeper rift. Nonspecialists are left with the impression that Heidegger’s Summer Seminar of 1924 is a text by Heidegger, when, in fact, if I am not mistaken, Heidegger destroyed his notes and what we are left with are students’ notes cobbled together; they probably turned Heidegger’s lectures into their own commonplaces, which is what students usually do, as we all know. (We may as well have one of the famous imitations of the master with which Heidegger’s brother entertained his drinking friends, perched on a beer barrel like a bibulous orator.)Incidentally, I wish specialists would stop using the acronym SS 1924 to refer to the text. It has a sinister... (shrink)

Sir—In their editorial, Hall, Carter & Morley [1] present an incorrect interpretation of my central argument. The point of my paper [2] is that there are solid reasons to suspect that the capacity of heroin addicts to consent to heroin therapy is compromised because of their addiction. As one medical commentator on my paper states, if active heroin addicts can give voluntary and competent consent to heroin therapy without any problems, then we need a new conceptualization of addiction: they are (...) not addicted, almost by definition [3]. Yet obviously there are problems and grey zones. The solution is to investigate the issue empirically in order to determine the extent of the problem. (As we have done for consent to research on depression and other mental illnesses.) Ultimately, the question can only be solved on a case by case basis, using standardized assessment tools adapted for this purpose. The MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool (MaCAT‐T) is the particular assessment tool I chose to discuss. [4] It is the most promising candidate available, and it has proved its merits in the areas of depression and schizophrenia. -/- At no point do I condemn heroin therapy and endorse an abstinence model of treatment, as the authors state. On the contrary, I note the success of heroin therapy and make suggestions about how to facilitate the consent process. Ironically, it may be Hall et al . who have oversimplified the issues. What we need here are empirical studies on the decisional capacity of heroin addicts to consent to heroin therapy. Only then will we be able to refute the naive view they have no ‘free will’, or say how much they have; but really my paper is not about ‘free will’ at all. This is a philosophical concept. The topic I chose to discuss is ‘decisional capacity’, also called ‘mental competence’. This is a clinical concept with complex legal and ethical associations that often vary across jurisdictions. My point was that although the Swiss Heroin Trials were approved in Europe, they probably would not be approved in Canada or the United States under existing regulations. Interested readers might want to consider the wide variety of reactions to my paper, published in the same issue [5]. Unfortunately, the editorial by Hall et al . does little to advance this debate. (shrink)

Dewey and Russell's debate over the status of logic in the twentieth-century is, by now, well-trodden ground for scholarly inquiry. However, Dewey's novel theory of propositions, first articulated in his 1938 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, has received comparatively less attention than the debate that touched upon it. The paucity of interest among philosophers of language is probably due to a variety of reasons, such as the theory's unorthodox character and, what at least appears to be, its naive simplicity (...) when compared to other more common (syntactic and pragmatic) theories of propositions. In this paper, I would like to examine the three most extensive treatments, one by the late H.S. Thayer, another by Tom Burke, and the most recent exposition by Larry Hickman, with the intention of reviving scholarly interest in Dewey's theory of propositional form. Another objective of the present project is to situate Dewey's theory relative to more contemporary theories and debates about propositional form in the philosophy of language literature. (shrink)

F. A. Hayek has had great influence upon recent political thought. Though he presents no organized account of Bentham his many references, mostly uncomplimentary, create the impression that Bentham's presentation was characteristically ‘crudely expressed’ and ‘naive’, and that Benthamite constructivism has been a major threat to individual liberty and a precursor of totalitarian social control. While Hayek has made a valuable contribution to the study of political ideas, this caricature has probably discouraged his readers from studying Bentham. It will (...) be argued, however, that Bentham and Hayek share much common ground, and that an appreciation of the ways in which Bentham's position differs from Hayek's may contribute to a useful critique of Hayek's system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Selected Letters by William, Henry JamesWilliam James EarleWilliam and Henry James. Selected Letters. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Introduction by John J. McDermott. Charlottesville VA: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Pp. xxxi + 570. $ 39.95.Almost fifty years of letters to and from the very diversely brilliant James brothers: in this volume a generous, and probably ample, selection of 216 from a total of (...) 740 surviving letters or postcards, from an original total, according to the present editors, of twice as many. This volume of correspondence reflects the deep, unquestioned, unshakable familial (and virtually statutory) closeness of William and Henry who happened, as adults, to be seldom in the same place. There is, it must be said, very little explicit philosophy, narrowly or broadly defined, in these letters, but the philosophical reader will—or ought to—find much raw material for philosophical reflection. For example, a reasonable historicist thesis of how brotherhood, or family connection generally, plays itself out is supported by these documents. The nineteenth century is not the same as the twentieth. For example, here is William’s comment on the will of his sister, Alice, who left more to her companion and care-giver, Katherine Loring, a [End Page 479] women of extraordinary virtue and burden, than to her brother Robertson: “I can well sympathize with Alice’s desire to leave her something handsome; but I must say that her own consent (being apparently privy to the will) strikes me as tant soit peu lacking in delicacy. Surely no one of us would like to be in such a position in her family or any other” (271). This would be, in 1998, a rather unenlightened and ungenerous attitude, but is natural enough in 1892, even if not quite inevitable, not being shared by Alice herself. There is, incidentally, much discussion of wills and bequests, for the Jameses were of the genteel class, people with small family money and modest private incomes for whom the wherewithal to maintain homes with servants and to provide themselves with country houses and recuperative European vacations was always a faintly embarrassing, and occasionally a pressing, problem.It is probably also true that the much-discussed question of Henry’s homosexuality has, somehow, to be recast in historically relative terms. Here is an early report—1869—of Henry’s from Oxford: “As I walked along the river I saw hundreds of the mighty lads of England, clad in white flannel & blue, immense, fair-haired, magnificent in their youth, lounging down the stream in their punts or pulling in straining crews & rejoicing in their godlike strength” (41). This could not, the point is, be said by anyone, gay or straight, in 1998. Yet Henry is neither generally naive nor uncritically anglophile. He says of the Warwickshire scenery, which in a way he likes, that it is “too monotonously sweet & smooth—too comfortable, too ovine, too bovine, too English in a word.” And he adds, a little surprisingly: “It seems like a vast show region kept up at the expense of the poor” (41). This is only one of many appealing comments not sparsely scattered, but unpredictably, in letters of more ordinary news. Here’s one I liked occasioned by seeing theater in Paris: “We talk about it & write about it & criticize & dogmatize & analyse to the end of time: but those brave players stand forth & exemplify it & act—create—produce!” (66).Of course the “wit and wisdom” are not the monopoly of Henry. Here is William being wise: “We all learn sooner or later that we must gather ourselves up and more or less arbitrarily concentrate our interests, throw much overboard to save any” (55–56). Again: “It is a sweet world, in the interstices of its bedevilment & brutality” (321). And William being funny: “Boils are surely the most slowly evolving things in nature—Christian doctrine is nothing to them” (393). He is talking about his own boils and was subject, at every period, to ailments and infirmities: “Since writing to you, I have been swimming in deep seas of influenza, gout and Erysipelas of the face” (443). Or as he, in 1900, sums it up: “My... (shrink)

The late I. J. (“Jack”) Good, a British mathematician, played a significant role at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma code and therefore contributed mightily to the allied victory in World War II. Though not a Christian believer, Good’s approach to epistemological issues and his understanding of probability offer valuable insights to those engaged in a serious Christian apologetic. Moreover, Good’s relationship with Marcello Truzzi, critic of naïve thinking in parapsychology and the occult and who directly influenced skeptic (...) Carl Sagan, makes Good of more than passing philosophical interest. (shrink)

This is a shot at expressing a few of the problems that arise when you try to understand how novels are read. I shall be trying to formulate them in very ordinary language: the subject is becoming fashionable, and most recent attempts seem to me quite unduly fogged by neologism and too ready to match the natural complexity of the subject with barren imitative complications. Of course you may ask why there should be theories of this kind at all, and (...) I can only say that they are needed because of what we have missed by always meditating on what we have read and can survey, as it were, from a distance which allows us to think it's keeping still, rather than upon the ways in which, as we read, we deal with the actual turbulence of a text. Much of what I say will seem obvious enough, but it may throw some light on a fact that we all know so intimately that we don't bother to ask questions about it: the fact of plurality, of which the plurality of our own interpretation is evidence. There are interesting side issues: why do some novels seem to be more plural than others, and why, on the whole, do the ones that seem most plural so often turn out to be fairly recent, not to say modern? Also, perhaps, how do interpretations alter in time? And what's wrong with the sorts of theories we already have? . . . For the natural or naive way of reading - a matter of recognition, the medium being a virtual transparency - is neither natural nor naive. It is conditioned and arbitrary, a false return to "story" - to the "wisdom", as Benjamin calls it, of folklore, a pretence that everybody can agree on a particular construction of reality. It is, however, no more apposite to condemn this on moral grounds than to condemn texts that reject narratives, that reject story, theme, closure, authority, that trap us into contemplation of their own opacity, on the ground that this is deceptive. It seems right to allow into the plurality of readings the naive among the rest, though such a text as Ford's is so evidently not naive that naive readers of it would probably soon grow impatient. It calls for virtuosity elaborately built on the basis of naive competence, a development on productive capacity. Even to think of what that virtuosity entails is to encounter novel problems. It is harder to describe it than to do it, like riding a bicycle. But it is worth trying, because of the errors that accumulate in the absence of serious discussion - false notions of plurality, a too simple view of the history of interpretation, even culpable negligence in the reception of new and difficult work. These are problems that arise from problems native to novels - they are the problems of modern criticism, its scope and responsibilities. We know them about as well, as Dowell knew the Ashburnhams. But that is another sad story. Frank Kermode is King Edward VII Professor of English at Cambridge University. He is the author ofThe Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Continuities, Modern Essays, andShakespeare, Spenser, Donne: Renaissance Essays. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "A Reply to Denis Donoghue" , "A Reply to Joseph Frank" , and "Secrets and Narrative Sequence". (shrink)

There is an ethical dilemma present when considering updating predictive clinical artificial intelligence (AI) models, which should be part of the departmental quality improvement process. One needs to consider whether withdrawing the AI model is necessary to obtain the relevant information from a naive patient population or whether to use causal inference techniques to obtain this information. Withdrawing an AI model from patient care might pose challenges if the AI model is considered standard of care, while use of causal (...) inference will not be reliable if the relevant statistical assumptions do not hold true. Hence, each of these two updating strategies is associated with patient risks, but lack of reliable data might endanger future patients. Similarly, not withdrawing an outdated AI might also expose patients to risk. Here I propose a high level ethical framework – epistemic risk management - that provides guidance for which route of model updating should be taken based on the likelihood of the assumptions used during the creation of the original AI model and the assumptions required for causal inference holding true. This approach balances our uncertainty about the status of the AI as standard of care with the risk of not obtaining the necessary data, so as to increase the probability of benefiting current and future patients for whose care the AI is being used. (shrink)

This article discusses the problem of Martin Heidegger's famous involvement in Nazism. This problem has already been widely discussed in the literature, but it is worth re-thinking. The question of Heidegger's involvement and, above all, his post-war silence about Nazi crimes have been discussed basically from the perspective of his anti-Semitic attitude, personal ambitions or even as naive thinking. Perhaps there is worth looking at this problem from the point of view of Heidegger's philosophy and, above all, the role (...) and meaning of language. Heidegger called for reaching the covered base – being itself. The key to this must be to reach the boundaries of language, that is, the transition from the language of everyday life, which is a consequence of an attitude oriented only to naive existence itself, to the language of being. This path leads inevitably to the border of language, that is to the "place" where language balances between saying and silence. Heidegger saw it as the proper philosophical attitude, which is a discovery in the "event" of truth of being. The tragedy takes place here in the man's realization of his helplessness towards the truth of being, and thus of silence, which is a transition from the state of philosophical silence to political silence. The philosopher is probably "doomed" to political engagement, and a consequence of it could be the famous "Syracuse". (shrink)

From the PREFACE. The aim of this work is given in its title. First, it is an "introduction" only, and does not go into the details or the literature of the subject. The aim is to point out the highways of psychology, rather than its myriad byways. Secondly, it is an "introduction to psychological theory," and aims less at a knowledge of facts than at an understanding of principles. Until principles are settled there is no bar to the most fantastic (...) theories and interpretations. These principles being illustrated in the most common facts of experience, it is not necessary to psychological insight to make an anthology of madhouse and hospital stories. Such a procedure has about the same relation to psychology that the various books of "wonders" or the "brilliant experiments" of the popular lecturer have to sober physical science. An odor of quackery is perceptible in both cases. The plan of the work precludes much attention to physiological psychology. Whatever the merits of this science may be, it presupposes pure psychology. If our aim is to give a physiological explanation of psychological facts, we must' first know the facts. Or if our aim is the more modest one of finding the physical conditions or attendants of mental facts, again we must know the facts. But this knowledge is not possible by the way of physiology, and in any case the mental facts remain what they always were. Their likenesses and differences and essential nature would not be changed if physiology were supreme. Even the "new psychology " would not give us new mental facts, but only a new interpretation of the old facts. The Zeitgeist itself begins at last to see this; and the naive onslaughts on the "old psychology" are happily growing fewer. Psychological literature shows very marked progress in this respect within the last twenty years. Physiology remains a most estimable science, but the physiological reconstruction of psychology has been postponed. The study of the physical conditions of our mental life has a pathological and practical importance; but it does not promise any valuable psychological results, at least for those who can distinguish between the physical conditions and the mental facts which they condition. The limitation of plan involves many omissions; and in these there will seem to be a measure of arbitrariness. Hence many will not find here what they want, and probably still more will find what they do not want. There seems to be no way of adjusting so grave a difficulty except by maintaining, on the one hand, freedom to publish, and, on the other, freedom not to read. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword*Alan D. SokalAlas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. 1 Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. One of (...) my goals here is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is [End Page 338] ambiguous; and confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example: linear, nonlinear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly, chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality, choice).I should emphasize that all works cited in my article are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Indeed, the most hilarious passages in my article were not written by me: they are direct quotes from the Masters.But why did I do it? I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true,” why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don’t aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit. Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left. 2 Alan Ryan said it well:It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth.... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it.... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. 3Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decriedthe rise of “postmodernist” intellectual fashions in Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all “facts” claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental. 4 [End Page 339](Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical scholarship can refute the fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And as the acerbic sociologist Stanislav Andreski noted long ago,So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of... (shrink)

The starting point in the development of probabilistic analyses of token causation has usually been the naïve intuition that, in some relevant sense, a cause raises the probability of its effect. But there are well-known examples both of non-probability-raising causation and of probability-raising non-causation. Sophisticated extant probabilistic analyses treat many such cases correctly, but only at the cost of excluding the possibilities of direct non-probability-raising causation, failures of causal transitivity, action-at-a-distance, prevention, and causation by absence and (...) omission. I show that an examination of the structure of these problem cases suggests a different treatment, one which avoids the costs of extant probabilistic analyses. (shrink)

A brief historical comment on scientific knowledge as Socratic ignorance -- Some critical comments on the text of this book, particularly on the theory of truth Exposition [1933] -- Problem of Induction (Experience and Hypothesis) -- Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge -- Formulation of the Problem -- The problem of induction and the problem of demarcation -- Deductivtsm and Inductivism -- Comments on how the solutions are reached and preliminary presentation of the solutions -- Rationalism and empiricism-deductivism (...) and inductivism -- The possibility of a deductivist psychology of knowledge -- The Problem of Induction -- The infinite regression (Hume's argument) --The inductivist positions -- The Normal-Statement Positions -- The normal-statement positions: naive inductivism, strict positivism and apriorism -- Critique of strict positivism - twofold transcendence of natural laws -- The transcendental method - presentation of apriorism -- Critique of apriorism -- Kant and Fries -- Supplement to the critique of apriorism. (Psychologism and transcendentalism in Kant and Fries.-On the question of the empirical basis.) -- Probability Positions -- The probability positions - subjective belief in probability -- Statements about the objective probability of events -- Probability as an objective degree of validity of universal empirical statements -- One way of more closely defining the concept of the probability of a hypothesis (primary and secondary probability of hypotheses). The concept of simplicity -- The concept of the corroboration of a hypothesis - positivist, pragmatist and probabilistic interpretations of the concept of corroboration -- The infinite regression of probability statements -- Pseudo-Statement Positions -- The pseudo-statement positions: new formulation of the problem -- Natural laws as "instructions for the formation of statements" -- "True - false" or "useful - useless"? Consistent pragmatism --Difficulties of consistent pragmatism -- Tool and schema as purely pragmatic constructs -- Natural laws as propositional functions -- Conventionalism -- The pseudo-statement positions will temporarily be put away: conventionalism -- The three interpretations of axiomatic systems. (The circle of problems surrounding conventionalism) -- Conventionalist implicit and explicit definitions Propositional function and propositional equation -- Conventionalist propositional equations as tautological general implications -- Can axiomatic-deductive systems also be understood as consequence classes of pure propositional functions (of pseudo-statements)? -- The coordinative definitions of empiricism: synthetic general implications -- Conventionalist and empiricist interpretations, illustrated by the example of applied geometry -- Strictly Universal Statements and Singular Statements -- Implication and general implication -- General implication and the distinction between strictly universal and singular statements -- Universal concept and individual concept-class and element -- Strictly universal statements-the problem of induction and the problem of universals -- Comments on the problem of universals -- Back to the Pseudo-Statement Positions -- Return to the discussion of the pseudo-statement positions -- Symmetry or asymmetry in the evaluation of natural laws? -- The negative evaluation of universal statements. Critique of the strictly symmetrical interpretation of pseudo-statements -- An infinite regression of pseudo-statements -- An apriorist pseudo-statement position -- Interpretation of the critique up to this point; comments on the unity of theory and practice -- A last chance for the pseudo-statement positions -- Pseudo-Statement Positions and the Concept of Meaning -- The concept of meaning and logical positivism -- The concept of meaning and the demarcation problem-the fundamental thesis of inductivism -- Critique of the inductivist dogma of meaning -- Fully decidable and partially decidable empirical statements-the antinomy of the knowability of the world. (Conclusion of the critique of the pseudo-statement positions.) -- The dialectical and the transcendental corroboration of the solution -- Is the problem of induction solved? (shrink)

Iphigenia Aulidensis was produced after the poet's death, probably in 405 BC. The aim of this paper is to recover the text of this production, which I call FP for First Performance. Probably Euripides left behind an incomplete draft, which was finished by Euripides Minor, the poet's son or nephew. The text we have contains, as Page showed in 1934, material added for a fourth-century revival and other still later interpolations. Diggle's edition tries to separate original Euripides from all later (...) hands on the basis of style. But if we want to recover the amalgam that was FP we need to be attentive to the plot that is implied by the most clearly genuine portions: we can't confine ourselves to what appears to be Euripidean since more than one hand contributed to FP. A discovery about the plot gives us some objective basis for reconstructing FP. Our transmitted text contains two different conceptions of Calchas' prophecy, only one of which belonged to FP. Several passages scattered throughout the play imply that it was public, made to the entire army, but other passages say that it was private, restricted to Agamemnon's inner circle, with the army left in the dark. The secret prophecy motif, I argue, is the work of a fourth century producer, whom I call the Reviser. Its purpose was to introduce into the play scenes where Greek soldiers, ignorant of the real reason for Iphigenia's coming to Aulis, might make naive comments or ask questions that are highly ironic in view of the actual situation, this being an emotional effect he found congenial. We find two such passages in places that are under grave suspicion: the entrance of Clytaemestra, where there is a chorus of Argives who felicitate Iphigenia on her wonderful prospects, and the first messenger, who reports naive questions from the soldiery. Both these passages have linguistic and dramaturgical features that make it virtually certain that neither Euripides nor Euripides Minor wrote them. Working from these we can detect the Reviser's hand at other places in the play and reconstruct its original lineaments. One satisfying result is that the business of baby Orestes, played by a doll, can be shown to be the work of the Reviser. The play ended with Iphigenia's departure for the altar, and there was no substitution of a stag. Like Menoeceus, Macaria and their kin, Iphigenia pays for the victory of her country with her blood, and there is no happy ending. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Francis Sparshott THE CASE OF THE UNRELIABLE AUTHOR Narratology, as the study of narrative in its most general sense, has made great advances in the last decade, ranging from the rhetorical and syntactic study of narrative forms to an interpretation of human life as a fabric of stories we tell ourselves and each other. I do not keep up with these studies, and the intention of die present article (...) is not to add to them. The standpoint from which it is written is not that of the literary theorist, but that of the relatively plain reader. I write as someone who reads stories that people have written for relatively naive people like me to read, though I have fortified myselfwith a handful of appropriately down-to-earth theoretical works to help me out. The article presents some reflections prompted by a novel that I have found disturbing, not as a special sort of being called a reader and correlated with an equally special writer, but as someone who has been reading a book and has had to come to terms with the fact of being transformed into a person who has read it. In 1966, the English novelist Anthony Burgess announced his intention of writing a novel "of Tolstoyan proportions."1 In 1980 it appeared, under the title Earthly Powers, and was duly described by some reviewers as his War and Peace.2 But why? Perhaps it was just the size of it, 649 pages. Perhaps it was the way the novel combined a story of private life with a background of world history. But perhaps what the reviewers found relevant in Tolstoy was not only the length and the epic scale but also the way his novel conveyed a view oflife, partly in the story invented, partly in the opinions of favorably presented characters, and partly in the way he supplemented his story with comments directiy addressed to the reader — or should we rather say, projected into the readerly void. As for Burgess himself, he probably had nothing more specific in mind than the narrowness he elsewhere complains of in English novelists, whose interests remain typically domestic and suburban when they could be "expanding the 145 146Philosophy and Literature resources of literature to find out more about die whole human complex, the roots on which societies are built."3 Suppose we take the parallel with Tolstoy seriously. War and Peace reads as if told in a voice which is that of the implicit author, a distinctive and cranky character represented for us by the name "Tolstoy" on the title page. A distinctive character, but not a character in the book; it is just the putative owner of a voice projected by the tone in which the book is written. However, much of the special effect of War and Peace comes from our tendency to identify this highly personalized voice-bearer with a real person. The authorial voice ofthe book becomes that ofthe person who wrote it, Count L. Tolstoy himself, quite widiout regard to who this person was in real life and what the real life was that he was in. The book reads like a communication, and mat is how many ofus read it. As it happens, the actual person Tolstoy was himselfat least sometimes prepared to read books that way. Our first question to a new author, he said when writing about Maupassant, is: "What sort of a man axe you? Wherein are you different from all die people I know, and what can you tell me that is new, about how we must look at this life ofours?"4 That is, a book is not only a text to exercise our readership on, and a story told for us to follow in delight or suspense, but also a message from a real person who writes, to real people who read, about the world they all share. Note that we do not have to read War andPeace that way. Fielding's Tom Jones is written in a comparably distinctive and insistent authorial voice, as of someone buttonholing the reader and sharing a joke about the world; but I, and many other readers, take mis to be a... (shrink)

The Concept of Hierarchy, as well as various problems, aspects and doctrines attaching to it, was preposterously overrated in Greek philosophy, especially Platonic and Neo-platonic; probably even more so in medieval Scholastic philosophy which attempted to rationalize its supernaturalistic obsession with arguments taken from Greek, chiefly Aristotelian and thus semi-Platonic perfectionalism as a putative “natural” basis for it. Some great exponents of the modern German philosophy of Value, Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, represent the same tradition in a doubtless more critical (...) and more properly philosophic, less naively metaphysical, but still in a pretty dogmatically intuitional fashion. The counterpart to this we find to be rampant in modern English-speaking philosophy dominated by the thought-style of Logical Positivism, though many of its more recent representatives would disown that label. Mouthpieces of an egalitarian, machine-ridden and utilitarian and functional society intolerant of the idea of kings, aristocrats, slaves, serfs, even rich and poor nay literate and illiterate, these thinkers idolize human “wanting” as such, whatever its contents and characteristics, would reduce all value to “needs” or “desires” and their different “intensities” and in their turn, I venture to say, seek preposterously to evade the very concept of Hierarchy, not only on the plane of social philosophy but also in the context of Axiology. They postulate a flattened world from which the experience of Verticality is all but wholly excluded. (shrink)

In the last published round of his debate with Walter Block on economic methodology,1 Bryan Caplan introduces Bayes’ Rule as ‘a cure for methodological schizofrenia’. Block had raised the question ‘Why do economists react so violently to empirical evidence against the conventional view of the minimum wage’s effect?’ and answered it with the suggestion that economists do so because they are covert praxeologists. This means that they base most of their economic arguments on conclusions derived from their a priori understanding (...) of human action, although, as methodologists, they prefer to maintain that their arguments are merely appropriately qualified generalisations of empirical observations. Against this, Caplan maintained that neoclassical economists are Bayesians with some strong prior beliefs, which lead them to ascribe low probability to any statement that goes against the strongly held consensus. Presumably, there is such a strongly held consensus with respect to the minimum wage effect. Caplan concluded that ‘[t]he Bayesian position stakes out a compelling middle ground between atheoretical positivism and praxeology. On the one hand, the Bayesian view emphasizes that few propositions are known with certainty, and that we should adjust our probabilities as new information comes in. On the other hand, the Bayesian view recognizes that the rational view is not an average of past empirical findings, much less a naïve faith in the last prominent study.’ Caplan’s references to Bayes should be considered carefully before we accept that Bayesianism makes for a middle ground—let alone a compelling one— between positivism and praxeology. The image of a middle ground may be soothing, but it is no more than a metaphor. Whether it makes sense in this context, is an altogether different matter. (shrink)

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and history of education is delved into. First, it is noted that both disciplines have diverged from each other over the last few decades to become relatively autonomous subsectors within the pedagogical sciences, each with its own discourses, its own expositional characteristics, its own channels of communication, and its own networks. From the perspective of the history of education, it seems as though more affiliation has been sought with the science of history. The (...) history of education, in any event, has in the past few years become more historicizing and less ‘educationalizing’. According to the author, there are signs that indicate that such an analogous line of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, also applies for the philosophy of education. Does this mean that there are no longer any bridges from the one area to the other or that none are possible? Probably not. In the second portion, it is shown that the modern or even postmodern ‘new cultural history of education’, with its often ironical and demythologizing traits uses or can use a considerable amount of ‘grand theory’. Indeed, the development of an adequate conceptual apparatus that also has to cope with the problem of ‘presentism’ assumes a constant dialogue with the past and for this a philosophical‐interpretative approach is still the best situated. Inversely, the Foucauldian perspective shows that philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular equally hardly do without history. Within the reflection on pedagogical praxis, the historical and the philosophical thus probably will continue to rely on each other—if only as allies against the dominance of short‐winded empirical‐quantitative research. Still, it would be naive to think that, from this possible alliance, the fragmentation of historically developed knowledge systems with their own sociological and institutional foundation of scientific activities can be rectified in a trice. (shrink)

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and history of education is delved into. First, it is noted that both disciplines have diverged from each other over the last few decades to become relatively autonomous subsectors within the pedagogical sciences, each with its own discourses, its own expositional characteristics, its own channels of communication, and its own networks. From the perspective of the history of education, it seems as though more affiliation has been sought with the science of history. The (...) history of education, in any event, has in the past few years become more historicizing and less ‘educationalizing’. According to the author, (who is not a philosopher of education) there are signs that indicate that such an analogous line of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, also applies for the philosophy of education. Does this mean that there are no longer any bridges from the one area to the other or that none are possible? Probably not. In the second portion, it is shown that the modern or even postmodern ‘new cultural history of education’, with its often ironical and demythologizing traits uses or can use a considerable amount of ‘grand theory’ (à la Foucault). Indeed, the development of an adequate conceptual apparatus that also has to cope with the problem of ‘presentism’ assumes a constant dialogue with the past and for this a philosophical‐interpretative (casu quo, hermeneutic) approach is still the best situated. Inversely, the Foucauldian perspective shows that philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular equally hardly do without history. Within the reflection on pedagogical praxis, the historical and the philosophical thus probably will continue to rely on each other—if only as allies against the dominance of short‐winded empirical‐quantitative research. Still, it would be naive to think that, from this possible alliance, the fragmentation of historically developed knowledge systems with their own sociological and institutional foundation of scientific activities can be rectified in a trice. (shrink)

Does systems theory need rethinking? Most social scientists would probably say no. It had its run, was debated critically, and found wanting. If at all, it should be treated historically. Why then might systems theory need rethinking, as the title of this symposium claims? The reason is that, unlike in the natural and biosocial sciences, any conception of system in the social sciences has remained suspect in the wake of problematic Parsonian and cybernetic systems theories. The premise of this special (...) issue is that abandoning conceptions of systems has imposed a high price on the social sciences: a lack of ontologies and methodologies that are both philosophically profound and scientifically defensible. It has left social scientists who choose to ignore ontology in their theoretical and empirical work defenseless against enterprising settlers from a variety of humanities and social science disciplines who attack mainstream work with—often simplistic and naïve, but nevertheless fundamental—philosophical arguments, whether anti-scientific postmodernists or pseudo-scientific rational choice theorists. The goal of this special issue is to showcase new and original work that contributes to a rethinking of systems theory by taking the conception of systems seriously. This introduction offers a programmatic statement of a systemic ontology and methodology as well as a brief general outline and examples of what a systems-based approach in the social sciences entails. Key Words: systems theory • systemism • systemic approach • complexity theory • self-organization • emergentism • paradigms • social mechanisms • Mario Bunge. (shrink)

I discuss the meaning of probability in the Everett-Wheeler interpretation of quantum mechanics, together with the problem of defining histories. To resolve these, I propose an understanding of probability arising from a form of temporal logic: the probability of a future-tense proposition is identified with its truth value in a many-valued and context-dependent logic. In short, probability is degree of truth. These ideas appear to be new, but they are natural and intuitive, and relate to traditional (...) naive ideas of time and chance. Indeed, I argue that Everettian quantum mechanics is the only form of scientific theory that truly incorporates the perception that the future is open. (shrink)

I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the (...) “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism by Lyman Tower SargentWilliam James MetcalfLyman Tower Sargent. Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism. Ralahine Utopian Studies 26. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022. 412 pp. Softcover, US$61, £53, €40. ISBN 978-1-80079-489-4.In the field of utopian studies, Lyman Tower Sargent is well known and respected globally. His new book, Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism, is well written, witty, and persuasively argued, reflecting on, and updating, his life’s [End Page (...) 137] work. It includes several previously published pieces, such as Sargent’s oft-cited “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited” (1994), along with his current thinking across the broad field of utopian studies.Sargent admits to naiveté when, as a young scholar in the 1960s, he set out to write a “history of utopian literature”—probably thinking it wouldn’t take long! This field, he soon found, ever expands the more one looks. Sargent continues to look for, and discover, examples from around the world—many of which he has made available online in Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present.1 But now, at eighty-two years of age, he accepts that this project will require “quite a few lifetimes, lifetimes that are not available to me, so I hope that others will take up these topics” (349).Sargent thinks utopianism is best understood as “social dreaming—the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually involve a radically different society” (7). Utopia, he points out, “expresses deep-seated needs, desires and hopes” (42). This, he asserts, is a universal phenomenon—part of being human—certainly not confined to the Western Christian tradition, as some scholars have argued.We must be careful, Sargent warns, not to equate utopia with perfection; utopias are about betterment, not perfection. He argues that equating utopia with perfection is a ruse employed “by those opposed to the idea that human beings can bring about significant social change and is intended to undermine that possibility” (323). Sargent argues that all humans “need the idea that a better life is possible” (325) and this is what utopianism provides.As someone who has spent much of my professional life studying intentional communities, I have always recognized that almost all such groups have an underlying utopian impulse. So I came to utopianism research as a subset of intentional communities research. Sargent, on the other hand, sees “communitarianism as a sub-category of utopianism” (85). He acknowledges that intentional community members are “trying to find better ways of living together, making decisions about all important aspects of life, whether it is political, economic, religious, or sexual.... They are actually doing with their own lives what literary utopias describe in words” (93). Perhaps our different paths are a bit like asking whether the chicken or egg came first?Sargent quite correctly observes that many intentional community members reject the label of “utopian” because they confuse it with the naïve, and unobtainable notion of perfection—and I have often observed the same. Nevertheless Sargent asserts “that continued utopian thinking is essential to the overcoming of [End Page 138] the dystopian reality of... the last century” (178). This, he argues, is why intentional communities are important test sites for enacting utopian dreams.In discussing dystopia, Sargent points out how utopian aspirations occasionally lead to the creation of dystopias. “The hopes of communism became the dystopia of Stalinism.... The utopian dreams of Pol Pot became the dystopia of Kampuchea” (172). “Utopian visions from Lenin to the Taliban that purported to have the potential of producing an enhanced life have been hijacked and turned into dystopias” (175). While acknowledging that some colonization schemes, particularly for New Zealand and South Australia, had a utopian angle, nevertheless those schemes generally created dystopia for the Indigenous peoples. “The original inhabitants’” idea of the good life “inconveniently did not include having their land stolen, being enslaved, and being slaughtered” (262).That reminds us that utopianism, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Sargent offers a wonderful personal example, “my utopia would include a strong right to die” whenever and however he... (shrink)