Excerpt from The Passing of Plato The stupendous changes that have been wrought in the material life of the civilized races in a short period of time by the progress of modern science have been generally recognized. We have to make only a casual investigation into the history of the production of the things that would come under our view at our first turn, to find complete revolution in production, manufacture, and distribution. We find further that it is not in (...) each a single change, but revolution on revolution the most radical. For example, in less than twenty-five years the immense and complicated business of transit in our cities has passed from omnibus to horse car, from horse car to cable system, from the cable system to the electric car system, with special variations in the way of elevated railroads and pneumatic railways. Methods of lighting, heating, production and transference of power for motors, have passed through equal strides of change and improvement. Everything connected with the immense business of transportation, from the great undertaking of building a bridge or a steamship down to the sealing of a freight car or the excavation of a yard of rock, has in a like period passed through radical revolutions that are bewildering in their rapidity and in the greatness of the interests involved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The equation of the world with 'life' and 'life' with consciousness ramified into the baffling account Wittgenstein gave of the 'philosophical self '. The physical world, as Descartes argued, is made of material substance, and the mental world 'is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal'. Conceiving of consciousness as a private realm populated by private experiences, one is bound to be puzzled at its evolutionary emergence. Consciousness is attributable to an organism as a whole, not to its (...) parts, no matter how complex. And it is attributable to the organism on the grounds of the behaviour of the organism, its exercise of its perceptual faculties, its susceptibility to sensation, and its voluntary action. A venerable tradition going back at least as far as Descartes conceived of consciousness as the immovable rock against which the waves of scepticism break. (shrink)

One of the most influential logicians of the day has assembled and in part rewritten a number of his essays on important questions of logical theory. 1 The result is a most impressive book, at once powerful and graceful, and breathing a certain intellectual hauteur r which accords well with its conspicuous property of being intellectually first rate. These are not humble analytical gropings, undertaken by the dim light of an author’s sense of the sensible; but a series of campaigns (...) in abstract metaphysics, directed from the firm ground of mastery of a rigorous and exacting technique. “Those of us who have a taste for desert landscapes” is a phrase of the author’s. With a Roman ruthlessness he makes a solitude in which he can quantify peacefully over lumps of rock. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being and Time. A Translation of “Sein und Zeit by Martin HeideggerP. Christopher SmithMartin Heidegger. Being and Time. A Translation of “Sein und Zeit. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Pp. xix + 487. Paper, $18.95.A new English translation of Heidegger’s best book, Sein und Zeit has been eagerly anticipated ever since the appearance of the Macquarrie/Robinson translation in 1962.1 For anyone (...) with an ear for German would find that, in turning Heidegger’s visceral prose into wooden terminology, this first pathbreaking and very scholarly translation failed completely to render the startling and wholly untraditional diction of this work, a diction that rocked a staid and stifling academia and that in lectures preceding the book’s publication had therefore attracted students in droves, among them Leo Strauss, Hanna Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Löwith, Herbert Marcuse, and Hans Jonas. At long last, a new translation, Joan Stambaugh’s, is here, but, unfortunately, it is no better in this crucial regard, and it is not as scholarly either. (Macquarrie/Robinson do provide many detailed and useful accounts of their choices of translation.) Indeed, the new translation often seems to be a mere revision of the old and falls into much of the old translation’s terminological uprooting of Heidegger’s sometimes thick but always earthy language. Here are three examples.In S we find this rendering of Heidegger’s preliminary account of the phenomenological method he will apply in “laying out” our “factual” human existence “there” “in the world” of our cooperative taking care of life’s tasks:This “a priori” of the interpretation of Da-sein is not a structure which is pieced together, but rather a structure which is primordially and constantly whole. It grants various perspectives on the factors which constitute it. These factors are to be kept constantly in view, bearing in mind the preceding whole of this structure.(S 37)In M/R this same passage is translated, somewhat more readably and accurately, as:In the interpretation of Dasein, this structure is something ‘a priori’; it is not pieced together, but is primordially and constantly a whole. If affords us, however, various ways of looking at the items which are constitutive for it. The whole of this structure always comes first; but if we keep this constantly in view, these items, as phenomena, will be made to stand out.(M/R 65) [End Page 148]We note, first, how many of the M/R translations are taken over by S: “not a structure... pieced together,” which mistranslates “keine zusammengestückte Bestimmtheit” (SZ 41) or “not a determination arrived at bit by bit,” and “[structure]... primordial(ly) and constant(ly) (a) whole” for “eine ursprünglich und ständig ganze Struktur,” in which the English “primordial” turns the rather ordinary “ursprünglich” or “originally” into a technical term. Indeed, this phrase might best be rendered in more usual English along the lines of “This structure, assumed a priori... is originally, and continues to be, a whole.” For the point, lost in S but preserved in M/R with their “however,” is precisely that even though Dasein has been determined ahead of time to have the basic structure of a whole, we can still elucidate different sides of it phenomenologically by “throwing them into relief” (compare Heideger’s “phänomenal abzuheben”). In S, Heidegger’s pivotal “phänomenal” is lost altogether.Here, next, is how S renders Heidegger’s account of the call of conscience, which calls us back from our having lost ourselves in pressed busyness and vain chattering, at just that moment when these lose all their significance for us and go dead:The call is lacking any kind of utterance. It does not even come to words, and yet it is not at all obscure and indefinite. Conscience speaks solely and constantly in the mode of silence. Thus it not only loses none of its perceptibility, but forces Da-sein thus summoned and called upon to the reticence of itself.(S 252–53).And here is the M/R translation:The call dispenses with any kind of utterance. It does... (shrink)

One of the most influential logicians of the day has assembled and in part rewritten a number of his essays on important questions of logical theory. 1 The result is a most impressive book, at once powerful and graceful, and breathing a certain intellectual hauteur r which accords well with its conspicuous property of being intellectually first rate. These are not humble analytical gropings, undertaken by the dim light of an author’s sense of the sensible; but a series of campaigns (...) in abstract metaphysics, directed from the firm ground of mastery of a rigorous and exacting technique. “Those of us who have a taste for desert landscapes” is a phrase of the author’s. With a Roman ruthlessness he makes a solitude in which he can quantify peacefully over lumps of rock. (shrink)

We report a series of experiments in which subjects were required to make spatial discriminations about naturally obtained images, as follows. Subjects were shown two natural images on a computer screen, side by side and for a period of 500 ms. Subjects were then shown, on a separate part of the computer screen, a small patch of one of the images selected at random. Subjects were required to decide which of the two full images the patch comes from, and whereabouts (...) in that image it is taken from. They indicated their response by clicking the mouse cursor at the appropriate point on the screen. -/- The proportion of trials on which the subjects selected the correct image and the accuracy of the spatial position of their correct responses were calculated. These two measures independently indicate the general discriminability of the two image sets, and the extent to which the spatial layout of the image has been perceived. By comparing response accuracy for images that are from different sets (such as mountain or town scenes) with response accuracy when the two images are from the same set it is possible to establish the image properties that underlie coarse scene apprehension. By using sets of images that are perhaps best described as being natural textures (such as patterns of foliage or rock surface) it is possible to measure the extent to which texture is processed spatially. Our results are interpreted in the light of statistical differences between the image sets that we have used. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is that moral evil is for Kant an ineradicable aspect of human existence; moreover the author argues that moral evil is a datum of experience which none of the rationalist systems which preceded Kant's, nor Hegel's system which came after, could assimilate, a rock upon which they all shattered. Reboul's concern is to investigate the "insondable profondeur du mal radical" as this theme appears in the forty years of Kant's active philosophic production; his interest (...) reflects the influence of his mentor, Karl Barth. Reboul is at his best in his clear depiction of Kant's ingenuity at reconciling the optimism of the Enlightenment with the Reformation's conviction of sin. For example, the very insufficiency of Leibniz' attempt to supply a ground for every decision of the will, his inability to explain the reality of willful evil, is used by Kant as an excuse for not going beyond Leibniz' theory. "Expliquer la liberté serait la détruire," writes Reboul. Kant assimilates the idea of progress by assigning it to the level of phenomenal or technical improvements. Moral value resides only in those acts by which we loosen the ties of sensible determination upon the will and render ourselves autonomous. The struggle for autonomy must be fought by each man for himself; there is a decisive limit to the help we can derive from "progress." For Kant man is bent towards evil not only by reason of his spontaneous attraction to sensible objects, but also in virtue of a basic perversion of his faculty of judgment, a perversion which comes close to being identified with liberty itself. It is significant, as Reboul notes, that all of Kant's examples of free will are also examples of moral evil. This low estimate of man's spontaneous faculties is at the basis of Kant's suspicion of all eudaimonistic ethics, his demand that every moral decision be "disinterested," that the moral law be the sole determinant of the will. Just as in the first Critique Kant insists on finding an adequate cause to ground the universality which attaches to the laws of science and mathematics, so in ethics he demands an adequate explanation of the radical character of evil present in the world; this he finds in a perversion of the human faculty of judgment, whereby a contingent element of experience is illegitimately raised to the status of a universal maxim by the will. The moral decision must be disinterested because every attraction by a sensible object threatens to become the occasion for such a definitive fixation of our moral character. But Kant's deeper originality lies in a view which bridges the Enlightenment and later periods. Kant breaks with a convention of systematic philosophical activity which had held sway from the Greeks through Leibniz, the view that reality must be consistent. For Kant, the principle of non-contradiction does not apply to the phenomenal world but only to the noumenal. For Kant, human existence can harbor contradictions; consequently man lives perpetually in tension. As a citizen of two worlds, he is committed to achieving a moral ideal which the basic perversion of his will renders unrealizable. This tension can be viewed optimistically, as with Hegel ; then the "positivity" of evil is interpreted as a necessary step, a " felix culpa," by which God rouses man to greater efforts and brings him to maturity, autonomy, and a vision of the real. The other alternative is the Schopenhauerian interpretation, wherein the tensions in the absurdity of the human condition are taken as too extreme to warrant further participation. Reboul is excellent in showing the form these tensions take in Kant's system: the mystery of how a basically perverted will can be converted into a "good faith," although this is the ethical command; the command never to feel oneself "justified" through having done one's duty, even though the moral command obligates us to strive perpetually for this condition. However, in stressing the harsh import of sin for Kant, and thus saving Kant from Hegel, has Reboul not placed Kant in the company of Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus?--P. M. (shrink)

I like punk rock. I like girls with weird eyes. I like drugs but my body and mind won’t allow me to take them. I like passion. I like things that are built well. I like innocence. I like and am grateful for the blue collar worker whos existence allows Artists to not have to work at menial jobs. I like killing gluttony. I like playing my cards wrong. I like various styles of music. I like making fun of (...) musicians who I feel pladgerise or offend music as art by exploiting their embarrassingly, pathetic versions of their work. I like to write poetry. I like to ignore others poetry. I like vinyl. I like nature and animals. I like to swim. I like to be with my friends. I like to be by myself. I like to feel guilty for.. (shrink)

Drawing on both anthropology and philosophy, this paper argues that the profiled form of the human hand is a universally recognizable image; one whose significance transcends temporally and geographically defined cultural divisions, and represents the earliest known artistic symbol of the human form. The unique co-occurrence of five properties in the image of the human hand and the way it is recognized support this argument, including that it is: (1) unmistakably a hand, (2) unmistakably human, (3) a universal point of (...) interface, (4) a universal referent of scale, and (5) an easy way of making a complex shape. This underappreciated aspect of hand art makes these images among the most important forms of early artistic expression encountered in the prehistoric record. (shrink)

A recording or performance of a song is a cover if there is an earlier, canonical recording of the song. It can seem intuitive to think that properly appreciating a cover requires considering it in relation to the original, or at least that doing so will yield a deeper appreciation. This intuition is supported by some philosophical accounts of covers. And it is complicated by the possibility of hearing in, whereby one hears elements of the original version in the cover. (...) We argue that it can nevertheless be just as legitimate to consider a cover version on its own as it is to consider it in relation to the earlier recording that it is covering. In some cases, these two modes of appreciation will offer distinct rewards. In other cases, one mode will be substantially more rewarding than the other. The details matter, especially in complicated cases like covers of covers, but neither mode is privileged in principle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual HistoryJohn Patrick DigginsMen and ideas advance by parricide, by which the children kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs.Sir Isaiah Berlin1I was supposed to wind up the study of mine, and become the Lovejoy of my generation—that's the silly talk of scholarly people.Saul Bellow2To become "the Lovejoy," with the implication that (...) each generation could only have one, was the ambition of Moses Herzog in Saul Bellow's novel, written a few years after he had won the Nobel Award for literature. Herzog presents the life of a professor who has as many sexual escapades and as much personal angst as he has scholarly interests, too unfocused to be another Lovejoy. Bellow's novel is full of letters to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other modernist minds who brought Western intellectual life to a standstill, posing a lasting question mark about the possibilities of knowledge. Bellow taught in the program of the Committee on Social Thought at [End Page 181] the University of Chicago. His colleague and close friend Allan Bloom also taught in that program. But when Bloom wrote the best seller, The Closing of the American Mind, he cited Nietzsche and Heidegger as part of the "German disease" that did so much to subvert academic thought, supposedly turning students into zombies, walking air heads responding only to vacuous visual stimuli and mind-numbing music, with Rock n' Roll blasting through a Walkman and having the effect of a "masturbational fantasy."3While Bellow's epistolary novel interrogated modernist thinkers, Bloom's popular tract of the times cited many classical thinkers as a countervoice to the modernists—Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Hobbes, Kant, Lessing, Schiller, Locke, and Rousseau. Such minds also figured prominently in the works of Arthur O. Lovejoy. But the recitation of such names leaves the impression that Lovejoy concerned himself only with the main currents of European intellectual history. On the contrary, two of his most important and often neglected books are The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Reflections on Human Nature.4 There one finds profound meditations on two vital episodes in the history of ideas in America: the Enlightenment and the philosophy of pragmatism. Perry Miller, arguably America's greatest intellectual historian, skipped over the Enlightenment as he proceeded to study the Puritans and then the transcendentalists, and he never seemed to have much interest in the pragmatists.5 But what Lovejoy had to write on the Enlightenment and pragmatism is richly ironic.The pragmatists claimed to have liberated modern thought from the easy assumptions of the "Age of Reason," and today's poststructuralists charge that eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers deceived themselves in looking to the advent of knowledge as an answer to the presence of power. Lovejoy's books offer a different take entirely, making us aware that it is the modernist thinkers who may be deceiving themselves with the dubious promises of pragmatism and the arrogant conceits of poststructuralism and deconstruction, whose proponents claim to be the first "masters [End Page 182] of suspicion." In many of Lovejoy's works, nothing is resolved and everything is left suspended in a state of honest suspicion.Lovejoy was comfortable with contradiction, and hence more in tune with Augustine, who looked to the depths of human consciousness for spiritual knowledge, than with Aquinas, who believed evidence for God and human freedom could be found in reason alone. Nowhere is Lovejoy's affinity for the emotions of consciousness better seen than in his several essays on romanticism, both English, French, German, and even its origins in Chinese aesthetics and Confucian ethics. It was not reason and the notion of order and regulation that appealed to Lovejoy but the spontaneous promptings of nature springing forth without reflection or design. He delighted in quoting Voltaire against classicists and scholastics. "Worship God and practice justice—this is the sole religion of the Chinese literati.... O Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, Francis, Dominic, Luther, Calvin, canons of Westminister, have you anything better? For four thousand years this religion, so simple and so noble, has endured in... (shrink)

The objective of this work is to establish a relationship between the cutting time in rocks, determining a speed and the point load strength index test, Is, to characterize the rock in terms of resistance and avoid sending samples to laboratories. As a first stage, on andesite samples, 5 x 5 x 10 cm test tubes were made. After the elaboration they were subjected to cutting, using an electric floor cutter and the time was evaluated. This cut was made (...) in a transversal way and two parts were obtained, one of them with dimensions 5 x 5 x 5 cm, approximately. In a third stage, the point load strength test was carried out in a press built for this purpose. Finally, the cutting speeds were correlated with the point load test values and only when rock samples do not pigeonhole on the proposed relationship, send them to the laboratory. Keywords: Mining fortification, uniaxial compressive strength, rock cutting, point load strength test index. References [1]P. Feijoo, R. Aucay, D. Ordoñez, "Aplicación del esclerómetro para la determinación de resistencia a compresión de rocas", presentado en el IV Congreso Internacional de Minería y Metalúrgia, Varadero, Cuba, 2018. [2]P. Feijoo y M. Román, «Correlación entre la Deformación y la Resistencia a la Compresión de rocas», uct, vol. 23, n.º 91, p. 6, may. 2019. [3]P. Feijoo, A. Bravo, N. Escandón, "Aplicación “UDAFORMIN” para la determinación del tipo de fortificación minera", presentado en el XII Congreso Iberoamericano de Computación para el Desarrollo, San Salvador, El Salvador, 2019. [4]P. Feijoo y C. Iñiguez, «Corte en las Rocas y su Relación con la Resistencia a Comprensión Simple», RISTI, n.º E 30, p. 59-67, jun. 2020. [5]P. Feijoo y J. Padrón, «La Resistividad de Rocas y su Relación con la Resistencia a Comprensión Simple en Mina», UCT, vol. 24, n.º 99, pp. 61-67, abr. 2020. [6]M. González. El terreno. Ediciones UPC. Barcelona. España, 2001. [7]E. Besoain. Mineralogía de Suelos. Turrialba: Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas de la OEA, 1970. [8]P. Feijoo, A. Flores, B. Feijoo, "The Concept of the Granulometric Area and Its Relation with the Resistance to the Simple Compression of Rocks", presentado en la 7th International Engineering, Sciences and Technology Conference, Panamá, Panamá, 2019, pp. 52-56, doi: 10.1109/IESTEC46403.2019.00018. [9]F. Blyth. Geología para Ingenieros. Cecsa. México D. F. México, 2003. [10] E. Tarbuck & F. Lutgens. Ciencias de la Tierra: Una introducción a la Geología Física. Pearson. Madrid. España, 2005. [11]L. Suarez del Rio, A. Rodríguez, L. Calleja, V. Ruiz de Argandoña, «El corte de rocas ornamentales con discos diamantados: influencia de los factores propios del sistema de corte», CSIC, vol. 48, n.º 250, pp. 53-59, abr-mayjun 1998. [12]Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Explotaciones de Roca Ornamental. Diseño de explotaciones y selección de maquinaria y equipos. UPM. Madrid. España, 2007. [13]Catalog, Covington,. LAPIDARY & GLASS MACHINERY, USA. Retrieved from https://covington-engineering.com/content/pdf/Covington-Catalog.pdf. [14]D. Burbano, T. García, «Estimación empírica de la resistencia a compresión simple a partir del ensayo de carga puntual en rocas anisótropas », FIGEMPA, vol.1, n.º 2, pp. 13-16, dic. 2016. [15]P. Ramírez, L. de la Cuadra, R. Lain, E. Grigalbo. Mecánica de rocas aplicada a la minería metálica subterránea. Instituto Geológico Minero. Madrid. España, 1984. [16]P. Cordero, "Manual de prácticas de laboratorio de Mecánica de Rocas " tesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México D.F., México, 2019. [17]L. González de Vallejo, M. Ferrer. Manual de campo para la descripción y caracterización de macizos rocosos en afloramientos. Instituto Geológico y Minero de España. Madrid. España, 2007. [18]P. Pohjanpera, T. Wanne, E., Johansson. Point Load Test Results From Olkiluoto Area Borehole Cores. Posiva. Finlandia, 2005. [19]P. Ramírez, L. Alejano. Mecánica de rocas: fundamentos e ingeniería de taludes. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Madrid. España, 2004. [20]M. Navarrete, W. Martínez, E. Alonso, C. Lara, A. Bedolla, H. Chávez, D. Delgado, J. Arteaga. «Caracterización de propiedades físico-mecánicas de rocas ígneas utilizadas en obras de infraestructura», ALCONPANT, vol. 3, n.º 2, pp. 133-143, ago. 2013. [21]P. Feijoo, "Manual de mecánica de rocas y estabilidad de túneles y taludes" tesis, Universidad del Azuay, Cuenca, Ecuador, 1997. (shrink)

ve r since the appearance of Ontogeny and Phylogeny a decade ago, Stephen Jay Gould has continued to delight and inform a wide spectrum of readers and, in doing so, to defy C.P. Snow's lament about the "two cultures" of the sciences and the humanities. Gould's monthly column in Natural History magazine, published under the heading "This View of Life," has led to a series of highly praised volumes of essays—Ever Since Darwin (1977), The Panda's Thumb (1980), Hen's Teeth and (...) Horse's Toes (1983), and most recently The Flamingo's Smile (1985). In addition, Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981), which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award, analyzed the questionable character of intelligence testing and emphasized the many personal and cultural biases that have led researchers astray in this field. Given the sheer amount of Gould's publications, which include numerous scientific publications as well, Gould's readers have been kept busy indeed absorbing his prodigious output. (shrink)

This article considers the state of human beings in a post-postmodern conditions and focuses on obversion as one version of posthuman reality in polyversion, which is lusciousness. Obversion is regarded as a logical and at the same time dynamic figure of dis-identity and non-presence. Trying to find out if a real human being is written leads one to consider the relationship of real and written reality and the possibility of posthuman writing. Posthuman writing becomes apparent in tracks, traces, scars and (...) vestiges such an @ as a signifier of becoming t@iled. The vestiges of a human being are being investigated through the appeal to an actual post-postmodern conceptions such as speculative realism, speculative posthumanism, dark ecology, etc. In the post-postmodern context concepts such as trut/h, faith and kindness as a counterweight to the excessive postmodern quotation and theorization are being examined. Thus, a human being as a post-postscript is becoming a preface at the same time. This article explores such crucial postmodern issues as iterability, signature and others in a contingent context, in which an immanence of living itself becomes a writing in the postdigitality, post-Internet and post-media extent in relation to the realization of the disaster of technical or even mechanical as human. This research realizes on a showcase of post-postmodern architecture as an immanent spatiotemporal contingency, en-vironment of a human being. It shows how a minimalistic style in post-postmodern ethics and aesthetics correlates with obversive rocking in contrast to binary opposition logic. Thus, it realizes a movement from human to posthuman as scriptor, writing a postscript, and beyond to post-posthuman as postscriptor, writing a post-postscript as a human being, writing itself in its contingent immanence. (shrink)

The theory of visual perception that Irvin Rock develops and supports in this book with numerous original experiments, views perception as the outcome of a process of unconscious inference, problem solving, and the building of structural descriptions of the external world.

The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...) of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true. (shrink)

The place of the emotions among the passions -- The analytic of the emotions I -- The analytic of the emotions II -- The dialectic of the emotions -- Pride, arrogance, and humility -- Shame, embarrassment, and guilt -- Envy -- Jealousy -- Anger -- Love -- Friendship -- Sympathy and empathy.

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock make the radical claim that there is no conscious perception of the visual world without attention to it.

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. (...) After having thus set the stage I will argue that the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In this contribution, I will argue for an ontological understanding of time as temporality. This, however, implies that in a certain sense being is temporality, by which I mean that on an ontological level temporality is nothing but the process of change, i.e. the dynamic aspect of being in its becoming, changing, and perishing, and that concrete beings are not merely in time, but they are temporal. This leads to the conclusion that actual time is the process of change that (...) becoming beings are, as well as the conclusion that reality is fundamentally temporal as argued by process metaphysicians like Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Gilles Deleuze. The investigation begins with first establishing the methodological difficulties involved in thinking temporality as an ontological feature. In a second step, dynamic ontologies are introduced as the conceptual background best suited to think ontological temporality and their difference to event-ontologies is explained. Finally, the distinction between temporality and linear time is clarified. This introduction of temporality ends with some arguments for the existence of temporality that are inspired by Aristotle’s famous investigations into the nature of time. After having thus introduced temporality as an ontological feature and argued for the existence and relevance of it, its implications for our understanding of the dimensions of time and especially for anticipation are discussed. (shrink)