Reviews the book 'William James and the Metaphysics of Experience,' by David C. Lamberth.

William James's disgust for scientific arrogance was not in defiance of his early education in science, but because of it. In particular, James was influenced by the probabilistic method of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, especially as interpreted by Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce, who was James's most immediate scientific influence, maintained an unresolved ambiguity between a probabilistic scientific fallibilism and a confidence in science's quest for certainty, while James emphasized the fallibilism of science as the crowning evidence for epistemological (...) uncertainties. Despite his disagreement with scientific certainty, James fully supported science as a fallible, useful means of inquiry. (shrink)

: It is part of the conventional wisdom about the James family that the elder Henry James (1811–82) had a large influence on his son, William James (1842–1910), in the direction of religious interests. But William neither adopted his father's spirituality nor did he regard it as a foil to his own secularity. Instead, after first rejecting the elder James's idiosyncratic faith, he became increasingly intrigued with his insights into the natural world, which were in turn shaped by the Swedenborgian (...) philosophy of correspondences and use, which depict worldly facts as vessels of the spirit. The young science student drew upon this approach to nature as a resource for finding the operation of immaterial aspects within the world. The influence of the father emerges in William's emphasis on the will in human psychology, his eagerness to punctuate the striving of "the will to believe" with sessions of comforting conviction, his readiness to find "'piecemeal' supernaturalism" in subliminal psychology, his incorporation of idealism into his radical empiricism, and his openness to psychical experience. Without accepting the particulars of Henry James's faith, William James shared with his father a conviction that providential action in the universe, usually understood as the work of transcendental forces, was embedded within the natural world and within humankind. (shrink)

The dissertation explores the early life and thought of William James . Using James's published works as well as his letters, his published but little-known notes and reviews, and his unpublished diaries and notebooks, this dissertation constructs an intellectual biography employing intellectual history, the history of science, philosophy, and religious studies. ;William James experienced the culturally shaping influences of his grandfather's wealth and republican values, the eccentric and spiritual ideas instilled by his father in an almost chaotic process of education, (...) and the impact of a scientific education in the 1860's, a time when Darwinism revolutionized both the content and the methods of natural science. As a result of these influences, James began to form the kernels of ideas that would become central to his mature psychology, philosophy, and religious thought. He struggled with the simultaneous uncertainty of his intellectual perspectives and his vocational choices, and he gradually began to accept uncertainty itself as a central theme and goal of his life and thought. His steps in this direction were at first unsure, and indeed, he actually experienced a prolonged crisis of depression and indecision from 1867 to 1872. But even his suffering was a catalyst to his intellectual developments. A major inspiration for his commitment to uncertainty was his realization of the role of probabilities in the science he had been learning since his young adulthood. It inspired his idea that religious beliefs and scientific theories, while unrelated, are parallel in their uncertainty, and that each, if reasonable, can be acceptable as plausible even if not provable. The ultimate result of James's education in freedom was his argument for a pluralistic and non-deterministic view of the universe, his conviction of the possibilities for belief despite uncertainty, and his advocacy of the need for commitment and action to improve this world without reference to another life. (shrink)

Almost a philosopher -- First embrace of science -- Between scientific and sectarian medicine -- The ancient art of natural grace -- Crises and construction -- An earnestly inquiring state.

In chapter 5 of Knowledge and its Limits, T. Williamson formulates an argument against the principle (KK) of epistemic transparency, or luminosity of knowledge, namely “that if one knows something, then one knows that one knows it”. Williamson’s argument proceeds by reductio: from the description of a situation of approximate knowledge, he shows that a contradiction can be derived on the basis of principle (KK) and additional epistemic principles that he claims are better grounded. One of them is a reflective (...) form of the margin for error principle defended by Williamson in his account of knowledge. We argue that Williamson’s reductio rests on the inappropriate identification of distinct forms of knowledge. More specifically, an important distinction between perceptual knowledge and non-perceptual knowledge is wanting in his statement and analysis of the puzzle. We present an alternative account of this puzzle, based on a modular conception of knowledge: the (KK) principle and the margin for error principle can coexist, provided their domain of application is referred to the right sort of knowledge. (shrink)

Over recent years, the research community has been increasingly using preprint servers to share manuscripts that are not yet peer-reviewed. Even if it enables quick dissemination of research findings, this practice raises several challenges in publication ethics and integrity. In particular, preprints have become an important source of information for stakeholders interested in COVID19 research developments, including traditional media, social media, and policy makers. Despite caveats about their nature, many users can still confuse pre-prints with peer-reviewed manuscripts. If unconfirmed but (...) already widely shared first-draft results later prove wrong or misinterpreted, it can be very difficult to “unlearn” what we thought was true. Complexity further increases if unconfirmed findings have been used to inform guidelines. To help achieve a balance between early access to research findings and its negative consequences, we formulated five recommendations: (a) consensus should be sought on a term clearer than ‘pre-print’, such as ‘Unrefereed manuscript’, “Manuscript awaiting peer review” or ‘’Non-reviewed manuscript”; (b) Caveats about unrefereed manuscripts should be prominent on their first page, and each page should include a red watermark stating ‘Caution—Not Peer Reviewed’; (c) pre-print authors should certify that their manuscript will be submitted to a peer-review journal, and should regularly update the manuscript status; (d) high level consultations should be convened, to formulate clear principles and policies for the publication and dissemination of non-peer reviewed research results; (e) in the longer term, an international initiative to certify servers that comply with good practices could be envisaged. (shrink)

Throughout the ages one of the central topics in philosophy of religion has been the rationality of theistic belief. This book proposes that parties on both sides of this debate might shift their attention in a different direction, by focusing on the question of whether it is rational to be a religious theist. Explaining that having theistic beliefs is primarily a cognitive affair but being a religious theist involves a whole way of life that includes one's beliefs, Golding argues that (...) it can be pragmatically rational to be a religious theist even if the evidence for God's existence is minimal. The argument is applied to the case of Judaism, articulating what is involved in religious Judaism and arguing that it is rationally defensible to be a religious Jew. The book concludes with a discussion of whether a similar argument might be constructed for other versions of religious theism such as Christianity or Islam, and for non-theistic religions such as Taoism or Buddhism. Joshua Golding offers a carefully wrought explanation of how it can be rational for someone to live a religious life, in particular, a traditional Jewish life. (shrink)

Social bots – partially or fully automated accounts on social media platforms – have not only been widely discussed, but have also entered political, media and research agendas. However, bot detection is not an exact science. Quantitative estimates of bot prevalence vary considerably and comparative research is rare. We show that findings on the prevalence and activity of bots on Twitter depend strongly on the methods used to identify automated accounts. We search for bots in political discourses on Twitter, using (...) three different bot detection methods: Botometer, Tweetbotornot and “heavy automation”. We drew a sample of 122,884 unique user Twitter accounts that had produced 263,821 tweets contributing to five political discourses in five Western democracies. While all three bot detection methods classified accounts as bots in all our cases, the comparison shows that the three approaches produce very different results. We discuss why neither manual validation nor triangulation resolves the basic problems, and conclude that social scientists studying the influence of social bots on communication and discourse dynamics should be careful with easy-to-use methods, and consider interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Financing innovative and costly treatments in various therapeutic fields entails a number of problems in countries where costs are covered by public services. Providing these drugs is forcing actors to define the maximum sums of money society is willing to spend for given health improvements. This raises the question of whether maximum financing should vary according individuals’ circumstances, such as the rareness of a disease, lifestyles, social inequalities experienced over a life time, etc. This article examines a particular priority, namely (...) that given to the youngest patients, such prioritising usually refers to the “fair innings argument”. We question what could justify such a prioritization criterion. Three arguments are considered. At first we consider that FIA could be justified by the objective of equalizing the opportunities of well-being. Next, we proposed justifying the fair innings argument with the aim of equalizing the time provided to individuals to achieve their plan of life, in accordance with Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness. Finally, we proposed considering the FIA as being justified because of the goal of equalizing the time provided to individuals to accept death. These three arguments, of course, have many limitations, some of which we have highlighted. This article doesn’t aim to convince about the superiority of one argument over the other ones. We seek to contribute to the discussions which could happen on prioritization criteria regarding health care, by making explicit what could justify one specific criterion: the age criterion. (shrink)

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick Ferré. These essays, informed by the insights of Ferré and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

Here in more than a hundred photographs is portrayed Liebling's Minnesota. During two decades marked by social, political and cultural change, Liebling travelled the state and found his largest subject -- the depiction and interpretation of commonplace human experience. The images range from the grain elevators and skid row of Minneapolis to the slaughterhouses in South St. Paul and the poor, working-class streets of St. Paul's West Side; from the Iron Range and the Red Lake Indian reservation in (...) the north to the farming towns in the south. The vision of Minnesota that emerges from the extraordinary photographs is uniquely that of the artist, yet it leads viewers effortlessly to an enhanced understanding of the places, the times, and, always, the people. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Within Jean Paul Sartre’s atheistic program, he objected to Christian mysticism as a delusory desire for substantive being. I suggest that a Christian mystic might reply to Sartre’s attack by claiming that Sartre indeed grasps something right about the human condition but falls short of fully understanding what he grasps. Then I argue that the true basis of Sartre’s atheism is neither philosophical nor existentialist, but rather mystical. Sartre had an early mystical atheistic intuition that later developed into atheistic (...) mystical experience. Sartre experienced the nonexistence of God. (shrink)

Le travail et la formation des adultes sont aujourd’hui traversés de syntagmes mobilisés par une idéologie managériale dévoyant les termes d’autonomie, de responsabilité ou de capacité. À partir d’une analyse critique, l’article se propose de resituer ces glissements sémantiques dans le champ des recherches et des pratiques actuelles de la formation. Le recours aux travaux de Ricoeur et d’Honneth permet ensuite d’aborder leurs contributions respectives pour prolonger ces questions et leurs apports, en particulier, pour penser la reconnaissance. L’article se termine (...) par l’ouverture que permettent ces travaux pour les fondements de la formation, vers l’horizon d’une « vie bonne ». (shrink)

Chris Tweedt has offered a solution to the “common sense problem of evil,” on which that there is gratuitous evil is justified non-inferentially as a trivial inference from non-inferentially justified premises by invoking versions of CORNEA. Tweedt claims his solution applies not only to the versions of the common sense problem of evil offered by Paul Draper and Trent Dougherty, but also to that offered by me in this journal in 1992. Here I argue that Tweedt fails to defeat (...) this version of the problem. So even if Tweedt’s response to Draper and Dougherty is successful, a version of the common sense problem of evil survives. (shrink)

The notions of “narrated time” and “narrative identity” have become, in less than three decades, commonplaces, not only for philosophers, but also for psychologists and ethicists. This would be welcomed, if only it were not used nowadays in what must be called a new dogmatic way. Now, Paul Ricœur indeed asserted, in various ways, the wealth of the notion of narrative; but he also readily acknowleged its limits – aren’t these limits those of hermeneutics itself? Normal 0 false false (...) false EN-US JA X-NONE. (shrink)

En 1972, Emmanuel Levinas ouvre l’article qu’il consacre à Paul Celan par une citation justement célèbre : « Je ne vois pas de différence entre une poignée de mains et un poème ». Ce que voit Paul Celan dans une poignée de mains mériterait assurément de longs commentaires, ce qu’entend Emmanuel Levinas dans ce poème élémentaire est et n’est pas plus simple. D’une certaine manière, la poignée de mains ne dit rien mais elle dit : simple signe lancé (...) à l’autre, elle se résume dans un dire sans di... (shrink)

L’ontologie heideggérienne de l’être-pour-la-mort a souvent servi de référence négative à Paul Ricœur. Il lui a très tôt opposé trois thèses qu’il n’aurait peut-être pas formulées s’il n’avait pas croisé la philosophie de Jaspers : a) « La naissance signifie plus que la mort » ; b) « la rencontre décisive avec la mort est la mort de l’être aimé » ; c) « la mortalité elle-même doit être pensée sub specie vitae et non sub specie mortis ». La (...) première thèse conditionne les deux suivantes. Elle introduit une phénoménologie de l’ « être-en-vie » qui en appelle de la vie reçue à la vie transmise. On objectera peut-être que la phénoménologie de l’être-en-vie suppose l’ontologie de l’être-pour-la-mort. Mais, même si c’était le cas, elle n’en transformerait pas moins profondément la signification. La compréhension de l’existence est affectée elle-même par les phénomènes de la vie reçue et transmise. C’est ce que veut dire cette expression : « exister vivant ». L’angoisse de la fin n’annule pas la joie des commencements. Peut-être même reçoit-elle de celle-ci son sens.Paul Ricoeur has often referred to Heidegger’s ontology of being-towards-death to oppose it. He early set against it three thesis that he might have formulated differently had he not studied Jasper’s philosophy : a) « birth means more than death » ; b) « the decisive encounter with death is the death of the loved one » ; c) « mortality itself must be thought sub specie vitae, not sub specie mortis ». From the first thesis, can be inferred the two others. It brings in a phenomenology of being-alive. One may raise the objection that the phenomenology of being-alive presupposes the ontology of being-towards-death. But even so it would be necessarily transform its meaning. The understanding of existence is itself affected by the phenomena of life as given and received. Such is the meaning of the phrase : « existing alive ». The distress of the end never cancels the joy of the beginnings. It may even get its sense from it. (shrink)