ABSTRACT This essay considers the highly ambivalent attitude of the Austrian-Dutch physicist Paul Ehrenfest toward contemporary developments in both science and society. On the one hand, he was in the vanguard of the quantum and relativity revolutions, supported industrialization and economic planning based on mathematical models, and, in general, cherished technocratic ideals. The essay highlights several influences that shaped his attitude in these respects, from his ties with the Philips Physics Laboratory and his sojourns in the United States (...) to the utopian visions of H. G. Wells. On the other hand, he was extremely worried about the harmful consequences of contemporary changes in science and society, such as specialization, the growing pace of city life, and the increasing dependence on modern technologies, be they material or mathematical. In this regard, he agreed with cultural critics such as Max Nordau, Henri Bergson, Ostwald Spengler, and Ludwig Klages. Rather than attempting to solve this paradox, the essay suggests that this kind of ambiguity characterized a great deal of innovative science in the period. (shrink)

Our object in this paper is to study the antecedents, contents, implications, and impact of a not well-known or appreciated paper by EHRENFEST in 1911 on the essential nature of the different quantum hypotheses in radiation theory. After a careful analysis of EHRENFEST’s notebooks, correspondence, and publications, we conclude that the essential points of EHRENFEST’s paper were not perceived to a large extent, and hence that its implications were not considered thoroughly. Specifically, we show that EHRENFEST (...) contributed significantly to the clarifications of the differences between PLANCK’s and EINSTEIN’s respective quantum hypotheses, as well as to those of the concepts ‘‘discontinuity,’’ ‘‘quantization,’’ and ‘‘corpuscularity.’’. (shrink)

We analyze the evolution of EHRENFEST's thought since he proved the necessity of quanta in 1911 until the formulation of his adiabatic hypothesis in 1914. We argue that his research contributed significantly to the solution of critical problems in quantum physics and led to a rigorous definition of the range of validity of BOLTZMANN's principle.

Nous présentons une traduction française du compte rendu de L’Algèbre de la logique de Louis Couturat que Paul Ehrenfest rédigea en 1910 pour une revue scientifique russe. Dans ce texte, le physicien autrichien Ehrenfest propose d’appliquer la logique symbolique à l’analyse d’un réseau électrique. Dans une courte introduction, nous expliquons le contexte historique de ce texte et son importance philosophique.

En los orígenes de la física cuántica, a principios del siglo xx, la asimilación y maduración de las nuevas teorías requirió del establecimiento de vínculos con sus antecesoras, antes de poder desprenderse de ellas y formar una nueva estructura totalizadora de comprensión en esta disciplina. En este..

The first classification of general types of transition between phases of matter, introduced by Paul Ehrenfest in 1933, lies at a crossroads in the thermodynamical study of critical phenomena. It arose following the discovery in 1932 of a suprising new phase transition in liquid helium, the “lambda transition,” when W. H. Keesom and coworkers in Leiden, Holland observed a λhaped “jump” discontinuity in the curve giving the temperature dependence of the specific heat of helium at a critical value. (...) This apparent jump led Ehrenfest to introduce a classification of phase transitions on the basis of jumps in derivatives of the free energy function. This classification was immediately applied by A.J. Rutgers to the study of the transition from the normal to superconducting state in metals. Eduard Justi and Max von Laue soon questioned the possibility of its class of “second-order phase transitions” -- of which the “lambda transition was believed to be the arche type -- but C.J. Gorter and H.B.G. Casimir used an “order parameter to demonstrate their existence in superconductors. As a crossroads of study, the Ehrenfest classification was forced to undergo a slow, adaptive evolution during subsequent decades. During the 1940s the classification was increasingly used in discussions of liquid-gas, order-disorder, paramagnetic-ferromagnetic and normal-super-conducting phase transitions. Already in 1944 however, Lars Onsagers solution of the Ising model for two-dimensional magnets was seen to possess a derivative with a logarithmic divergence rather than a jump as the critical point was approached. In the 1950s, experiments further revealed the lambda transition in helium to exhibit similar behavior. Rather than being a prime example of an Ehrenfest phase transition, the lambda transition was seen to lie outside the Ehrenfest classification. The Ehrenfest scheme was then extended to include such singularities, most notably by A. Brain Pippard in 1957, with widespread acceptance. During the 1960s these logarithmic infinities were the focus of the investigation of “scaling” by Leo Kadanoff, B. Widom and others. By the 1970s, a radically simplified binary classification of phase transitions into “first-order” and “continuous” transitions was increasingly adopted. (shrink)

The specific heat of hydrogen gas at low temperatures was first measured in 1912 by Arnold Eucken in Walther Nernst’s laboratory in Berlin, and provided one of the earliest experimental supports for the new quantum theory. Even earlier, Nernst had developed a quantum theory of rotating diatomic gas molecules that figured in the discussions at the first Solvay conference in late 1911. Between 1913 and 1925, Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest, Max Planck, Fritz Reiche, and Erwin Schrödinger, among many (...) others, attempted theoretical descriptions of the rotational specific heat of hydrogen, with only limited success. Quantum theory also was central to the study of molecular spectra, where initially it was more successful. Moreover, the two problems interacted in sometimes surprising ways. Not until 1927, following Werner Heisenberg’s discovery of the behavior of indistinguishable particles in modern quantum mechanics, did American theorist David Dennison find a successful theory of the specific heat of hydrogen. (shrink)

The article examines the development of physics research in Ukraine on the example of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UIPT). Founded on the initiative of the eminent physicist Abram Ioffe, the UIPT has gradually become one of the world’s leading research institutions. During 1928–1938, many important events took place at the institute, which became markers for the development of physics in Ukraine and the USSR as well as in the world. An experiment on the fission of atomic nucleus (...) using artificially accelerated protons confirmed the validity of the intentions to reorient research towards nuclear physics. The involvement of foreign specialists in the work of the UIPT contributed to the informal consolidation of scientific thinking in physics. Outstanding physicists of the world such as Boris Podolskyi, Oleksandr Weisberg, Konrad Weiselberg, Friedrich Houtermans, Laszlo Tisza, Fritz Lange, Victor Weisskopf, George Placzek, Paul Dirac, Georgii Gamov, Niels Bohr, Paul Ehrenfest, and others worked here for longer or shorter periods. Niels Bohr, Ivar Waller, Milton S. Plesset, Evan J. Williams, and Leon Rosenfeld made reports at the theoretical conferences of UIPT. As a result, in the late 1920s and during the 1930s, an informal society of physicists from around the world was formed in Kharkiv. The consolidation of talented scientists has accumulated traditions, centuries of experience, and practical knowledge in the field from many scientific schools around the world. (shrink)

Computational methods such as computer simulations, Monte Carlo methods, and agent-based modeling have become the dominant techniques in many areas of science. Extending Ourselves contains the first systematic philosophical account of these new methods, and how they require a different approach to scientific method. Paul Humphreys draws a parallel between the ways in which such computational methods have enhanced our abilities to mathematically model the world, and the more familiar ways in which scientific instruments have expanded our access to (...) the empirical world. This expansion forms the basis for a new kind of empiricism, better suited to the needs of science than the older anthropocentric forms of empiricism. Human abilities are no longer the ultimate standard of epistemological correctness.Humphreys also includes arguments for the primacy of properties rather than objects, the need to consider technological constraints when appraising scientific methods, and a detailed account of how the path from computational template to scientific application is constructed. This last feature allows us to hold a form of selective realism in which anti-realist arguments based on formal reconstructions of theories can be avoided. One important consequence of the rise of computational methods is that the traditional organization of the sciences is being replaced by an organization founded on computational templates.Extending Ourselves will be of interest to philosophers of science, epistemologists, and to anyone interested in the role played by computers in modern science. (shrink)

This collection brings together twenty-two later essays by Paul Ricoeur under the topics of structuralism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and religion.

Bernard Williams identifies Hume as “in some ways an archetypal reconciler” who, nevertheless, displays “a striking resistance to some of the central tenets of what [Williams calls] ‘morality’”. This assessment, it is argued, is generally correct. There are, however, some significant points of difference in their views concerning moral responsibility. This includes Williams’s view that a naturalistic project of the kind that Hume pursues is of limited value when it comes to making sense of “morality’s” illusions about responsibility and blame. (...) It is, Williams maintains, only when we consider moral responsibility in genealogical terms, which gives attention to the importance of culture and history, that we can find a way of exposing the various prejudices and illusions of “the morality system”. Nevertheless, despite these differences, what Hume and Williams share is a fundamental commitment to provide a more “truthful” and “realistic” understanding of moral responsibility and our human ethical predicament. (shrink)

We propose in this article some new elements for the interpretation of Heraclitus' doctrine, concerning in particular the role of the opposition of contraries as generator of harmony, that results from Fragments 8DK and 51DK. This interpretation is based on the conceptual tool of matrices of concepts. After having described the basic elements that govern the latter, we set out to define in this conceptual framework the notions of opposition and contrary, as well as of harmony. This allows us to (...) give an interpretation and also a justification of Heraclitus' specific doctrine, according to which the opposition of opposites generates harmony. (shrink)

Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half-forgotten patterns of civility and moments of inarticulate awe. Reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary.Reverence, says philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff, begins in an understanding of human limitations. From this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death. It is a quality of character (...) that is especially important in leadership and in teaching, although it figures in virtually every human relationship. It transcends religious boundaries and can be found outside religion altogether.Woodruff draws on thinking about this lost virtue in ancient Greek and Chinese traditions and applies lessons from these highly reverent cultures to today's world. The book covers reverence in a variety of contexts -- the arts, leadership, teaching, warfare, and the home -- and shows how essential a quality it is to a well-functioning society.First published by Oxford University Press in 2001, this new edition of Reverence is revised and expanded. It contains a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a new preface, two new chapters -- one on the sacred and one on compassion -- and an epilogue focused on renewing reverence in our own lives. (shrink)

This paper presents the view that tropes can change, and so are not individuated by their determinate qualitative characters. On the view I have in mind, a trope is at any given time fully determinate, but can change qualitatively within the bounds set by a determinable essence. A charge trope, for example, must at any time have some exact intensity, but can survive changes in intensity. My argument, roughly, is this: Objects can change, and tropes are the parts of objects (...) that change (in a special sense of ‘part’), so tropes can change too. After some preliminaries, I present the argument carefully and discuss the operant notions. I then discuss each premise in turn. I respond to the charge that the view isn't realist, and to objections based on identity‐conditions for tropes. I describe both substratum‐ and bundle‐theoretic versions of the view, and finally, show what the view buys us. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the God of the Christians: And on One or Two Others by Rémi BraguePaul J. GriffithsOn the God of the Christians: And on One or Two Others. By Rémi Brague. Translated by Paul Seaton. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 160. $26.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-58731-345-5.Rémi Brague holds professorial positions at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He is perhaps (...) best described as a philosophical theologian and historian of ideas, and has published widely and deeply in these fields, writing mostly in French. A good portion of his work has, during the last two decades, been translated into English, and there are now half-a-dozen books and many essays by him available in that language. The book here under review was published in French in 2009.The book’s title aptly indicates one of its main themes, which is the deep and distinctive difference between the God of the Christians and other gods, especially the God of Islam. Brague does not like—and wishes to place under the ban—ways of characterizing Christianity and Islam that suggest or imply that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and that they are each monotheistic, Abrahamic, and a people of the Book. Furthermore, he advocates such a ban, sometimes in excitable language, because of deep differences in Christian and Muslim ways of understanding, depicting, and analyzing God.Brague seems to think that difference in predicatively identifying, describing, and responding to something requires, if it reaches a certain level, the conclusion that what is being identified, described, and responded to is not the same thing. Such difference makes, for example, shared reference impossible. If the predicate list I supply for something I wish to talk about is sufficiently different from the predicate list you supply for something you wish to talk about, the conclusion Brague prefers is that we are not talking about the same thing—that we are not referring to the same thing.But there are problems here. Imagine the following case. I speak of someone who is female, sixty-eight years old, lives in Bangalore, writes in English, and has published seventy-four essays and thirteen books. You speak of someone who is male, seventy-three years old, lives in Montréal, writes in French, and has published thirty-nine books and more than one hundred essays. The predicates have little in common. It might seem reasonable to say [End Page 463] that we are and must be referring to different people because no one person could share this predicate list: the list contains noncompossibles. But a little discussion shows that we each understand ourselves to be speaking about the most eminent living philosopher; that is a description each of us applies to the person thus predicatively identified.What to say about this? Perhaps that each of us is speaking of (referring to) the most eminent living philosopher, but that one (or both) of us has identified that person wrongly. On this understanding—not one, I think, that Brague would prefer—there is no failure of reference. Rather, there is error, more or less widespread, in specifying the properties belonging to the individual to whom the overarching predicate (‘most eminent living philosopher’) applies. Alternatively, one might say that only one—or perhaps neither—of us is speaking about the most eminent living philosopher, and that failure to do so is guaranteed by a sufficient number of mistakes in the predicate list. That is the line Brague would prefer.But it is easy enough to see that such an interpretation is not necessary and may be confused. We might, after all, be in substantial agreement as to what it would take to be the most eminent living philosopher. We might, that is, give largely the same sense to that expression, even if we disagree massively as to the particulars of the person who meets the case. And if so, the proper conclusion is not that neither of us is talking about the most eminent living philosopher; it is rather that we are talking about just that person... (shrink)

This 2007 book examines the possibilities for the rehabilitation of Hegelian thought within analytic philosophy. From its inception, the analytic tradition has in general accepted Bertrand Russell's hostile dismissal of the idealists, based on the claim that their metaphysical views were irretrievably corrupted by the faulty logic that informed them. These assumptions are challenged by the work of such analytic philosophers as John McDowell and Robert Brandom, who, while contributing to core areas of the analytic movement, nevertheless have found in (...) Hegel sophisticated ideas that are able to address problems which still haunt the analytic tradition after a hundred years. Paul Redding traces the consequences of the displacement of the logic presupposed by Kant and Hegel by modern post-Fregean logic, and examines the developments within twentieth-century analytic philosophy which have made possible an analytic re-engagement with a previously dismissed philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This is a book about the Hilbert space formulation of quantum mechanics and its measurement theory. It contains a synopsis of what became of the Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics since von Neumann's classic treatise with this title. Fundamental non-classical features of quantum mechanics-indeterminacy and incompatibility of observables, unavoidable measurement disturbance, entanglement, nonlocality-are explicated and analysed using the tools of operational quantum theory. The book is divided into four parts: 1. Mathematics provides a systematic exposition of the Hilbert space and (...) operator theoretic tools and relevant measure and integration theory leading to the Naimark and Stinespring dilation theorems; 2. Elements develops the basic concepts of quantum mechanics and measurement theory with a focus on the notion of approximate joint measurability; 3. Realisations offers in-depth studies of the fundamental observables of quantum mechanics and some of their measurement implementations; and 4. Foundations discusses a selection of foundational topics (quantum-classical contrast, Bell nonlocality, measurement limitations, measurement problem, operational axioms) from a measurement theoretic perspective. The book is addressed to physicists, mathematicians and philosophers of physics with an interest in the mathematical and conceptual foundations of quantum physics, specifically from the perspective of measurement theory. (shrink)

For Rawls, the demands of justice compete with moral and religious obligations that are part of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines. The ways we love are shaped by our comprehensive doctrines; however, love can also stand in opposition to our moral and religious beliefs. I will argue that love – spousal, familial and associational – constitutes its own register of values along with its own set of obligations. For this reason love confronts not only our moral and religious beliefs, it also confronts (...) the demands and requirements of justice. Rawls has worked out a negotiated peace between the obligations of justice and the demands of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines in the form of an overlapping consensus on a free-standing political conception of justice. I will argue that in Rawls’s philosophy, justice has not yet made peace with love. (shrink)

This chapter presents an opinionated account of how to understand the contributions of experience, especially with respect to the role of cognitive science, in developing and assessing metaphysical theories of reality. I develop a methodological basis for the idea that, independently of work in experimental philosophy focused on explications of concepts, contemporary metaphysical theories with a role for experiential evidence can be fruitfully connected to empirical work in psychology, especially cognitive science. My argument is not that cognitive science should replace (...) the metaphysician’s use of a priori theorizing and ordinary experience as a guide to metaphysical reality. Rather, we should enrich our perspective on a priori theorizing and ordinary experience as a guide to metaphysical reality by drawing on any relevant work in cognitive science. (shrink)

Free Will & The Tragic Predicament : Making Sense of Williams -/- The discussion in this paper aims to make better sense of free will and moral responsibility by way of making sense of Bernard Williams’ significant and substantial contribution to this subject. Williams’ fundamental objective is to vindicate moral responsibility by way of freeing it from the distortions and misrepresentations imposed on it by “the morality system”. What Williams rejects, in particular, are the efforts of “morality” to further “deepen” (...) or “refine” the notion of the voluntary, with a view to securing “ultimate justice”. It is these aims and aspirations, he argues, that take us to the precipice of scepticism. In Shame and Necessity (1993) Williams advances a vindicatory genealogy that unmasks the “illusions” and “fantasies” of our current ethical ideas as they relate to agency and responsibility. What we are then left with is the task of “recasting our ethical conceptions” . It is here that Williams is especially insistent on the importance and value of historical consciousness and reflection. The role of our reflections about the Greeks and tragedy is precisely to show that in order to move forward, into the future, we need to first look back at where we have come from. The value of these “untimely” observations is that they provide us with alternatives and options that we might otherwise lack. What we discover, when we consider the Greeks, is their commitment to a “pessimism of strength” that rests on rejecting scepticism. It is this two-sided perspective on our ethical predicament that delivers a more truthful account of our human situation, one that will help us discard those illusions and fantasies of "morality" that we are “better off” without. An account of this kind refuses to accept an optimism that insists that any form of responsible ethical life must be one that is immune to the influence of luck and fate. This is the fundamental lesson that we can learn from the ancient Greeks and that Williams seeks to “recover” for us. (shrink)

With his writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, ideology, and religion, Paul Ricoeur has single-handedly redefined and revitalized the hermeneutic tradition. From Text to Action is an essential companion to the now classic The Conflict of Interpretations. Here, Ricoeur continues and extends his project of constructing a general theory of interpretation, positioning his work in relation to its own philosophical background: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer, and Weber. He also responds to contemporary figures like K.O. Apel and Jürgen Habermas, connecting his own (...) theorization of ideology to their version of ideology critique. (shrink)

This article revisits the manuscript tradition and the different redactions of John Buridan’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. The aim of the article is threefold. First, it makes some corrections to the lists of manuscripts containing the third redaction and the final redaction of Buridan’s questions commentary on the Physics. Second, it argues that manuscript Zaragoza, Biblioteca Capitular de la Seo, cod. 15-61, ff. 1r-62v, contains a previously unknown version of the final redaction (together with the standard version from f. 62v (...) onwards). Third, to facilitate further study of the manuscripts of Buridan’s questions on the Physics and their mutual relations, appendices at the end of the article provide detailed tables of contents for the third redaction and the final redaction, as well as editions of selected questions from the Zaragoza manuscript, the third redaction of Buridan’s questions on the Physics, and the so-called Quaestiones breves. (shrink)

General introduction -- The concept of science in the context of Western Civilization and the debate between science and faith -- Relationship between science and religion -- The unity of reason -- General conclusion.

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s theory of productive imagination in previously unpublished lectures. The eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur was devoted to the imagination. These previously unpublished lectures offer Ricoeur’s most significant and sustained reflections on creativity as he builds a new theory of imagination through close examination, moving from Aristotle, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant to Ryle, Price, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Sartre. These thinkers, he contends, underestimate humanity’s creative capacity. While the Western tradition generally views imagination as derived from the reproductive example of (...) the image, Ricoeur develops a theory about the mind’s power to produce new realities. Modeled most clearly in fiction, this productive imagination, Ricoeur argues, is available across conceptual domains. His theory provocatively suggests that we are not constrained by existing political, social, and scientific structures. Rather, our imaginations have the power to break through our conceptual horizons and remake the world. (shrink)

This volume, the first part of Paul Ricoeur's Philosophy of the Will, is an eidetics, carried out within carefully imposed phenomenological brackets. It seeks to deal with the essential structure of man's being in the world, and so it suspends the distorting dimensions of existence, the bondage of passion, and the vision of innocence, to which Ricoeur returns in his later writings. The result is a conception of man as an incarnate Cogito, which can make the polar unity of (...) subject and object intelligible and provide a basic continuity for the various aspects of inquiry into man's being-in-the-world. (shrink)

Threats to the stability of liberal democracies are of obvious contemporary import. Concern with stability runs through John Rawls’s work. The stability that concerned him was that of fundamental terms of cooperation. Rawls long believed that the terms which would be stable were his two principles, but he eventually conceded that even a well-ordered society was more likely to be characterized by “justice pluralism” than by consensus on his own conception of justice. Contemporary liberal democracies, too, are divided about what (...) justice demands. I believe Rawls’s treatment of stability can help us understand the conditions under which fundamental terms of cooperation can be stable under non-ideal conditions such as ours. But because Rawls never worked through the consequences of his concession, his view needs to be developed before we can draw on it. Rawls’s treatment makes use of elementary game theory. Thus in _Theory of Justice_ he said -- and in _Political Liberalism_ he implied -- that stability would result from citizens with a sense of justice “playing” strategies which combined for what was, in effect, a Nash equilibrium. I argue that his concession requires a new conception of stability and implies that Rawls cannot appeal to a Nash equilibrium to show how stability would be maintained. His concession therefore forces open a troubling gap in his analysis. I fill that gap by proposing a weaker equilibrium concept that serves Rawlsian purposes. I conclude with what this project suggests for challenges facing the fragile liberal democracies of our own time. (shrink)

In an effort to deny the ongoing effect of colonialism and imperialism on contemporary political life, the death knell for a multicultural society has been sounded from all sides. That's the provocative argument Paul Gilroy makes in this unorthodox defense of the multiculture. Gilroy's searing analyses of race, politics, and culture have always remained attentive to the material conditions of black people and the ways in which blacks have defaced the "clean edifice of white supremacy." In _Postcolonial Melancholia_, he (...) continues the conversation he began in the landmark study of race and nation _'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack'_ by once again departing from conventional wisdom to examine -- and defend -- multiculturalism within the context of the post-9/11 "politics of security." This book adapts the concept of melancholia from its Freudian origins and applies it not to individual grief but to the social pathology of neoimperialist politics. The melancholic reactions that have obstructed the process of working through the legacy of colonialism are implicated not only in hostility and violence directed at blacks, immigrants, and aliens but in an inability to value the ordinary, unruly multiculture that has evolved organically and unnoticed in urban centers. Drawing on the seminal discussions of race begun by Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and George Orwell, Gilroy crafts a nuanced argument with far-reaching implications. Ultimately, _Postcolonial Melancholia_ goes beyond the idea of mere tolerance to propose that it is possible to celebrate the multiculture and live with otherness without becoming anxious, fearful, or violent. (shrink)

This paper develops a trivalent semantics for the truth conditions and the probability of the natural language indicative conditional. Our framework rests on trivalent truth conditions first proposed by Cooper (1968) and Belnap (1973) and it yields two logics of conditional reasoning: (i) a logic C of certainty-preserving inference; and (ii) a logic U for uncertain reasoning that preserves the probability of the premises. We show systematic correspondences between trivalent and probabilistic representations of inferences in either framework, and we use (...) the distinction between the two systems to cast light on the validity of inferences such as Modus Ponens, Or-To-If, and Conditional Excluded Middle. Specifically, the conditional behaves monotonically in C, but non-monotonically in U; Modus Ponens is valid in C, but valid in U only for non-nested conditionals. The result is a unified account of the semantics and epistemology of indicative conditionals that can be fruitfully applied to analyzing the validity of conditional inferences. (shrink)

As part of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” — which concerns the present confrontation and confusion of democracy and populism — this essay begins from the observation that populism is a word of Latin, not Greek, derivation. The Roman populus did not have the independent democratic power of the Athenian demos, though both words can be translated as “people.” Whereas today, in representative democracies, the conflict of populism and democracy can and does do serious damage to the latter, under the (...) regime of ancient Greek direct-democracy populism was more a demon fantasy, conjured by its diehard, oligarchic opponents, such as Plato, than a real, viable alternative mode of doing democratic politics. Thus, ancient Greek political history has its limits as a guide through our present troubles. (shrink)

With his writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, ideology, and religion, Paul Ricoeur has single-handedly redefined and revitalized the hermeneutic tradition. _From Text to Action_ is an essential companion to the now classic_ The Conflict of Interpretation_s. Here, Ricoeur continues and extends his project of constructing a general theory of interpretation, positioning his work in relation to its own philosophical background: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer, and Weber. He also responds to contemporary figures like K.O. Apel and Jürgen Habermas, connecting his own (...) theorization of ideology to their version of ideology critique. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophical structure for historical explanation that resolves disputes about the scientific status of history that have persisted since the nineteenth century. It does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative and by making their logic explicit. The books formulates a unique positive account of the logic of narrative explanations. This logic reveals how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. The book also develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology (...) of history--that is, it argues that there exists no one fixed past but many pasts. It includes a novel reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, displaying how Kuhn offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. The book situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework. Naturalism regards all canons of rational inquiry as evolving and contingent. The book also argues for the general philosophical significance of historical explanation. The first four chapters defuse methodological and the metaphysical objections to narrative explanations. The final three chapters explore how narrative explanations relate to other sciences. It will be of interest to researchers in historiography, theory of history, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Du point de vue de l’interprétation de Marx, il existe plusieurs raisons de revenir sur la lecture que M. Henry en a proposée. On peut d’abord souligner qu’à l’époque cette lecture n’a pas véritablement fait l’objet d’un débat public. Cela est d’autant plus curieux que beaucoup de ceux qui se sont depuis penchés sur l’œuvre de Marx, ont pris en compte l’apport de cette lecture. La première raison, pour en proposer une étude, serait donc de dire que la perspective d’Henry (...) mérite à nouveau une discussion. Si l’on considère, par ailleurs, qu’elle roule en grande partie sur la différence entre personnalité et individualité et entre propre et propriété, une seconde raison serait qu’une telle interprétation recoupe l’intérêt actuel pour un complexe de problèmes qui touchent directement et indirectement les rapports entre personnalité et propriété. (shrink)

Teleosemantics asserts that mental content is determined by natural selection. The thesis is that content is fixed by the historical conditions under which certain cognitive mechanisms – those that produce and those that interpret (respond to) representational states – were selectively successful. Content is fixed by conditions of selective success. The thesis of this paper is that teleosemantics is mistaken, that content cannot be fixed by conditions of selective success, because those conditions typically outnumber the intentional objects within a given (...) representational state. To defend against this excess, advocates of teleosemantics must attempt to privilege some conditions of success while ignoring others. This results in selective explanations that aread hoc,thereby depriving teleosemantics of the virtues it hoped to inherit from the theory of evolution by natural selection, including its alleged naturalistic credentials. (shrink)

This collection of papers makes a step towards increased dialogue among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. The text should be significant for those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

Discusses the conflict between subjective time and historical time, looks at how fiction and historical writings create a model of temporal experience, and considers the question of sense and reference.

Michel Foucault and Paul Veyne: the philosopher and the historian. Two major figures in the world of ideas, resisting all attempts at categorization. Two timeless thinkers who have long walked and fought together. In this short book Paul Veyne offers a fresh portrait of his friend and relaunches the debate about his ideas and legacy. ‘Foucault is not who you think he is’, writes Veyne; he stood neither on the left nor on the right and was frequently disowned (...) by both. He was not so much a structuralist as a sceptic, an empiricist disciple of Montaigne, who never ceased in his work to reflect on 'truth games', on singular, constructed truths that belonged to their own time. A unique testimony by a scholar who knew Foucault well, this book succeeds brilliantly in grasping the core of his thought and in stripping away the confusions and misunderstandings that have so often characterized the interpretation of Foucault and his work. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of “atheism” as it arises in Hume’s _Dialogues_. It argues that the concept of “atheism” involves several signficiant ambiguities that are indicative of philosophical and interpretive disagreements of a more substantial nature. It defends the view that Philo’s general sceptical orientation accurately represents Hume’s own “irreligious” and “atheistic” commitments, both in the _Dialogues_ and in his other (“earlier”) writings. While Hume was plainly a “speculative atheist”, his “practical atheism” was targeted more narrowly against “superstition” - (...) as opposed to deism or religion of a more “philosophical” kind. (shrink)